F-- r t CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN IN 189I BY HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE Date Due FtB 2 4k . • j SFPi.^ -J i -^'-^ 1 '-' "J' ti! - ' '**«W««»£»*iiSS4ai-K,i,5r" mm* (WS'Wdff^ ^2 1 '^: '.'^ . CorneH University Library DA 375.138 1891 Side-lights on the Stuarts 3 1924 027 996 101 Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027996101 ;-f' ■ : PacsiTTi-ile of a Golden Angel of HEKRY VI. supposed to be the iirst com used as a TotlcIi -piece. Facsimile of sm actual Touch-piece of CHARLES 11. from tlie British Mtiseum. SIDE-LIGHTS STUARTS f; a. indbrwiok, q.c. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS SECOlfD EDITION LONDON SAMPSON LOW, MAKSTON, SEARLE & BIVINCJTON Limited §t. glunstan'B gjimsc Fetter Lane, Fleet Street, EX. 1891 ■ t^\ [_AU rights reserved^ A) / BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 3£0 pp., 8vo, with facsimilee of coins issued by tlie Commonwealth and the Protector, .10s. C'lJ. THE INTEEBEGNUM, A.D. 1648—1660. LONDOH": SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE & ElVINGTOK, LiiDilcd , St. Dunstah's Hoi se, Fitter Lank, E C. '"I,. I lis- TO MY SON WALTER, IN WHOM I WISH TO INSPIRE A LOVE FOR THE HISTORY OT HIS COUNTRr, if StUifatc t{)f£(e 3Pagtii. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. Recent events have tended to revive popular sympathy witli the misfortunes of the Stuart dynasty. An asso- ciation of wealthy and distinguished people have bound themselves to champion the lost cause, and an exhibition of portraits, relics and memorials of the Eoyal House of Stuart, a collection of priceless value to the antiquary and the historian, has turned public sentiment somewhat in their favour. The kindly reception which was accorded to the first edition, of this work, the paucity of the errors that have been pointed out, and the numerous communications that I have received in reference to the biography of Arabella Stuart, and the details of Jeffreys' Western Campaign, lead me to think that a second edition, in a form more accessible to the general public, may not be unacceptable. F. A. INDEEWICK. WiNCHELSEA, October, 1890. CONTENTS. I. That High and Mighty Pkinoe, King James . . . i PAOE II. Lauy Arabella Stuart ... . .22 Her Letters . .... .72 III. Witchcraft . . . . . 123 List of Trials . . . . 190 IV. King Charlbs I. . . . . 195 V. The Regicides .... . 272 VI. Merrie England ... . . . . 315 VII. Thk King's Healing ..... 353 VIII. Monmouth's Rebellion ..... 365 The We.stem Circuit (;^aol-Book (1685) . . 397 Index . . ... 429 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGR James I., a.d. 1603 . . . . .1 Arabella Seymour . . 64 Facsimile of Letter to the Queen . 106 Facsimile of Letter to the Lord Chief Justice . . 115 King James VI. of Scotland , 13K Scrjeunt Bradshaw, by Worlledge . . . . 218 Whitehall with Holbein's Gate as it appeared at the Kestoration . 239 Execution of Charles I., from a Dutch broadsheet published at the Hague shortly after the event . ... 244- Queen Henrietta Maria at Tyburn . . . 270 Oliver Cromwell as (31iver I. . 274 Major-General Harrison . . . 2<<4 Facsimile page of a Diurnal for 5th February, 1649 . 324 Facsimile of an Angel of Henry VI., and a Touch-piece of Charles II. 357 Jeifreys as Earl of Flint, &c. . . . ,367 Facsimile of page in Gaol-Book containing conviction of Alice Lisle ... . . 380 Facsimile of first page of Calendar for Taunton, 17th Re]it., ICiSi") (from the Gaol- Book) . , . _ 4Qg Jacobus VI. Scutiaj Hex, ct I'liuius eo uoiuine Auglia?, Frauciai ct Lliberuia? niaximo a])[ilausu elertus Kex, tfcc. , auuu JJumiiii ll)0:i. SIDE-LIGHTS ON THE STUARTS. THAT HIGH AND MIGHTY PRINCE, KING JAMES. The settlement of tte succession to the throne had for years been a subject of great concern to our monarchs and our statesmen. Henry VIII., who, with his many faults, had a great and patriotic love for his country, and was according to his lights a true Englishman, had been most careful in pro- viding for the succession. From his knowledge of the temper and the instincts of the English people, he judged with prophetic wisdom that the Scotch family, with their strong sacerdotal proclivities and high- handed autocracy, were unsuited to become rulers of the English nation, and he declared by the will under which he settled the Crown, and which was at his death ac- cepted as a valid and binding decree, that in the event of all his three children dying without issue and his own blood thus wholly failing, the Scotch line being the descendants of his eldest sister, Margaret, married to James IV. of Scotland, should be passed over, and that the Crown should devolve on the descendants of his younger sister, Mary, Duchess of Suffolk.-^ His son, 1 See Fronde's " History of England," vol. iv. p. 523, for a copy of Henry Vlllth's will. B 2 SiDE-LICIITS ON THE StUARTS. Edward VI., died at the age of sixteen without issue ; his daughter, Mary, died without having son or daughter to succeed her ; and Elizabeth, for her own reasons, one of which undoubtedly was to secure the succession to the Scotch branch and thus to unite the two kingdoms under one sovereign, lived a life of celibacy and devoted herself during the later years of her reign to making careful and statesmanlike preparation for the establish- ment of King James of Scotland. That the old Tudor was right in his appreciation of the Scotch stock was proved by the event, but whether the country would have ultimately been better for the Eng- lish succession is matter of doubt. The time was rapidly approaching, even in the sixteenth century, for the ending of Osesarism and for the assertion of popular rights, and had we been governed by a sovereign and statesmen of the Tudor order, we might have waited longer for the shock which in 1648 galvanized the liberalism of England into permanent political life. As it was, the ultimate result of Elizabeth's disregard of King Henry's testament was to revolutionize the institutions of the country, and by putting us well ahead of other nations in the theory and in the practice of freedom, to preserve us from those calamities which, in the name and cause of popular liberties, overtook most of the nations of Europe. In the shadow of that great revolution we still walk, and there we shall abide till the overpowering force of an ever-increasing democracy may in the course of time induce an equal convulsion to restore the natural equilibrium of political forces. Elizabeth, to carry out her project of the succession, was in constant correspondence with the Scotch king, and exercised over him the natural control of a strono- over a weaker mind. She took a personal interest That High and Mighty Prince, King James. 3 in his affairs, required him to marry, and offered him the choice as a bride of Arabella Stuart, a Royal Princess of great beauty and culture and a possible pretender to the Throne, or of Anne, daughter of the King of Denmark, a Protestant princess with some reputation for beauty. She also went so far as to describe the fair Dane, to tell him where Denmark was, and to explain the language which the Danes spoke, as to both of which points the Royal Scot ap- pears to have been in considerable ignorance. She re- conciled her people and her statesmen to the advent of the Scotch king, and provided for a peaceful change of Government, not however without searchings of heart and some misgivings -which haunted her even to the last, for we learn in the graphic account of her illness by a gossip- ping priest, that as she rolled on her bedside she " raved of Tyrone and Arabella," Tyrone representing Ireland, then as now discontented and ungovernable, and Arabella representing the succession, which (differing in her judgment of the people from the opinion formed by her father) she thought it best for the country to be diverted from the English into the Scotch hue, and to be conferred upon the son of the misguided but unfortunate Queen of Scots, whose life she had found herself compelled to take. All things, therefore, worked favourably for the accession of King James. Very little was known of him in this country; and what was generally known or believed was favour- able. He had a reputation for learning and for piety, for good-nature, and for liberality. It was known that he had been since his childhood separated from the evil influence of his mother, and it was believed that he was thoroughly imbued with the strong Pro- testant instincts of his guardians and tutors. Before B 2 4 Side-lights on the Stuarts. Philip, the Prince of Spain, could marry Mary, Queen of England, the Parliament of the day pledged him by an oath to keep our laws, our liberties, and our customs inviolate and inviolable, to appoint no foreigner under any circumstances to any office or commission under the crown, and to quit the kingdom on the death of the queen, should she leave no issue to succeed her. But James was taken by the English people on the mere nomination of the dying Queen. Par- liament was not consulted, no questions were put to him, no conditions were imposed. He was ac- cepted free and unpledged, and was duly proclaimed in London and Westminster, on the 28th of March, 1603, without a voice being raised in opposition. His accession was quietly and amiably acquiesced in by the citizens, who mourned with unaffected grief the loss of their great queen, and who felt that the dearest wish of her heart, namely, the peace- ful union of England and Scotland, was being then fulfilled. The omens were propitious, and as an indication of future greatness a lioness whelped in the Tower .^ The grand old men of the Elizabethan era had passed or were passing away, but there still remained a goodly con- tingent of statesmen holding to the traditions of the last reign, able and willing to guide King James's foot- steps and to protect the throne, if his vanity and im- periousness had not led him to spurn their advances and to reject their counsel. He quickly turned to other counsellors, corrupt, slavish, and dependent ; he lavished his means and his caresses upon unworthy favourites ; he quarrelled with his Parliament, which under the Tudor sovereigns had become a great and increasing power in ' State Papers, 10. 6 (1603). That High and Mighty Prince, King James. 5 the laud; lie gradually alienated tte nobility, aud lost touch with the people ; and he began from the very day of his coronation to sow the seeds of that discord which for many years raged in the country, and ulti- mately drove his descendants, bag and baggage, from English soil. James, whose impatience and anxiety to secure the throne of England had, during the queen's life, been unbounded, who had described himself as Moses on Mount Pisgah, gazing at the promised land, which he seemed destined never to tread, ceased all impatience and all anxiety on hearing of his proclamation, and set out for his new kingdom with the easy and shambling progress that usually characterized his every movement. Shortly after his accession he had his portrait painted, and he is described on the legend as " Jacobus Maximo applausu electus Bex,'' a character, however, which he and his family violently repudiated at a later date. His personal appearance on his arrival in England was not quite in accordance with the popular idea of a British king. He was of middle height, with thin hair, his legs were weak from his childhood, and his walk was described as '" circular." He was a fair horseman, and was fond of hunting, though he had not a very firm grip of the saddle, for he appears once to have been thrown into a pond in Suffolk, and once at Theobalds in 1622, while hunting with Sir Symon D'Ewes, to have been thrown into the New River through the ice, and " much water came out of his mouth and body." He also delighted in bear-baiting and cock-fighting, the Keeper of his Majesty's cock-pit receiving 200L per annum, not much under the then salary of a Secretary of State.^ He had a good-natured, slobbering kind of ' Jesse's " Court of EDgland under tlie Stuarts." 6 Side-lights on the Stuarts. moutlij with a tongue somewliat too large, and a face tbat revealed like a mirror the inner workings of his mind- he grew pale and red by turns, and seldom attempted to control either his feelings or his speech. His hands were soft as silk, which is said to have arisen from his never washing them, contenting himself with performing his ablutions by wiping them with the end of a damp towel. His clothes gave him the appearance of corpulence, through being quilted thickly enough to be dagger-proof, and he was so much afraid of or averse to crowds, that on his arrival in York on his way to London, he threw a wet blanket over the enthusiasm and loyalty of his new subjects by issuing a proclamation forbidding all un- necessary resort to his Eoyal person. Neither can he be said to have had a very pretty taste in dress. One of his household says, " I saw him in the same progresse after his inauguration in a dress which was as greene as the grasse he trod on, with a father in his cap and a home instead of a sword by his side. How suitable to his age, calling, or person, I leave others to judge." * On one of bhese progresses, stopping for a night at Houghton Tower, in Lancashire, he showed his apprecia- tion of the beef of England over the mutton of his Scottish marshes by conferring a knighthood on a loin of the British ox, a distinction which, unlike all other knight- hoods, has become world-wide and hereditary, and will never become extinct so long as Great Britain or her colonies pasture oxen and live upon beef. There are several of his portraits extant, of such great dissimilarity that many of them can have no possible resemblance to him whatever. The best I conceive are some two or three by William Faithorne, a contemporary artist and engraver, a very carefully-preserved and ^Traditional Memoyres on the Rcigue of King .James." London, 165S. 4 UT,v That High and Mighty Prince, King James. 7 beautiful collection of whose drawings is to be found in the Print Department of the British Museum. He had an intense belief in his learning and in his skill in divining the motives of men, and in unravellino- difiBcult and complicated questions of law, of fact, or of policy, as also in his power of governing, which he called king-craft, and the exercise of which brought down upon him nearly all the troubles of his reign. He also prided himself on his foresight and deter- mination, and like most weak persons he was some- times capable for a moment of acts of unnecessary- vigour. For instance, in 1689, he took a most unne- cessary and solitary voyage to Denmark, in boisterous and stormy weather, to meet his future queen, in order, as he quaintly says in his letter to the Privy Council of Scotland,^ that he might clear himself of " being led by the nose like an unreasonable creature or a bairn that could do nothing of himself," and that he might not be " unjustly slandered as an irresolute asse," a slander to which, whether justly or not, he has been universally subjected from that day to this. As to his personal character, it is, I think, only justice to say, that much of the scurrilous abuse to which he has been subjected, appears to be without warrant, and that he was personally a man of good moral character, a quality for which he was probably much indebted to the strict a,nd careful training he had . received from 'his Presbyterian tutors, and the hard lessons he had learnt from the experiences of his mother and his grandfather. His language, however, both written and oral, partook too much of the grossness and rudeness of the age, his manners were eflfeminate and effusive, and he was not quite so ' " Secret History of James I.," vol. ii. 2:j2. 8 Side-lights on the Stuarts. mucli a practitioner as preacher of the virtue of tem- perance, for there is on record a contemporaneous account of the visit of his brother-in-law, the King of Denmark, to the English Court in 1606, on which occasion both kings got intoxicated at the public reception. James was in such a disgraceful state that he had to be carried to bed by his courtiers, a task performed with considerable difficulty, and the King of Denmark was so disguised with liquor that he grossly insulted the Countess of Nottingham, wife of the Lord High Admiral, and had to be carried off in the same fashion as his brother of England.*' In his family, how- ever, he appears to have been loved, probably through his easy disposition and his liberality. He was, un- doubtedly, much attached to his children, and par- ticularly to his son Charles, upon whom he expended an extraordinary amount of good advice both oral and written, and it certainly must be put to his credit that his sons, Henry Prince of Wales and Charles, after- wards king, and his unfortunate daughter Elizabeth of Bohemia, were all in their private life well conducted, and, indeed, exemplary persons. Whether he was quite so fond of his wife is a more doubtful matter, but like many husbands who are not too fond of their wives in private, he professed a great affection for her in public, ostentatiously kissing her between the shoulders when he parted from her, and eulogizing in his maudlin moments the " yellownesse of her haire." Among the Petyt MSS. in the Inner Temple Library, are the following verses on the death of Queen Anne, " by King James himself," showing good feeling and kindness of heart, if somewhat exaggerated in metaphor. " Peynton : Jssse's " Court of England under the Stuarts," vol. i. p. 59. That High and Mighty Prince, King James. 9 " Her to invite the Great God sent His star,'' Whose friend and nearest kin good princes are, Who, though they run the race of man and die. Death serves but to enhance their majesty. So did my queen from hence her court remove, And left of earth to be enthroned above. She's changed, indeed^ for sure no good prince dies, But like the sun sets only for to rise." According to all accounts tlie queen was a strong- minded but extravagant woman, fond of dress and of dis- play, showing kindness, however, and generosity to her friends and attendants, but she was strongly suspected of being a Papist, and was accordingly not very popular in England. She appears, however, to have lived on good terms with the king, who treated her well, and exercised over her the only good influence which he seems to have exercised over any one. In many respects the king was mean and paltry. He was suspicious, inquisitive and chattering; he took a minute interest in the private aflFairs of the persons of his court, and in the daily life and conversation of his state prisoners, of whom, during this reign the Tower and other prisons were full ; and the State Paper Office is filled with reports of a more or less scandalous nature on the private lives of all the prominent persons in the kingdom. He had an almost insane view of his Divine right and Royal Prerogative, and on one occasion, shortly after his accession, he insisted, in gross disregard of our laws and customs, on trying a thief himself, and sentencing him to be hanged. He also wished to sit in the King's Bench and hear arguments ' Referring to the comet that had lately appeared, and which was o-enerally believed to be of Divine import, but whether favourable to the Protestant or the Catholic party abroad, men's minds were hopelessly divided. Petyt MSS., No. 538, vol. xlix. p. 93. 10 Side-lights of the Stuarts. on demurrers and special pleadings, and when, through the remonstrance of the judges, he was dissuaded from so doing, he sent his directions to the Courts of Common Law and to the Privy Council, to act on his orders, one of which was to punish an unhappy man who was reported to have spoken of him as "King Joram." For although he prided himself on his wit, he was, like many professed humorists, very susceptible to any witticism which might be turned against himself. One of his most trusty and faithful servants was Sir Henry Wootton, who, in 1613, was Ambassador at the Hague, Being asked at table what was the chief duty of an ambassador, he answered that he was " an honest man sent abroad to lie for the good of his country " {ad mentiendum reipuhlicce causa). Whereupon one Gaspar Schoppius published a pamphlet quoting the above as upon King James' authority, to show that Protestants dissembled as weU as Papists, and discharged their diplomatic duties with lies and equivocations. The king was greatly angered at this, and although Sir Henry Wootton in the follow- ing month' published a pamphlet defending the king from the charge of sending ambassadors abroad to He, he was kept out of employment for some years, and was only restored to favour when, at a late period of the reign, it was found impossible any longer to dispense with his services. The Court from the very earliest period occupied its many hours of leisure in card-playing, diceing, and gambhng. The king held his reception and lived at the palace at Whitehall, where every nio-ht the tables were crowded, and the king, the queen, and the royal princes, whose sense of dignity would not ^ Novombor 25Ui, 1613. That High and Mightv Prince, King James, ii permit them to mix with the crowd of courtiers and themselves to throw for their stakes, played vicariously through the hands of their favourites, and regularly lost and won sums that entailed constant interviews with " Jingling Geordie," the Court banker and Rothschild of the period. " On Twelfth Eve," says Chamberlain in one of his gossipping letters,* " there was great golden play at Court, no gamester admitted that brought not BOOl. at least. Montgomery played the king's money and won him 760Z., which he had for his labor ; the Lord Monteagle lost the queen 400L, Sir Robert Cary for the prince BOOL, the Earl of Salisbury 300L, the Lord Buckhurst 500Z., et sic de cceteris ; so that I heard of no winners but the king and Sir Francis Woolley, who got about 800Z." And thus almost the first glimpse we have of the royal family of the Stuarts after their arrival in England shows them seated round the green cloth and playing for the stakes that even then they were beginning to wring from the purses of a somewhat reluctant people. This mania for play and for luxurious entertainments naturally brought with it the desire for a suitable habitation for the great monarch and a proper house of re- ception for his courtiers and his guests. With this object in view, the king at the very beginning of his reign took steps to rebuild the old Palace of White- hall, and to erect on its site and on other land to be acquired by purchase, a house worthy of so great a king and so magnificent a kingdom. The designs for the new palace by Inigo Jones still exist. Had they been carried out, London would have possessed one of the most extensive and beautiful royal residences in » Chamberlain to Carlton, February 8th, 1607. State Papers, 31. 4. 12 Side-lights on the Stuarts. Europe, but architects, builders, and freeholders required pay as the work proceeded, and thus the building never got further than the banquetting-house at Whitehall. A fire which took place in 1698 entirely destroyed the rest of the old palace, but the banquetting-house was by good fortune rescued from the flames, and it still stands with its melancholy associations as the first and only instalment of the great project of King James. This habitual gambling, coupled with the unbridled extravagance indulged in by king and queen, by princes and favourites, was the first cause of estrangement between the Crown and the people, and quickly led to other disasters. Elizabeth's reign was marked by thrift to a remarkable degree, and so averse were she and her ministers to avoidable taxation, and so close did they run their expenditure, that at the queen's death it was reported to the Council that there was no money in the Exchequer. Gambling debts, costly entertainments, reckless expenditure on favourites, male and female, gross extravagance of the queen and her Court, and lavish entertainment of foreigners, induced calls on Parliament which could not be justified, and were only granted sullenly and under pressure, and other means were naturally sought to raise the necessary funds. In 1613 the king gave 17,O00Z. for jewels presented to Lady Frances Howard^ on her marriage to the Lord • This lady was the divorced wife of the Earl of Essex. On the marriage Eoohester was created Earl of Somerset, in order that the lady might not lose her rank at Court. Within little more than a year of this date the Countess was tried for the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, in conjunction with one Mrs. Turner, widow of a physician, and one Forman, an astrologer and wizard, whom she employed for the purpose. The two latter were executed, but the Countess, having pleaded guilty, was pardoned by the king. She afterward retired into the country, lived in great misery with her husband, and died of a malignant disease at an early age. State Papers, vol. Ixxv. 13. November 18th, 1613. That High and Mighty Prince, King Jajies. 13 Kocliester, while his personal guard and his postmen from Royston were still unpaid. He gave 2500Z. for a single jewel for the queen, and 3200L for one for the prince, while the pay of the navy was so much in arrear that the wives and children of the sailors were hardly kept from making an outcry at the gate.^ In order to meet this wilful waste it was pro- posed to create and sell new titles of nobility. There existed at this time in France One of the quaint titles which associated the temporal with the spiritual power of the great prelates who, there as elsewhere, exercised a powerful influence over the fortunes and the politics of the country. There were to be found scat- tered through the various provinces of France wealthy and noble landowners, who held by hereditary right certain territories of the Church on condition of their acting as judges in the temporal affairs of the bishopric and leading the bishop's troops to battle when the eccle- siastical trumpet summoned them to the field. The title they held was that of Vidame (vice dominus), the word dame in the old French language signifying dominus, or lord. Thus there were the Yidame de Chartres, the Vidame d' Amiens, the Vidame de Eheims, and many others. Latterly, however, the title had become appur- tenant to the soil, and the purchasers of these eccle- siastical lands acquired with them the title of Vidame with the then not very onerous burthens. The king accordingly, looking about for the means of raising revenue, conceived the idea of replenishing his exchequer by adapting the title and position of a vidame to the exist- ing state of society in England. The Enghsh counterpart was to be called a Vidom, but as the peers resented any increase of their body being created by purchase, these 2 State Papers, vol. Ixxv. 13. November 18th, 1613. 14 Side-lights on the Stuarts. new vidoms were not to be called as Lords to Parliament, but to be eligible as commoners for seats in the Lower House. This scheme, however, was too unpopular to be seriously pressed, and in its place the king created and sold the title of baronet, or little baron, for lOOOZ. cash to each claimant, with the further liability on each baronet to have his eldest son knighted at the age of twenty-one at a further fee, or to compound in a lump sum for the fee and the knighthood to- gether. This title still continues among us, but the title of Yidame gradually died out among our neigh- bours. At the time of the French Revolution there were only five or six vidamies in the whole of Trance, and after that date they disappeared altogether. The creation of these new titles, however, only ad- dressed itself to the vanity or the patriotism of the country; far worse schemes were afterwards enter- tained. The crown timber, which had been carefully nursed by Henry VIII. and Elizabeth for building the wooden walls of old England, inasmuch as the English oak alone in the world would last out a sea-fight without cleaving on receipt of a shot, was put up to auction, and millions of trees were felled and sold to whom- soever. Englishman or foreigner, would bid the highest price. Large sums were thus received, and in 1608 a scheme was proposed, and a Bill was drafted, for selling the Crown lands by bastardizing Queen Eliza- beth, an act of perfidy, of ingratitude, and of base- ness, from which the memory of the king has only been saved by the total collapse of the scheme on its first suggestion to the House. Considerable sums were also raised by fines and by selling the right to persecute popish recusants in various parts of England. I have That High and Mightv Prince, King James. 15 come across two of these warrants.^ They are dated iu 1610, and are endorsed as follows: "Sir John Smitk gives 8000L per annum, for Yorkshire recusants.'" " Sir Thomas Grantham gives 2000Z. a year more than before for Lancashire recusants." Poor unhappy papists, to live under a king who was believed to be with them in heart, but who, for his selfish ends, handed them over to their persecutors, and at a time when the country had not yet realized that a man's religion as his politics should be as free and as unfettered as the sea that surrounds him, and the air that he breathes. Every office and every tax in course of time was either farmed out for a money payment or granted to some favourite who had claims on the Crown, and so wholesale and inveterate was the habit of receiving payments or bribes by persons in high office, that the greatest of Chancellors, and in other respects the wisest of men, Lord Bacon, succumbed to the temptation, and closed what would otherwise have been an honourable, if not a glorious career, in retirement and disgrace. Tor the first time also a Benevolence, or forced loan, was attempted by the king, but fortunately for him the people of London, under the lead of the Lord Mayor and the Sheriffs, refused to pay, and the troubles consequent upon it were reserved for his successor. His reign was, however, eminently and everlastingly disgraced by his dealing with two cases of great and notorious crime. The execution of Mrs. Turner,* and Forman, the astrologer, accessories to the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, while the guilty principals, ^ State Papers, 1610, England. Oddly enough, at the same time I found a warrant to pay William Briat, the king's rat-killer, M. per diem (dated 1603). '' Mrs. Turner, who was a very handsome and ingenious woman, moving 1 6 Side-lights on the Stuarts. probably Lord and certainly Lady Somerset, who were personal favourites of bis own, were freely par- doned, cast an early and an indelible stigma upon bis much- vaunted justice. This was emphasized and re- peated later on when the king in his last year made overtures for the restoration of the Barl of Somerset to favour and authority, a step only prevented by his own death. The other, equally scandalous and equally notorious, was the conviction of Sir "Walter Raleigh for high treason in the year 1603, and his sub- sequent execution on that conviction in 1618, fifteen years afterwards, and after he had been honourably employed in the service of the Grown. This proceeding disgusted the whole country, and was jealously and truly regarded as a dishonourable and cruel surrender to the Court of Spain. To resist the pretensions of that power to the control of this country, the subjects of Queen Elizabeth had volunteered their money and their lives, had sailed out boldly and successfully against the Grand Armada, and had driven the Spaniard from our shores ; and one can well realize even in these days the sickening feeling that must have come over the people at this spectacle of their abasement before their old and traditional enemy. Nor does it seem credible that the nation could have tamely permitted almost the sole survivor of the captains of the British Fleet who beat the Spaniards in 1588, to be sacrificed to their jealousy in in good society, had invented a new starch, and had introduced the fashion among ladies of wearing saffron-coloured ruffs. This fashion which she originated, however died with her, as she was hanged in one of her celebrated yellow ruffs, in the presence of a great concourse of people. Two centuries later Mrs. Manning brought a similar discredit upon the wearing of black satin drosses, she having been hanged iu one given to her by her former mistress, the Duchess of Sutlierlajid. That High and Mighty Prince, King James. 17 1618. Prince Henry, referring to Raleigk's imprison- ment, is reported to have said that no one but his father would have kept such a bird in a cage, and well may it have been exclaimed that the king had been infected with the mania of the idolaters, whom he professed to pursue, when he offered up the choicest son of England to propitiate the Moloch of Spain. It has been said of many eminent men that their characters would have stood higher with posterity had they not sought a reputation for which neither their nature nor their station in life had fitted them. Sir Alexander Oockburn, a man of great learning and emi- nence as a judge, and who in other respects rendered great services to his country, once said in my hearing that he would rather have written " David Copperfield " than have been Lord Chief Justice of England, and King James's ruling passion was to rank as a great orator and a great writer. For both these positions he had some qualifications, and I think it probable that the extravagance of his pretensions in this respect may have considerably obscured his merits. I do not pretend to have read his works, though I have waded through some portions of them, and I intend to refer to his work on " Demonology," but I give the opinions of two well- qualified critics, Horace Walpole and Isaac D'Israeli, father of Benjamin Lord Beaconsfield and the learned author of the " Curiosities of Literature." ^ Mr. D'Israeli says : — " As a writer, his works may not be valuable, and are infected with the pedantry and the superstition q£ the age ; yef; I suspect that James was not that ^rdegraded and feeble character in which he ranks by the contagious voice of criticism. He has had more critics than readers. After a great number of acute observa- 5 " Cmiosities of Literature,'' p. 170. 1 8 Side-lights on the Stuarts. tions and witty allusions, made extempore, which we find continually recorded of him by cotemporary writers, and some not friendly to him, I conclude that he possessed a great promptness of wit and much solid judgment and acute ingenuity." Some thirty years after the above was written, Mr. D'Israeli having completed his unin- viting task of reading through King James's works, says that he saw no reason to alter the somewhat ambiguous commendation he had formerly bestowed. Horace Wal- pole,'' in concluding his hostile criticism of the king's literary talent, says : — " One remark I cannot avoid making : the king's Speech is always supposed by Parliament to be the speech of his ministers : how cruel it would have been on King James's ministers if that interpretation had prevailed in his reign." One matter, however, is commonly and habitually overlooked in discussing the character and attainments of this king. It is undoubtedly the fact that the Bible as now read in church, was mainly the result of that monarch's exertions. The preface, with its fulsome dedication to that High and Mighty Prince James, speaking of him and to him as the Sun in his strength, as that Sanctified Person, as endued with singular and extraordinary graces, and as the Wonder of the World goes on with more truth to describe him as the principal author and mover of the work, and as continually uro-ing and inciting to its completion. Follow:ing the confer- ence at Hampton Court, attended as it was by ministers of various denominations, and at which the king took a prominent part, he arranged the scheme of the trans- lation, the number and divisions of the translators, and took a personal and direct superintendence of the work. Looked at solely as a literary composition, the Bible of Catalogue of Eoyal and Noble Authors (1759), vol. i. n. 41. That High and Mighty Prince, King James. 19 1611 is a noble work, a great advance upon tlie versions then extant, the foundation almost of the English lan- guage as now spoken and written ; and although of later years a conference of scholars and divines of great ability and learning has revised that version of the Scriptures, yet the general, and I believe the correct, opinion is that they have not found their way to any material improve- ment on the version of King James, which still holds its place on the shelves and in the affections of the country. One other observation deserves to be made before passing away from the character of this king. He was a man of constitutional timidity ; he shrank from a drawn sword ; '' he was superstitious, he believed in witchcraft and the evil eye. He was in continual dread of assassination, and he took the most minute precau- tions for his personal safety, and yet when the supreme moment of danger arrived, and he was told by the Lord Keeper Williams that his days were numbered, he received the intelligence with calmness and resig- nation, and passed away in the full possession of his faculties, spending his last hours in prayer and medi- tation and in quiet and rational discourse with his minister on the important affairs of the kingdom. " Thus," says the historian of these latest hours, " in the full power of his faculties, a timorous prince en- countered the horrors of dissolution. Religion rendered cheerful the abrupt night of futurity ; and what can philosophy do more ? or, rather, can it do as much ? " An incident symptomatic of the times in relation to the king's death ought not to be omitted, James lay ' On the occasion of the knighting of Sir Kenelm Dighy the king nearly poked out his eye, and the Duke of Buckingham had to direct the sword to the knight's shoulder. 2 20 Side-lights on the Stuarts. dying of an ague at his favourite seat at Theobalds. Ague was the prevalent disease of the period, and for it there was no well-recognized cure. Ignorance and superstition had, however, as might have been antici- pated, suggested various remedies as infallible specifics. A mixture of gin and acorns, mustard and beer, a piece of spider's web in an apple, a black bottle-spider mashed into a pill with fresh butter, a mouse pie, a live frog hung in a bag up the chimney, the wearing of various charms, driving a nail into a stile over a footpath, were all considered, in different parts of the kingdom, to be of wonderful efiBcacy. But the treatment most commonly in vogue in the Kentish marshes, where ague is still somewhat abundant, was to fasten on the wrist of the patient a plaster composed of tallow, pepper, and herbs, and to leave it there till the ague disappeared. The Duchess of Buckingham was in waiting on the king, and distrusting either the skill or good-will of the doctors in attendance, mixed a plaster according to the Kentish prescription, and while they were absent from the room, put it on the king's wrist, where it was found by the doctors on their next visit. The natural tendency of the public at this period to suspect poison, led to accusations against the Duke of Buckingham of having murdered the king by a poisoned plaster, in order to secure the crown for Charles before James had time to supplant him by the restoration of Somerset to favour. At a later period it was charged against Charles that he had been privy to this attempt of the duke on the life of his father, and it was one of those things of which that monarch, before his execution, declared his conscience to be free. "All our ills," says a writer during the Common- wealth, " might easily have been at first prevented (and That High and Mighty Prince, King James. 21 perhaps no less to tlie king's advantage than the people's) had the same caution the Parliament exacted from Philip of Spain been taken from James of Scotland ; " a feeling which so strongly pervaded the people in 1688 that the new dynasty was bound down by constitutional fetters to the equal benefit of all parties to the contract. However good may have been King James's intentions, and many good wishes no doubt he had, he was, as was said, a king-in-law rather than a king to his people, loving as a sovereign the children of his birth rather than those of his adoption, and he carefully and studiously sowed, as if with malice prepense, every seed which could ripen to a harvest of discontent and trouble to his household and his kingdom. He was buried with great pomp and ceremony in Westminster Abbey, and his effigy lay under a canopy modelled by Inigo Jones. But he was unlucky alike in his artistic as in his political ventures, for the scaffold erected for an assault at arms to entertain the King of Denmark served as the model for that which was used at the execution of Charles I., and the pomp and ceremonial of James's funeral rites formed a precedent for the obsequies of Oliver Cromwell. 2 2 Side-lights on the Stuarts. II. AEABBLLA STUART. To take a single historical personage, to trace Mm from tlie cradle to the grave, to read his inmost thoughts in his private papers, to contrast these with his public utterances, and to find, it may be, in his singleness of mind, or it may be in his double life, the hidden motives which have led to otherwise inexplicable actions ; to enter into his joys and sorrows, to sympathize with his domestic trials and his public successes, to appraise the influence of his intervention on the course of national events, and thus to arrive at a proximate if not an exact estimate of his character, is one of the most seductive as it is one of the most laborious of employments. But for a true enjoyment and apprehension of history this is the course that the student must pursue. A knowledge of the complex organization of the human body is only to be attained by a study of the different bones, sinews, muscles, and arteries of which it is composed. The system of the heavens is only to be learnt by a minute examination of the natures and the movements of the planets and bodies of the celestial firmament. The proper- ties of waters and of minerals are only ascertained by an investigation of the elements of which they are consti- tuted ; and in like manner the history of a nation or of an epoch is best derived froni the individual consideration of the various personages— political, social, literary, and artistic — who lived and moved within it. The greatest Arahella Sttjart. 23 historians have ever been the greatest and most pleasing biographers, and there are probably no pages of history that do not dwell in our memory more from the special incidents of some one or more of the characters whose lives are there recorded than from any definite recollec- tion of the whole. In studying so far as we can from their own correspondence, their own diaries, and their own newspapers, the everyday lives of the citizens of any period, we seem gradually to move in the circle in which they moved, to breathe the atmosphere which they breathed, to share their thoughts, and to reciprocate their sentiments. And we are thus enabled to look back at the passing events of a bygone age, and to realize a picture, as it were from the life, without a compulsory recourse to the manifolded replicas of other inquirers. The Lady Arbella or Arabella, one of the minor stars of the Stuart constellation, of whose life the following is a somewhat detailed sketch, drawn from the sources to which I have referred, did not herself take any part in political strife, though she was the involuntary subject of more than one political plot. She lived, so far as she could, a life of culture and of independence, apart from ambition or intrigue, and yet her career was not devoid of romance. Born of a royal lineage, she lost more than she gained by the accident of her birth, for she was alternately the recipient of the favours of the crown, and the victim of its tyranny and injustice. The Lady Arabella appears to have been born in London in the month of November, 1575. She was the daughter of Charles Stuart, second son of Margaret, Countess of Lennox,^ and was thus descended in a direct • In Hampton Court Palace are two portraits of the old Countess of Lennox, one by Sir A. More and one by Holbein. They both 2 4 Side-lights on the Stuarts. line from Henry VII. Lord Darnley, elder brother of Charles Stuart, having married Mary Queen of Scots,^ Arabella was niece to that unfortunate princess and first cousin to our King James I. Her father, Charles Stuart, married in 1574 Elizabeth Cavendish, daughter of Sir William Cavendish, a match which brought upon him the displeasure of Queen Elizabeth and caused his mother, the old Countess of Lennox, to pass a great portion of her old age in the Tower. Mar- riages, indeed, appear to have been the bane of this family, and to none more than Margaret, Countess of Lennox, who in discoursing on the events of her life with Camden, the historian, not long before her death, said she had been, thrice cast into the Tower, not for any treason, but for love matters. First, when Thomas Howard, son of the first Duke of Norfolk, fall- ing in love with her, they were both committed to the Tower, whence they were only delivered by his untimely death ; secondly, when Henry Darnley, her eldest son, married the Queen of Scots ; and thirdly, when her younger, and at that time her only son, Charles Stuart, married Lady Elizabeth Cavendish, mother of the Lady Arabella. What could have caused Elizabeth so much apprehension at the marriage of Charles Stuart and the represent her as between sixty and seventy years of age, the portrait by Holbein being probably a few years later of the two. She is dressed in black with a close-fitting Stuart cap of white, she is apparently above the average height, her eyes dark and bright, her hands small and very delicately formed, a smile on her face ; her hair, which is almost entirely hidden under the cap, appears of a dark brown. In Sir A. More's portrait she holds in her hand what appears to be a packet of letters, in that of Holbein a small spaniel plays at her feet. 2 Mary Queen of Scots sent a letter and christening present to the child, and Lady Margaret Lennox, writing from Hackney, thanks her for her "bounty to our leytel daughter."— November, 1575. Scot. Eliz. vol. X. p. 71. Arabella Stuart. 25 Lady Elizabeth does not at this distance of time appear too clearly. It may, however, have arisen from the fact that Mary Queen of Scots was suspected, and probably not without reason, of having contrived and brought about the match. Be that as it may, the conduct of Elizabeth towards the old countess was harsh in the extreme. She was kept under restraint during a long period of her husband's illness, her relations were refused access to her, her lands, her jewels, and her stuffs were sequestered and taken by the Crown. The only return for this large amount of plunder was, at her death in November, 1677, a handsome cortege and a stately funeral bestowed on her remains, and defrayed at the queen's charge. Her son, Charles Stuart, died in 1576, at the age of twenty-one, having become parent of one only child, Arabella, and was interred with suitable pomp in Westminster Abbey, where a mural tablet of handsome proportions marks his resting-place and records his lineage. The young child now bereft of a father, was soon also to be deprived of a mother's care, for Lady Elizabeth, then Countess of Lennox, died at Sheffield in January, 1 58 1. She died, according to her biographers, in perfect peace and tranquillity, her only care being for the prosperity and welfare of the queen to whose care and protection she committed the orphan child whom she was no longer able to guard. It was indeed necessary to commend the poor child to the protection of some stronger hand than had hitherto protected her, for already, at the age of six years, she had been the victim of very grievous in- justice from the Court of Scotland. It appears that after the death of Matthew, Earl of Lennox, the earldom reverted to the King of Scotland, who there- upon, by the Earl of Mar, and with the consent of the 2 6 Side-lights on the Stuarts. nobility and council, by Act of Parliament, granted it to Charles Stuart and the heirs of his body'. After the death of Charles, Earl of Lennox, the earldom would, under this limitation, have descended to his daughter and only child, Arabella, thus Countess of Lennox in her own right. The regent, however, being called upon by the Countess Elizabeth to grant her the wardship, for her dower, a grant to which she was legally entitled, not only refused to do so, but also repudiated the grant of the earldom to the late Earl of Lennox and the claim of Arabella as heir to the title and estates. Against this high-handed act of spoliation, Elizabeth, by her minister. Lord Burleigh, strongly pro- tested,^ but the queen's intervention did not meet with the success it merited, as the regent still persisted in his determination, and neither the Countess of Lennox nor her daughter Arabella in this, or the succeeding reign, ever derived the slightest benefit from the estates of their inheritance. On the death of her mother, the Lady Arabella was taken into the family of the Earl and Countess of Shrewsbury, an allowance of 2001. per annum, formerly made by the queen to Elizabeth, Countess qf Lennox being continued for the ..child's maintenance and sup- port.'' In these two distinguished persons she found ' Ellis's Original Letters, 2nd Series, vol. iii. p. 57. For the first few years Arabella appears to have been described as Countess of Lennox, and a portrait of her formerly at Hardwicke, describes her "Arbella, Comitessa Lavinise, astat thirteen, a.d. 1584." The age is •wrong, she was nine. Among a list of New Year's gifts made by the queen in 1600, appears an entry that the queen gave " to Barroness Arbella, gilt plate, 19oz. 3gr. di." Nicholes : "Progresses of Queen Elizabeth," vol. iii. p. 451-63. * It appears, however, to have been very Irregularly paid, judging from Lord Shrewsbury's complaints to Lord Burghley (May 18th 1593) Lansdown MSS. 39, 58, ' '' Arabella Stuart. 27 friends, who, taking her under their control and educating her almost entirely at their own expense, by their timely and judicious care endowed her with the learning and accomplishments which adorned her career. They displayed towards her a zealous regard and a parental affection which must have gone far to alleviate her position as an orphan, and to ingraft in her heart that patience and self-reliance which enabled her to bear up against the hardships and injustice of which she was subsequently the victim. Being thus, at the age of six years, domesticated with the Countess of Shrewsbury, she was brought up by that lady with her own daughters, and was regarded with a kindness and an affection which, though it doubtless was by some imputed to ambitious designs on the part of the countess, with regard to the succession on the death of the reigning queen, may nevertheless be attributed to more humane and creditable feelings. The principal part of her childish life was spent at Hardwicke, Chats- worth, and other residences of the Shrewsbury family, and was not of a nature to call for any remark, or to afford any materials for the biographer beyond those that invariably accompany the early days of a graceful and precocious child. She was educated in retirement, and appears to have profited by her lessons, for in a letter from Sir Walter Mildmay to Secretary Walsing- ham,^ in June, 1583, the former speaks of the little Arabella as being about seven years old last Christ- mas, a proper child of quick intellect and good parts, very like her old grandmother the old Countess of Lennox, who, by the way, was one of the handsomest women of her day ; and encloses in his despatch a few 5 State Papers, M.Q.S. vol. xii. p. 83. 2 8 Side-lights on the Stuarts. lines of compliment written by the child. And from a quaint little letter to the old Countess of Shrewsbury in 1587, she appears to have been living at some place called Fines." But though she thus learned to read, to sew, and to play the lute, now scouring the Nottingham hills, now rambling in Derbyshire glens, in the bright and sunny innocence of childhood, she was not the less care- fully and anxiously watched by the noble lady who had her in charge. It was not against rustic swains or lovers that the lady had to guard her child, for as yet her heart was only of an age to open to the chanting' of birds or the fascination of a new toy ; nor was it against the arts and wiles of a seductive ambition, for her heart was never framed for " treasons, stratagems, and strifes." It was against a class of men who, from the moment of the child's birth, looked upon her as a possible and important instrument in the development of their schemes. PhiUp the Second, who from his closet in the Bscorial ruled over the greater portion of the known world, whose agents were in every court, and whose influence was absent from none, kept his restless eye ever on the Stuart child, revolving how, for his own advantage, her position might best be turned to account. To this end his spies and emissaries constantly hovered round the residences of the Shrewsbury family, giving no small trouble and anxiety to discover and hunt them down. Now they appeared as beggars demanding a day's rest, now as servants, their true character not being discovered till they had been some time in the service, and once, to the horror of the Court, and the infinite terror of the countess, it was discovered that a well-known and accredited agent of that party had been for years in the * Sea post, p. 75. Arabella Stuart. 29 confidential position of tutor to Lady Arabella.' This person, whose name was Morley, and for whom the young lady appears to have entertained some partiality, would probably have remained with her many years, and might have succeeded in his intentions, had he not been more solicitous for his own advancement than for that of his master's plans ; and by frequently importuning the young girl to make promises to him of preferment and advantage, to be performed at her majority, alarmed the sagacity of the old countess, and thus led to the discovery of his real state and position. But the girl herself, innocent of the designs of ambitious men, who hoped by raising her to benefit their own estate, passed her time in the usual studies and pursuits of youth and in visits to her adopted sisters and cousins, who all in- variably addressed her in terms of endearment and affection. Thus she lived till she attained the age of twelve, in 1587, when for the first time she appeared at the Court of Elizabeth. She had previously, for a short time, lodged with Sir Henry Goodere in New- gate Street, a quarter by no means so aristocratic now as it was then, when she and her ladies cost, according to the good knight's computation, the sum of five marks, or Bl. 6s. 8d. a week.^ There is no subject upon which opinions may so rea- sonably differ as upon the question of female beauty, and yet cotemporary and later writers, though differing as to the character and the guilt of Anne Boleyne, ' She seems to have had a series of tutors, all of whom obtained promises of church preferment or of lands, value 40Z. yearly, none of •which, however, were ever fulfilled. ^ Taking the relative value of money then and at the present day, that would amount to about 17Z. per week ; a very fair allowance for a child of twelve years. 30 Side-lights on the Stuarts. of Mary Queen of Scots, and of Marie Antoinette, have unanimously agreed in ascribing to each of these persons the gifc of great personal beauty. It might not be inaccurate to put Lady Arabella in the same category, if only from the natural chivalry which is accustomed to associate beauty with misfortune. Candour, however, compels the admission that her beauty (which she certainly possessed to a considerable extent) was too much of the Elizabethan type to be acceptable at the present day. Her features, though regular, were somewhat pronounced, and her figure indicated the sportsmanlike tastes which distinguished the ladies of the Talbot and Cavendish families. The description given of her by the French Ambassador at this time, is that of a lively, accomplished, and intelli- gent girl, much petted by the Queen, and a favourite of all the gentlemen at Court. She spoke French and Italian, played several instruments, danced with exceed- ing grace, and wrote a very fair hand, a by no means usual accomplishment. With regard to her person, a portrait of her exists at Bolsover Castle, painted about this time, from which a good description of her may be obtained. She appears to have been tall, with very long fair hair flowing over her neck and shoulders, a cluster of curls surmounted by a diamond flame hangs over her forehead, which is high and broad. Her waist is long and tapering, and her hands white and delicate. Her dress is of white satin with small trimming of black, cut square across the breast and very full in the skirts, the sleeves tight at the wrists and loose to the shoulder. She wears a necklace of very large pearls, with which also her dress is very freely sprinkled. Her eyes are hazel and her complexion fair, and her whole appearance youthful and fascinating. She may well have been a subject of Arabella Stuart. 31 courtly praise, and she is stated to have attracted the admiration of no less a connoisseur in female beauty than the elegant Sir Walter Raleigh. For did she approach the age of womanhood without having numerous admirers and many aspirants to her hand. Hardly, indeed, had she gained her eighth year (in 1583) than a noble prospect of marriage opened before her. Leicester, with whose ambitious views all readers of Elizabethan history are well acquainted, had, with the assent of the Countess of Shrewsbury, resolved and brought to considerable maturity a project of marriage between Arabella and his own son, then a boy but two years older than the lady herself;® a match which, not giving great concern to Elizabeth, who had other pro- jects in view, was regarded with great jealousy and hostility by James. Philip the Second had endeavoured to bring about a contract between her and the Duke of Parma,^ hoping thus to procure the succession, if not for himself, at least for one who would have been merely a puppet in his hands, while Ehzabeth, whose repugnance to Arabella's marriage in later years caused her so much grief, and ultimately brought about her banishment from Court, was anxious to negotiate a marriage between Arabella and King James of Scotland.^ The Queen's object in desiring this union was most probably to avoid all discord as to the succession after her death. She suggested to James that he should marry either Arabella or the daughter of the King of Denmark, pressing, how- ever, upon her representatives in Scotland, to procure, if possible, a marriage with the former, and in order to conciliate and to assure him of her good intentions ^ State Papers, Eliz. Dom., 159. March, 1583. ' State Papers, Eliz. Dom. (1583), 159. Ditto (1584) 36—65. = State Papers, Scot. Eliz. (1584). 32 Side-lights on the Stuarts. towards them both, instructed her agent, in a private memorandum, not to press inconveniently upon James either the question of the Lennox estates or of the jewels. James, however, having on June 5th, 1589, written to the Queen that he had no inclinabion to marry either the one or the other,^ took his voyage to Denmark and married the Princess Anne in October of the same year. In the meantime, in February, 1587, the grim tragedy was performed at Fotheringay Castle, by which a noble though erring lady, a beautiful and captive princess, suffered the death of a traitor in the enemy's country. This is neither the time nor the place to descant on its justice or injustice, the needless shedding of blood or the stern necessity of the sentence, and I should not now have alluded to the event did it not intimately con- cern the history of the Lady Arabella. Mary Queen of Scots, suspected, and not without reason, of having brought about the match between the parents of Arabella, had always taken the liveliest interest in her welfare.* She refers to her in one of her letters as " our little jewel ;" she sent presents to the child from time to time, and commended her specially to the care of Elizabeth and to the watchful guidance of her own son. She bequeathed to her, amongst other things, a very curious and valuable missal, now in the posses- sion of the Emperor of Russia, illuminated by herself, and containing several sonnets of her own composition. In addition to which she left her a great quantity of ornaments and jewels. The latter were entrusted to the care of Mr. Thomas Fowler, an attendant on the ^ State Papers, Soot. Eliz., 37, 83. * On the 2nd May, 1578, Mary Queen of Scots wrote to the Bishop of Glasgow, commending Arabella to her son, and saying that Elizabeth had taken charge of the child. " Tytler's Enquiry," vol. ii. p. 454. Arabella Stuart. -.^ Scotch Court, to be retained by him in safe custody until Arabella attained the age of fourteen, then to be delivered to her for her own separate use.^ In the event of her death under that age they were to become the property of King James. They are described as being very costly and of great value. Accordingly, when Arabella attained the age of fourteen, inquiries were set on foot respecting these jewels, and Fowler was called upon to deliver them . up." None of the property, however, was forthcoming. Fowler, being attacked and threatened with law proceed- ings, sheltered himself behind the order of the king, to whom he declared he had surrendered them, and the following account was then given of their disappearance. Fowler, it appears, was a man considered in Edinburgh of great wealth, and he was also a very decided partisan of the king ; a position by which he laid himself open to extortions from both factions, the one plundering him as an enemy, and the king no less severely bleeding him * To all people be it knowne that we Marie be the grace off God Quene of Scotland dowgier (sic) of Fraunce doo will and require Thomas fowller, soole executor to our dearest mother-in-law and aunt, the lady Margaret Countess of Lennox, deceased, to delyver into the hands and cowstody of our right well-beloved cousines Elizabeth Contess of Shrews- bury all and every suche guells as the said Lady Margaret before her death delivered and committed in charge to the said Thomas fowller for the use of the Lady Arbella Stewart, her grannd chylde, if God send her lyf till fourtene yeres of age. If not then for the use of oure dear and only Sonne the Prince off Scotland. In witnes that this is oure will and desire to the said fowller we gewen the present under our owne hand at Shefild maner the xix off September in the yere of our Lord ji.d. threscore and nyntenth and of our Eeyne the thretty-sixth. A warrant from the Queen of Scotland to Thomas fowler to deliver the Lady of Lennox Jewells to the Contess of Shrewsbury for the use of the Lady Arbella or the king her sone. — M.Q.S. 11, 18 (19th September, 1579). " State Papers, Elizabeth (1590), 45—58. Ditto, Scotland, Elizabeth (1590), 45, 55, 63. D 34 Side-lights on the Stuarts. under tlie name of law. In one of the forays made by Botliwell and his supporters, Fowler's house was broken into and all his property, including these very jewels, carried off. This act of hostility induced a reprisal, and some of the earl's party being intrapped, a fierce onslaught was made, and the precious gems re-captured. An inventory of them was taken, and for better security they were lodged in the custody of the crown. But, alas ! the custody of the filibustering earl was hardly less fatal than that of the anointed monarch, for hardly were they a twelvemonth in his majesty's custody before they found their way to the goldsmibhs and the Jews. Once transformed into golden nobles and broad silver pieces, little chance was there of their ever reaching the fair legatee. In vain did Elizabeth beg, threaten, and implore the king to do for once an act of justice and restoration. Arabella never saw, nor was compensated for, those costly jewels which the unfortunate Mary had saved from the wreck of her fortune and left in her last moments as a dowry for her little niece.^ Fowler was sent to London, and had interviews with Lord Burley on the subject of the jewels and their restoration; but nothing came of the intervention, and the queen soon afterwards, out of consideration to James's pocket, directed the matter to be dropped.® Shortly after this Fowler also disappeared, but he turned up again in London towards the end of 1600, when he got himself into trouble by prophesying the queen's death in 1603. Unlike most prophets, however, he had the double satisfaction of finding his prophecy true, and living to see it realized, with the additional comfort of not beino- burned as a wizard. In December, 1591, two years having passed since ' State Papers, Elizabeth, 221 (1600). " Murdin, 635—640. Arabella Stuart. 3 c the king's marriage to Anne of Denmark, and there being no issue or prospect of ctildren, Ms majesty, writing from Holyrood, opened a correspondence with Arabella, who was then about sixteen years of age, as the next heir to his throne; a correspondence not of political or of treasonable character, but one of interest, of kindness, and of affection, assuring her of his hearty wishes and of his friendly intentions towards her.® Of these good intentions he had already given some earnest, for he endeavoured, with the assist- ance of Mary Queen of Scots, to bring about her marriage, first to the handsome Duke of Lennox, and secondly to the Earl of Arran. Arabella, however, was like the poor traveller, for whose cloak the sun and the wind contended. So long as the sun shone on her in England she was made the victim of fraud and calumny at the Scottish Court. No sooner did James discover that his cousin was not a hungry papist eager to supplant him in his rights, and to plot against his throne, than Elizabeth, prone to see in every hedge a robber and in every briar an assassin, frowned on her former favourite, and turned upon her the cold shade of her displeasure. It had already been rumoured about the Court that the Countess of Shrewsbury, vehemently suspected of being a papist, of harbouring seminarists, and of trying to corrupt her ward, had heard mass in her house in the presence of Lady Arabella,^ and as the time rapidly approached for her majority, the Catholic party were again actively engaged in pursuing their cherished plans. The scheme now on foot was one as bold as it ' State Papers, Scotland, Elizabeth, 47, December 23, 1591; see post, p. 75. Prince Henry was not born till February 19, 1594, at Stirling Castle. ' Talbot MSS. (August 25th, 1598). D 2 36 Side-lights on the Stuarts. would seem to have been impracticable. It was purposed to carry off the lady to Spain, and then by force to marry her to sucli person as the king of that country should desire. To oppose this it was designed by the King of Scotland to renew the scheme to marry her to his dearest friend and cousin, the Duke of Lennox,^ a match in every way desirable and likely to inure to the happiness of both, in furtherance of which project Lennox was sent to England himself to make his court to the young lady. To this, however, the queen refused her consent, preferring, as is currently reported in the papers of the French Court, to endeavour a match between her and Henry of Navarre, who had just been released by divorce from his wife.* A scheme intended, no doubt, to secure the succession to Henry of Navarre and Arabella, but probably no less fantastic in design and difficult of execution than that of the Spanish Court just alluded to. Meantime Arabella was regularly established at the EngHsh Court, and as year succeeded year fresh prospects of marriage floated before her eyes ; now it was Matthias, brother of the Emperor of Ger- many, whose marriage with her was to be one of the clauses of the peace with Spain ; * now Alexander Farnese, the great Spanish hero; now D'Aubigny, the darling of France; brilhantand dazzling prospects, all of which, however, for various poli- tical reasons, failed of accomplishment. But balls followed balls, masques, fetes, and spectacles, in which Arabella with the other ladies of the Court took part, ' Bowes to Burleigh, State Papers, Eliz. 49, 23 (September 23rd, ' State Papers, Eliz. 59, 6 (1596). * State Papers, Sec, Eliz. 66, 11 (February, 1599). Arabella Stuart. 37 and little occurred till towards the close of the queeu's reign to disturb her repose or to prevent her attention to those accomplishments and studies to which more than to the seductions of a court her heart was devoted. She was not altogether, however, without her family troubles, as she had on two occasions to obtain the queen's indulgence for the Cavendish and Stanhope factions, who appear to have been at open warfare ever since 1592, when the ladies of the families quarrelled, and Sir John Stanhope's stirrup-leathers were cut by some of the Cavendish party. After this they libelled each other in very broad language, and brought on themselves various orders of the Privy Council.^ In July, 1599, her cousin, Sir Charles Cavendish, was attacked by a party of Sir John Stan- hope's men, and in defending himself killed two of his opponents, receiving a severe wound himself. The result of which was an order of the Privy Council that " the like accident should not happen again," ^ an order which, harmless enough upon the face, had nevertheless the desired eflFect. She was also somewhat troubled about her means, and found considerable difficulty in raising enough to make the queen such a Christmas present as was suitable to her rank and position at Court.' But indeed the giving of presents at this time was so great a tax upon the nobility and gentry that their private letters are full of the complaints 'of this pressure on their means. " Sloane MSS. 4161 ; Lambeth MSS. (1592). ' Sloane MSS. 4161 ; State Papers, Eliz. Dom. (1599), 94, 96. ' At New Year 1599 — 1600 she gave the queen "one scarf or head veil of lawn outwork, flourished with silver and silk of sundry colours. Delivered to Mrs. Lucy Hide." Nicholls' " Progresses of Queen Eliza- beth," vol. iii. p. 451 . 38 Side-lights on the Stuarts. A greater trouble, however, came upon her in 1602, about a year before the queen's death, when it was rumoured that an attachment had sprung up between herself and Edward Seymour, eldest grandson of the Earl of Hertford, and that a marriage was in contemplation between them, a match of which the French Ambassador seems to have highly approved and taken great trouble to bring about. This reaching the queen's ears rendered her furious. She ordered Arabella and her servants into immediate restraint, and the strictest investigation to be made into the whole affair. It then appeared that there was some doubt as to whether Edward Seymour were really the culprit, for Arabella being pressed by the queen to unbosom herself in private denied that there was anything but jesting between herself and the Earl of Hertford, but confessed after her chaplain had been examined in secret by the Privy Council, that she had promised marriage to a gentle- man at the Court, though, fearing her majesty's resent- ment, she refused to pubHsh his name. "Whether the queen ever learnt the name of this gentleman is uncertain, but various speculations on the subject were rife at the Court, and De Beaumont, the French Ambassador, writing to De Villeroi for the informa- tion of his king, says that the matter was causing considerable anxiety to all parties, as it was not known then for a certainty that the queen would name the Scotch king as her successor, and it was commonly thought that it was her majesty's intention to name the Lady Arabella. For his own part, he says, he sees little ground for any one's anxiety, for the English people have had quite enough of one woman's government to prevent their being in immediate Arabella Stuart. 39 want of another; and even if the marriage with the Seymour had been concluded, the only effect would have been to have destroyed her chance of the succession, as neither her family nor his are pleasing to the English people. Among various names mentioned as those to whom she may have become engaged was that of the Rev. Mr. Starkie, private chaplain to Lady Shrewsbury and to herself, the reason apparently being that he had hanged himself on hearing of Lady Arabella's dis- grace at Court. But upon that matter being inquired into, at the request of the French king, it was found that the reverend gentleman had ended his career not out of love for the lady, though he seems to have written of her in most eulogistic terms, but because he had been thus deprived of a promised preferment.^ There was, however, at this time, a party slowly gathering itself together in favour of her succession. This scheme was greatly favoured by the Pope, who thought that by marrying Arabella to Cardinal Far- nese, brother of the Duke of Parma, a strong party might be formed in England, which, aided by foreign troops, might secure the succession by force. And he had, in fact, arranged for a force of 6000 men to land in Ireland, ostensibly for the protection of his Eoman Catholic subjects, but really to support this claim to the throne. Cardinal D'Ossat, in a letter to Henry IV.," of November 26th, 1601, goes at length, into this matter, and points out that young English gentlemen are now being educated in great numbers at foreign seminaries under the eye * Despatches of De Beaumont to the King of France, transcripts of which are in the King's MSS. at the British Museum, vol. cxxii. fol. 740, February 22nd, 1603. 8 Lettres du Cardinal D'Ossat, printed at Amsterdam, 1714, vol. v. p.53- 40 Side-lights on the Stuarts. of the Pope, who looks forward to their being the nucleus of a great party in England, which, with the assistance of the King of Spain, may enable him to gain his ends. The cardinal, however, declares his opinion that the great majority of the English people, the whole of the Scotch and of their allies, the Dutch and the Zealanders, will fight strongly against the proposal, and he suggests that Arabella's party mainly consists of those English lords who, having been judges of the queen, Mary Stuart, and fearing that the King of Scot- land (her son) would avenge her death if he succeeded to the crown of England, wish, for that reason, to exclude him from the throne. Neither does he think there is any one in the country whom Arabella could marry who would be capable of so great an undertaking as seizing the crown against the King of Scotland, unless, indeed, the queen were to nominate her the heir to the throne, a formal declaration of which some people shortly expect to take place. Nowhere is it suggested that Arabella was herself in any way cognizant of these schemes, but envious tongues were not wanting to poison the queen against her ; her promises of future good conduct were disregarded, she was removed from her position at Court and from the care of the Countess of Shrewsbury, and placed with the Earl of Kent under a surveillance which, thouo-h termed a change of residence only, savoured strongly of restraint, and from which she was only released in the succeeding reign. That she felt this treatment as harsh and unjust, and did not quickly forget her resentment, was apparent a short time after, when, being called upon by the Privy Council to attend as chief mourner at the queen's interment, she replied with a spirit and a firm- ness. much to her credit, that as she had been denied her Arabella Stuart. 41 majesty's presence during her life, she declined to be made a public spectacle at her death. It is due to her also to say that her resentment against Elizabeth never prevented her appreciating that great queen's nobihty and virtue, nor did she fail to condemn with spirit and decision the manners and conduct of the ladies and gentlemen of the Court of King James, and to draw a not too complimentary comparison between the two reigns. Great' and wonderful prognostics foretold the hour of the queen's death. The most awful storm that had ever visited this country broke over the metropolis, spectres and visions were seen in the air, and a lioness whelped in the Tower, For the last hours of her life the old queen gazed intently on a fixed point, as if vainly to recall her scattered senses, and in the scarcely audible words which issued from her lips were incessantly recurring the names of Tyrone and Arabella:^ Tyrone, the Irish rebel, who had leagued with Spain, raised a rebellion in her country, over- reached her generals, and defeated her armies ; and Arabella, gentle and inoffensive, whose only supposed fault had been to listen with too natural and too susceptible an ear to the voice of affection. Mean- time the old queen sank, and at midnight on March 19th, 1603, she breathed her last. No sooner was her death made public than Sir Robert Carey, having received the news from his wife, left the palace in order to be the first to carry the welcome tidings to the new king. All necessary arrangements had been made, and the following afternoon, amid the gloom thrown over the city by the late awful hurricane and the mourning caused by the loss of one whom ' State Papers, Eliz. Dom. 30 (1603). 42 Side-lights on the Stuarts. for five and forty years tlie people had loved and respected, the heralds traversed the city, and James I. was proclaimed King of England. He had been long and anxiously anticipating the event. Surrounded by his Court, in the castle of Stirling, he received daily and hourly communications from the English capital. His horses saddled, his trunks packed, and himself prepared to start at a moment's notice should events require his immediate presence in England, it appeared to him that the lingering sickness of the queen, now leaving her attendants without hope and now flickering again into life, would never come to an end. " We behold you," said a Scotch noble to his friend in London, " like Dives from afar, and wish we were with you in Paradise." "When, however, the peaceful result of the proclamation was known, he set out leisurely on his journey south, leaving his queen and his children to follow, passed with- out trouble or molestation into his new kingdom, created several knights and patents of nobility, showed his ap- preciation of justice by hanging an unhappy pickpocket without trial at York, took a day's hunting at Theobalds, and then entered the capital of his empire. But the progress of his queen and her children was to be accompanied by all the splendour and magnificence that could be contributed by the rich and prosperous kingdom into which she was to enter. The nobles vied one with the other in ex- temporising fetes and entertainments for the queen, and all persons, from the highest to the lowest, aban- doned themselves to the task of welcoming their new sovereign and courting her smiles. Not the least amongst those who longed to do this was the old Countess of Shrewsbury. She made extraordinary exertions, and laid under contribution all the tenant Arabella Stuart. 43 farmers and small gentry of the neigliboiirliood. She trusted with great and unparalleled hospitality to entertain the queen and all her suite, from the royal traveller herself to the meanest groom in her employ. In order also to make the entertainment more perfect, the invitation was presented in a manner totally unique, and certainly not of a character likely to suggest itself to any nobility of the present day. As the queen turned the brow of a hill she was met by a great com- pany of what appeared to be shepherds and shep- herdesses of Arcadia. One band was of young women, dressed all in white, with garlands on their heads, and on their arms baskets of flowers, which they strewed along the road, followed by young men, clad also in white, playing the tabor, pipe, and other rural instru- ments, leading a flock of sheep, whose wool was white as snow. Cornucopias and other emblems of peace and plenty were carried as symbols of the blessings her majesty was bringing to the whole island. A troop of huntsmen in green and silver came next, and they drove before them a herd of tame deer, their horns tipped with gold. The shepherdesses then informed the queen that Diana, hearing of her majesty's approach, was coming to invite her to repose in one of her retreats. Having finished this speech, which was in verse, there appeared from an adjoining thicket a number of young girls, daughters of the neighbouring gentry, escorting Lady Arabella in the costume and semblance of Diana. ^ "The royal huntress, chaste as fair," then made her obeisance to the queen and the princess, and prayed them to honour with their presence the noble mansion of Ohatsworth, the principal residence of the Talbot family. But alas ! for the vanity of human expectations, the - Strickland's " Queens of Scotland,'' vol. viii. p. 6. 44 Side-lights on the Stuarts. queen, either actuated by that waywardness for which she has been frequently condemned, or unwilling to be beholden to that family from which Mary Queen of Scots was reported to have received so much cruelty, refused to accept the hospitality of the countess, and thus the fair Diana, the deer with gilded horns, the Arcadian peasants, and the frisking lambs, failed of their eflfect, and were not fated to allure the royal guest to the expectant abode. The queen ordered the pageant to the house of Sir Henry Pierrepoint, where she re- mained a few days, spending, however, the greater part of her time and conversation in the society of Lady Arabella. That the impression she created was not unfavourable, may be surmised from the fact that immediately on her arrival in London, the queen nominated her to a place of honour about her own person, and appointing her state governess, placed under her charge the infant Elizabeth, future queen of Bohemia. Once more, therefore, was Arabella installed at Court, and brilliant and hopeful prospects opened before her. The first year of King James's reign is remarkable for the trial at Winchester of Sir Walter Ealeigh, Brook, and Oobham. Their object is stated to have been to place Arabella on the throne. But the charges were vague, and the plot was mysterious in its details and ramifications. Suffice it to say that no one at the time believed the Lady Arabella to have had any hand in the matter. She occupied a gallery with other ladies in the Court, and with regard to Cobham, stated that she had received a letter from him, and had answered it in the way of courtesy, but denied any complicity in any of the plots. At the trial she was openly acquitted by Cecil and Northampton, Arabella Stuart. 45 who publicly stated that the king never had a suspicion of her guilt. She herself, in one of her confidential letters, expressly repudiates any such thought, and com- plains bitterly of the " vain designs of wicked men, whose ambition has caused her name to be brought before the world to the exercise of her patience and not their credit." Having thus sailed through these troubled waters, she was able freely to indulge in all the pleasures and gaities of the Court, where she was the king's near relation, the chief lady, and a celebrated beauty. At a time when I had more leisure than has lately fallen to my lot, I made a careful selection of all the original letters I could find from and to Arabella Stuart, but there may be extant many others to which I have not had access. 1 have verified, as far as possible, each letter, and have, in most cases myself, made an exact transcript from the originals. Some of these have already appeared in print in various histories or memorials of the time, but many of them have never yet been in type, and I commend them to the attention of the reader as good specimens of the style and the manners of the period of transition from the Tudor to the Stuart dynasties. It will be found that in the earlier letters she spells her name after the fashion of the old Scotch kings, Stewart, but that in and after 1603, she adopts the modern formula, and spells Stuart. Arhella is, however, always used by her and by her correspondents. These letters, which are set out in the Appendix,^ teem with accounts of fetes, processions, and spectacles, dancings in London, huntings in the country, water-par- ties at Hampton Court, and those more refined pleasures to be found in the society of the clever and enlightened ^ Post, p. 72. 46 Side-lights on the Stuarts. men who shone at the commencement of the seventeenth century. She was herself thoroughly instructed in I^rench, Greek, Italian and Ijatin, and corresponded with the Danish Court frequently and elegantly in the latter tongue. She was a poetess of some merit, and was ranked in the list of those whose names are an honour to the country, in a work supposed to have been supervised by Milton himself. Her letters are written in a style that raises them far above those usually considered good and favourable specimens of the age, for although Queen Elizabeth wrote well and fluently both in English and in Latin, having in her youth had many enforced opportunities of study, yet Queen Mary, both in hand- writing, in spelling, and in grammar, was not much above an average national school-girl of the present day. They also display a delicacy of sentiment and a refine- ment of language, more the character of the present day than of two centuries and a half ago, and they abound in happy thoughts and elegant turns of ex- pression. They were written with very great care, and were, unlike most letters of this period, only com- pleted after careful drafting and numerous corrections, the result of which was that she complains much and often of the pain in her eyes and in her head from the constant strain of writing. The handwriting is also pecuHarly. distinct, and of an almost modern character, as will be seen by the specimens given as illustrations. In one of her letters from Oxford she gives an account of the festivities when the king and queen visited that city." She extols the munificence of the Spanish Am- bassador, who distributed among the ladies stores of Spanish gloves, hawks' hoods, and Spanish leather, and actually brought over a perfumer, whom he placed * Post, p. 81. Arabella Stuart. 47 at their disposition. She compares his behaviour with that of the famous warrior, Sully, who, not provided with these delicacies, and being, moreover, by nature, not of a jovial or merry disposition, was by no means so welcome a guest as his less celebrated companion.^ An artful and coaxing letter to Cecil entreats him to exert his influence on the subject of her pension, to have it increased, or at least paid with some regard to punctuality, for she has received nothing for two years, and is in great distress for want of cash. Then she gives her aunt an account of the king's munificence, who has presented her with 8001., and a service of plate, and of Cecil, who has given her a pair of bracelets, which have drawn upon her the envy of all the ladies of the Court, who are jealous and dismayed at the constant attention paid to her by persons of all ranks. Now again, she writes in the greatest distress of mind at not being able to think of anything suitable for a present to the queen on her birthday. " Her Majesty," she says, " regards not the value but the device. The gentlewoman whom I consulted (one of the queen's attendants), liked neither gown nor petticoat so well as some little bunch of rubies to hang in her ear, or some such daft toy. I mean to give her Majesty two pairs of silk stockings, lined with plush, and two pairs of gloves lined, if London afford me not some daft toy I like better. I am making the king a purse."^ Simple as these gifts appear, the lady gives them with the mournful reflection that her quarter's allowance will hardly defray their cost. She jokes the potent Earl of Shrewsbury on his puritanical ideas, and launches into comic ecstasy over the glories of red-deer pies and a cheese, in return for which she ^ Post, p. 82. ' Post, p. 87. 48 Side-lights on the Stuarts. sends the sharpest salad she ever eat. " A great' personage loveth it well, which is all that I can say in its commendation." "^ She presents to the King of Denmark a gentleman of her establishment named Cuttings,^ a celebrated lute-player, who is sent to Christiana apparently without the sligbtest regard to his wishes or feelings in the matter. She has a letter written" for her to Charles Gosling, wanting to know what there is between her cousin, William Caven- dish, and Mistress Margaret Chaterton, and adds a post- script of her own, reminding him of the old buck and the roasted tench she and her friends had with him, and begging him, after the fashion of Queen Bess, to " be a good fellow or be hanged." She describes the ambassador of the King of Poland, sent, as was reported, to ask her hand for his master, but -who, on his errand being known, was rapidly dismissed to his own country. She is present with other ladies at Garnet's trial, is godmother to one of the queen's children (Mary, born in April, 1605, and died in September, 1607), and according to Lord Salisbury's wish, she has made him a painting of the house and grounds at Hardwick. She tells how the queen appointed her to the honour of carver, and that on the first occasion, the meat being set before her, she made such unhandsome " carving " that the queen never again called upon her to do that office, but by kind words and atten- tions removed from her the disgrace that her failure ■" Post, p. 99. People at this time were very fond of a salad, vvliich. was served as the first course. * Se6jpo«<, p. 98. " See jiost, p. 101. This letter was purchased among the Stowe MSS., and is now exhibited at the British Museum. Arabella Stuart. 49 had brought upon her. In another letter she de- scribes the winter evenings in the country, and how the ladies of the Court contrived to amuse their royal mistress, for whose delight they continued day after day, from nine in the evening till two or three in the morning, to play at certain childish games, a long description of which is given by Miss Strickland in her life of Anne of Denmark, and which are somewhat contemptuously referred to in the letter to which I refer. In addition to these entertainments, she per- formed in Ben Johnson's " Masque of Queens," at Whitehall, February 2nd, 1609, and in his " Masque of Beauty," on January 14th. She also appears to have advanced the interests of several applicants for livings, and in May, 1605, to have procured her relative. Sir Charles Cavendish, to be made a peer. She was also, according to the fashion of the times, a suppliant for various taxes and fines to be farmed out to herself, amongst others a tax on oats, from which she antici- pated considerable profit. She also appears as a fre- quent mediator between the contending factions of the Talbot family, and, on one occasion, was called upon to interpose as a peacemaker between the bluff King of Denmark and her fair young cousin, who had recently become Countess of Nottingham. The Earl of Nottingham, the veteran hero of the Armada, was now considerably advanced in years. He was also subject to deafness, an infirmity which led the unfortunate king into the following scrape. Great pre- parations had been made for the king's departure after his visit to England, the whole Court went to Green- wich to bid him adieu, and for a greater honour, the Lord High Admiral was appointed to command the king's vessel to the mouth of the Thames. But inas- E 50 Side-lights on the Stuarts. mucli as James having many things to say, and many last words to get through, was not as quick over it as he should have been, and as time and tide are not more complaisant to a Christian than they were to a Canute, the Danish king, who was not anxious to pass the whole night in the river, became uneasy about starting, and ordered the admiral to set sail. The latter, who at the time was suffering from one of his periodical attacks of deafness, thought the king was paying him a compliment about his wife, and made no attempt whatever to get under weigh. The king then repeated his desire, and made a movement with his hands to show the old gentleman what he required, but he, not at all comprehending, still looked blank, and turned to his wife, who was standing near. She, not having heard what had passed, seeing the king gesticulating, and her husband looking disconcerted, immediately conceived that some insult had been offered either to her husband or to herself. She turned to the admiral, still tmconscious of the complexity of affairs, and the king advancing a few paces, and raising his hand to shout into the admiral's ear the fact that the tide was even then nearly out, the latter taking this as an offensive act, drew his sword. The scene of confusion may easily be imagined, but amid the din of voices, the admiral's bewilderment, his lady's vociferations and the king's attempted explanations, nature, undisturbed by this war of royal elements, quietly fulfilled one of her laws, and the tide going down left the royal party high and dry in the mud. How they passed their time till the water again got them afloat we know not, but no sooner had the king arrived in Denmark than he received a violent and abusive letter from the enraged countess, who considered that she had been insulted a second Arabella Stuart. 51 time/ This was sent by him to Arabella, and after some trouble and much correspondence with the Eng- lish minister at Copenhagen, she succeeded in patching up a truce and reconciling the conflicting parties. She appears during this reign to have been in receipt, in addition to her own private income, of a pension paid out of the Customs of 16001. a year, and she had a daily diet for herself and ten persons, together with a lodging at Whitehall, and being State governess of the infant princess, was at the head of the ladies of the Court. She had, in addition, an allowance of 8001. a year from the king, and a house of her own in Broad Street, notwithstanding which she complains of being in debt; but as to this and other similar complaints it may well be that her ladyship's want of economy had something to do with it, for accord- ing to a letter to Dudley Carlton in February, 1607,^ she appeared at one of the masques wearing jewellery over lOOjOOOL in value, and her costumes, as described in various letters, are always magnificent and in good taste. She also appears to have kept thirty-two servants, and among them this Cuttings, the lute-player, and as a royal princess to have always had some lady of the Court in waiting upon her. In March, 1607, she had a grant of all monies paid to the Exchequer from the Earl of Ormonde's lands, and she also received some benefit under a nuncupative will made by her aunt, the old Countess of Shrews- bury, who died in February of that year,^ In addi- tion to this she either had or was promised some- ' See her letters to the King of Denmark and Sir W. Sinclair, 2^ost, p. 94. " See " Court and Times of James I.," vol. i. p. 71. ' Lambeth MSS. (1607). E 2 52 Side-lights on the Stuarts. thing from a tax to be put on oats* and on Irish liides ^ imported into this country, and also at a later date a share in the licences to appoint persons to sell wine and whiskey in Ireland." So that on the whole, even allowing for the irregular and fitful payments of these patents and allowances, the lady must have had a good income even for that wasteful period,' and there were certainly grounds for Mr. Seymour's suggestion at a later date that he believed her to be a person of great means. She appears also to have started at Mansfield the process now familiar to us as the Plan of Campaign ; for the tenants being on bad terms with their lords, and having appealed to her for counsel and assistance, she advised them not only not to pay * Lodge, vol. iii. p. 227. ' St. P. Jac. Dom. 43, 115. ° Maicli, 1610. ' To give some idea of the cost of dress at this period, I have trans- cribed from a MSS. in the possession of the Archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth the following curious memorandum of the sixteenth century : — A Lady's Allowance for Clothes at 301. per Annum. Necessary expenses fm' every year. For hose and shoes ....... ?il. Smocks, handkerchees, towels, and night linen . . 50s. Eebatues, cuffs, stomachers and squares . . . 4Z. Girdles, garters, rybons, pinnes, fanns, lace masks, gloves, skarfes, &c. ........ 50s. Wyers for rebatues and hedwyers, rowles, necklace curies for peake, cobweblanne and nett lanne, &c. . . 30s. !For petticoats 3;. For boddies and vardingales 40s. Ffor dressinges ... .... 30s. Summa .... 20L Towardes gownes there remaynes of 30/. yearly allowance but lOZ. Lambeth MSS., vol. 709-135. Arabella Stuart. 53 their arrears till their demands were satisfied, but " to hold the rent " for the future. A plan which they seem to have adopted with some success, but on the attempt of some of them to make her ladyship respon- sible for the suggestion, stringent orders went down to the Justices of the Peace at Mansfield, and one Nicholas Sherston being convicted of slander was " well stocked and whipped" in the market-place.^ Renewed prospects of marriage seem also to have opened before her. She had offers from the Duke of Gueldres, whom she refused, afterwards from the Prince of Anhalt, of whom she said she liked neither his letters nor his Latin,^ and from the King of Poland, who, suing by his ambassador, was also, by the king's desire and her own inclination, dismissed with thanks. She was good friends with the king and all his party, and she seems, after he had been five or six years on the throne, and when having two sons likely to succeed him, his fears for the succession were allayed, to have sought from him a general promise to consent to her marriage with whom she pleased. This, she suggests that he ultimately gave, not having concerned himself directly about her marriage at any period of her residence in his house. In truth, her inclinations in no way led her towards a foreign alliance, and she doubtless obtained the king's promise in order to justify her contracting a marriage upon which she had set her heart. I have already alluded to her project, or supposed project, of a marriage in the reign of Elizabeth, with Edward, eldest grandson of Lord Hertford, and of the queen's hostility to that proposal. William Seymour, a younger grandson of Lord Hertford, was at this ' See Lodge, vol. iii. - Lodge, vol. iii. p. 97. Fowler to Shrewsbury. 54 Side-lights on the Stuarts. time as celebrated for his talents, his gallantry, and his good looks as he afterwards was for his bravery and fortitude, and for his faithful devotion to the unfortunate Charles, whom he followed through all his troubles, and only quitted on the scaffold. Con- stantly attending at the Court, be fell in love with the Lady Arabella, and she, unhappily for the future of both, but too truly reciprocated his affection. They met at fetes and entertainments at Court, they met at the houses of the nobility, at " Mr. Bugge his house in Fleet Street," ^ at public amusements, and in private circles ; but for a time the dread of the royal displeasure forbade him to declare his passion or her to encourage him to that avowal. Matters continued thus to the month of May, 1609, when Arabella, having previously retired for a while to the country to recruit her health, appeared again at Court. The queen was about to give one of the finest and most splendid masques which have illustrated that costly reign, in order to duly celebrate the installation of Henry, eldest son of the king, as Prince of Wales. These masques, most of which are by Ben Johnson, but with whose quaintness and beauties the present age is not very familiar, were plays constructed on allegorical subjects, and so arranged as to admit of the greatest magnificence and display. They succeeded the mysteries and religious plays, which, dreary and unamusing, were as far removed from the masques of Queen Anne as those are from the plagiarisms and burlesques which unhappily occupy our stage at the present day to the degradation of public taste and to the exclusion of works of original or of acknowledged merit. This masque was called Tethi/>; Festival; or, the Queen's ' See post, p. 104. Arabella Stuart. ce Wake. It was written by Samuel Daniel, no mean poet of the age, and was designed in scenery, in decora- tion, and in costume by tbe no less celebrated artist, Inigo Jones, The main feature of the show was a cave glittering with, a stalactite, whose brilliancy was effected by the liberal use of diamonds, rubies, and other precious stones, scattered freely about the scenes, where foun- tains of real crystal played scented waters, and the rarest and loveliest of exotic plants gave an air of Eastern luxuriance to the scene. Pillars of gold and silver wire supported the canopy under which the queen sat, and received the fairest and most graceful ladies of the Court, who in verse appropriate to the occasion, and in costumes representing the various rivers of the earth, came to pay their homage to the goddess of the sea. The throne was of a cloth manufactured for the occasion, and richer in appearance, according to an eye-witness, than the richest cloth of gold. The younger ladies of the Court, formed into a chorus of na'ids, sang catches alternately with a band of youthful nobility headed by Prince Charles in the character of Zephyr. The Princess Elizabeth, Lady Arabella, Frances Countess of Essex, then in the full bloom of youth and innocence, and all the beauty and elegance of the Court, took part in the performance. The crowd of admirers was intense, and so great was the desire that the greatest possible number should witness the show that an order was issued, the tyranny of which our ladies can even now appreciate. No ladies, it said, could be admitted who had not previously disencumbered themselves of their hoops. By this stratagem it was calculated that at least a hundred additional seats could be obtained. The dresses were sumptuous and royal. Lady Arabella was a perfect blaze of jewels, her dress being valued at 100,000L 56 Side-lights on the Stuarts. The queen's exceeded that, and the sword presented to the Prince of Wales cost at least 3200Z. 'Nor were the gentlemen behind in velvet tunics, in diamond buckles, and in splendid sword-knots. " Embroidered suits," it was said, " were so common that the richest lace that could be procured seemed but a mean grace to the wearer." The festivities were continued late into the night, when the company betook themselves to looking and scrambling at a magnificent banquet, and the sun rose, as it often did at that Court, shedding its bright and dazzling rays on the rich and gorgeous masquers of the night. To the eye all was gay, all was merry ; but beneath those brilliant trappings and amid the echoing sounds of mirth, two hearts must have beaten with fear and ansiety. William Seymour and Arabella had plighted their troth, and were now revolving the means of carrying out their project of marriage. Meantime their plans were hurried on by an unfortunate but hardly an unexpected event. From the watchful and scrutinizing eye of a Court it could not long have been concealed that Arabella entertained for Seymour feelings of a more ardent kind than are generally attributed to friendship or respect, and the king himself, a perfect lynx in matters of love, speedily became aware of the fact. She and her lover were both summoned before him in February, 1610, and charged with disparage- ment to the Crown and treason to the Prerogative in engaging themselves to matrimony without the Royal assent. What excuse Lady Arabella made for herself we know not, but Seymour's statement to the Privy Council in his own writing is still preserved among the Harleian MSS. in the British Museum.* He * Bee post, p. 103. Arabella Stuart. 57 says that lie is a younger son, witb. no fortune and nothing to claim by his birthright, whereas the Lady Arabella was a lady of great honour and virtue, and, as he believed, of great means, and he somewLat ungallantly suggests that it was with a view to better his position rather than for any other reason that he made advances to her. He says they met at the Court, at Mr. Bugge's house in Fleet Street,^ and also at Mr. Baynton's. That he had heard the lady was free to bestow herself on any subject, but that in fact there was no engagement or contract of marriage, or ever intended to be, without his majesty's favour being first obtained. In the result, whatever her story may have been, they were both discharged with a reprimand, and the king, either to compensate Arabella or to remove as far as possible any disgrace which the temporary withdrawal of his countenance may have brought upon her, received her again at Court, gave her a few hundred pounds in advance of her allowance, made her a present of plate, and promised her a share in a patent for licensing the sale of wine and usquebah in Ireland. But in the meantime rumour had been busy with her name, and she saw herself advancing in womanhood with no chance of a suitable provision from the king. Having in two previous instances prevented her forming an alliance with foreign princes — for in addition to the King of Poland the Elector Maurice had been a suitor for her hand — she now succeeded in obtaining from the king the long-coveted permission to bestow her hand on ° In Stow's " Survey of London " reference is made to John Bugge, Esquire, a rich and munificent merchant, who was mainly instrumental in rebuilding St. Dionys Backchurch, in the choir of which church he was buried during the reign of Qiieen Elizabeth. Mr. Bugge of Fleet Street may have been one of his descendants. 58 Side-lights on the Stuarts. any subject of the Crown whom she herself might desire. Armed with this prized but delusive recognition of her right, plans were at once laid to effect a marriage be- tween Seymour and herself. The design was carried on silently and with the greatest secrecy. The time and the place were anxiously discussed, and it was ulti- mately decided that the ceremony should take place in the lady's own private chamber in the Royal Palace at Greenwich, whither accordingly, one evening in the early part of June, 1610, did Seymour re- pair in company of his bosom friend and companion George Eodney. They ascended to the room of Lady Arabella, and there in the presence of a clergyman, of a lady of the Court whose name did not transpire, of Anne Bradshaw, the lady's faithful attendant, and of George Eodney, while the Court was wiling away the evening with dancing and with dice, and the king and his family were little dreaming of the treason taking place in an apartment adjoining that in which they sat — the fair Arabella gave her hand to the man who had long possessed her heart. Stolen interviews succeeded, and the usual romance and incidents of clandestine marriage. For some few weeks the secret was kept, but it was known to too many people long to remain concealed from the king, and it soon became a matter of common knowledge that the Lady Arabella had infringed the divine right, and had given herself in marriage. Her intention appears to have been, by sale of all her goods and lands, and by loans and gifts from sympathizing friends, to have amassed such a sum as would enable her and her husband to live together in the French capital until the anger of the BngHsh monarch could be appeased. Such fate, however, was not in store for Arabella Stuart. 59 her, and from tlie time that her marriage was known at Court peace and happiness ceased to be her com- panions. " The serpent of love has beguiled her," said the king to Lady Drummond. " She has eaten of the forbidden fruit, and her expulsion from Paradise is ordained." She and her husband were arrested. She was committed to the custody of Sir Thomas Parry, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, with whom she remained till the following March. Seymour, on the 25th July, 1610, was sent to the Tower, and thus to all appearance they were effectually separated." But love, who laughs at locksmiths, may well deride the restraint of a fortress when an ardent and courageous lover is at large within its walls and when a silver key will un- lock its gates. Arabella, beyond being placed under the surveillance of Sir Thomas Parry, was hardly to be thought a captive, and Seymour had found means to enable him to wander forth at pleasure. They met thus frequently and happily, and probably anticipated at no very distant time an end to their suffering. They may have hoped for much from the exertions of powerful friends, from the intercession of those whose influence was at times all powerful, they may have looked for mercy and forgiveness from James. But if so, they far miscalculated the monarch's intention, and of this they were not left long in doubt by an order issued by the Privy Council in the month of March, 1611. * On Seymour's arrival at the Tower he was met by one Melvin, an imprisoned divine and poet, who the next day gave him the following lines : — " Communis tecum mihi causa est carceris. Ara- bella tibi causa est, Araque sacra mihi." 6o Side-lights on the Stuarts. This condemned Seymour to double restraint in the Tower, and the lady to the custody of the Bishop of Durham, with instructions to carry her to the north on his immediately returning to his See. The bishop, good-natured but pedantic, was by no means pleased with the honour conferred upon him, and put himself at once in correspondence with the Council upon the subject. In the end Lady Ara- bella, having been a week with the bishop, during which time his lordship caught an ague, was trans- ferred to the custody of Sir James Croft at Barnet. The bishop was thus released from an awkward posi- tion, and the lady was committed to a more rigorous jailor, whose peremptory orders were at once to carry her to the north and to keep her in strict confinement. Hundreds of miles thus being placed between the two lovers, the one immured in an impregnable fortress, the other under the guard of a strict and faithful keeper, the king might feel secure from those consequences which so alarmed his predecessor in the case of Lady Catherine Grey. This order was received by Arabella with tears and lamentations. In it she saw the last tie broken between herself and her husband and the last hope of their happi- ness blighted. She was seized with a violent sickness, her constitution, ever of a delicate nature, began rapidly to give way, and she was pronounced by the physicians in great difficulty, if not in immediate danger, a state of things duly reported by Croft to the Privy Council. Thus a respite of her journey was obtained, and she was removed to Mr. Corner's house at Bast Barnet. Her illness was at first undoubtedly serious, but she made it appear of longer duration than in fact it was, and contrived, through her naaid, Anne Brad- Arabella Stuart. 6i staw,^ and Seymour's valet, to communicate frequently and effectually with her husband, and thus while the doctors discussed medicines for her recovery she and her maid revolved measures for their escape. At last, the very day before her removal northward was ordered, the longest time being given so as to enable her to gain additional strength for the adventure, their scheme was perfected, and on the 4th June, 1611, they proceeded to carry it out.* George Rodney provided saddle-horses at the inn at Barnet near the place of the lady's confinement. Henry Markham, one of the party, dressed himself as a groom attending on a lady, who was personaterl by the ever pre- sent Anne Bradshaw. Arabella having disguised herself by drawing a pair of great French hose over her petticoats, putting on a man's doublet, a man's peruke with long locks over her hair, a black hat, black coat, russet boots with red tops, and a sword by her side, appeared as the dashing cavalier. They all mounted their horses and rode rapidly on a short distance, when the unusual motion of the horse, she sitting astride as a man, added to the weakness consequent on her recent illness, obliged her to stop at a small country inn. " The young gentleman," said the host, "looks ill and will hardly last out to London." On she went, however, now resting at a wayside house and now supported by her companions, and at last reached the water side. Arriving there about six in the evening, they all took boats and rowed up the river to Gravesend, where a French vessel waited their approach. Safely on board of this, her companions urged her to start at once for their destination, but she, ' Anne Bradshaw entered her service as maid in 1603, and remained with her till some time in 1614. » 3 Winwood, 279. 62 Side-lights on the Stuarts. more anxious for the safety of her husband than regard- ing her own fate, insisted on waiting, in order that if he escaped, as was arranged, from the Tower he might join her in the vessel. During this suspense the tide went down and the ship was unable to sail for some hours, and thus that time was lost which, had it been turned to more profitable account, would infallibly have placed her beyond the reach of her pursuers. Her flight was soon discovered, and great was the alarm and con- sternation of the king. A royal proclamation was imme- diately issued f messengers and scouts were sent in all directions, and orders issued at once to the commander of the fleet to set out with his swiftest vessels in chase of the fugitive. But scouts, messengers, and ships would ahke have been unavailing, and the lady would have landed safely on the French coast, had she not been compelled to encounter a more formidable opponent than any that the king could have enlisted on his side. No sooner was her vessel in the Channel than the wind, which for several days had been fair for the French coast, veered suddenly round and blew steadily on shore. In vain was every effort made by the crew, in vain did the vessel tack again and again, in vain was every object that could impede the navi- gation ruthlessly consigned to the deep. The vessel had not made more than half the passage of the Channel when one of the king's sloops of war bore down upon them. Still they struggled manfully on heedless of the royal summons and regardless of the shot that now fell rapidly around them. The breeze that impeded them was no less unfavourable to the king's ship, but the latter, of superior size and ton- nage, after nearly two hours' close chase, having carried " Sea pod, p. 119. Arabella Stuart. 6^ o away their foremast and rigging and the water now pouring in rapidly at several holes, the crew were com- pelled to choose between a watery grave and a surrender to the British crown. Thus was Arabella Seymour again remitted to captivity, caring less for her own fate than for that of her husband, of whose position as yet she was entirely ignorant. Better fortune, however, attended him than had waited upon her. Dressed in the garb of a carter, he had left the Tower with a waggon and a team of horses which had brought materials for repairs. He passed straight to Gravesend, when, finding the tide low and not seeing the vessel in which his wife had embarked, he hired a small brig, and after many hours of cruising landed safely at Ostend. Thence making his way to the French capital, he lived there for some years in honour- able retirement. Not, however, without expressing the deepest commiseration and the greatest resentment at the treatment of his bride, and giving way in moments of despair to the wildest projects for her recovery and relief. He is described by Lord Clarendon as a man of noble and virtuous mind, who loved his study and his repose, but when the civil war broke out he closed his books and drew his sword, and became a brave and a skilful general. By Charles the First he was created Marquis of Hertford, and at the restoration one of the first acts of Charles the Second was to promote him, with unusual honour, to the rank and dignity of Duke of Somerset. From the moment of her capture the fate of Arabella was sealed. James's conduct towards her was arbitrary, tyrannical, and unjust. She had infringed no law, had been guilty of no crime ; she was imprisoned without warrant, and without trial, upon no authority but that 64 Side-lights on the Stuarts. of the king, whose motives in this matter were less those of the Christian monarch than of the Eastern despot who celebrates his accession to power by murdering or mutilating those of his family who may by any possibility become his successors. She was no longer kept under easy restraint, but with her servants and her relations was committed to the terrible custody of the Tower. Thence she poured forth tender suppli- cations to the king, the queen, the princes, and all from whose exertions she could anticipate rehef. Nor was she wanting in noble friends willing to intercede for her, amongst whom were Henry, Prince of Wales, the queen, and the Elector Palatine, husband of the Princess Elizabeth. To him King James is reported to have said, with an allusion to Scripture of which he was but too fond, "that if Judas were alive again and condemned for betraying Christ, some courtier would be found to beg his pardon." The monarch was inexorable, not a day, not a moment of release was allowed her. Her jewels were sold by the royal command, her goods and her furniture were inventoried and taken possession of by the Crown, her debts were left unpaid, and her favourite servants confined in a pestilential dungeon in the Marshalsea Prison. The Countess of Shrews- bury was immediately committed to the Tower,^ and being interrogated by the Council boldly refused to answer, alleging, first, that she was under a vow not to reveal what she knew, and, secondly, that being a peeress she could only be tried by her peers in the House of Lords and not by Privy Councillors at the council table.^ Sir James Croft ' See list of persons committed, jjosi, p. 120. * State Trials, vol. ii. Arabella Stuart. 6^: was committed to the Fleet, the servants of both parties to other prisons, together with every one directly or indirectly connected with the escape. Of Lady Arabella's thirty-two servants none were at large, but those specially required for her service were sent to her in the Tower .^ All the ornaments and the money found on her or on her servants were sequestered by order of the king. A quantity of her jewels, of great value, were stolen after she left Barnet and were never recovered, and there was a strong suspicion that Sir William Waad, who was shortly afterwards removed from the custodianship of the Tower, was instrumental in the theft." Like Mary, Queen of Scots, she employed the first year of her captivity in needlework and in writing. She worked gloves for the queen, which that good-natured lady accepted. Doubtless at first she felt for the fate of her friend and companion, but her inter- cessions, if they were indeed as hearty as she professed, never brought any advantage to the wretched captive. Amongst other letters she addressed one dignified and spirited to the Lord Chief Justice of England and the Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas,^ demanding as an English subject that inquiry should publicly be made by habeas corpus, or other usual form of law, what offence, if any, she had committed, in order that if guilty she might suffer the punishment of her deeds, or if innocent that she might be dischai-ged from restraint and allowed to rejoin her lawful husband; she also wrote an affectionate and dignified letter to her husband^ which was intercepted by her jailor, and is now in the British Museum.* ^ See this curious list, post, p. 121. * See a list of these jewels, post, p. 120. ' See post, p. 115. " Saa post, p. 113. 66 Side-lights on the Stuarts. From the depths of her affliction she poured out pitiful letters to the queen and to the king. She implored him to regard with the eyes of his royal and gracious heart the unfortunate state of his handmaid, and besought him on her knees to let her fault be covered by the shadow of his royal benignity, declaring that the Almighty, who knew the secrets of all hearts, knew her always to have been a most loyal and faithful subject.^ "In all humility,"® she sat down to write to the king from her dungeon in the Tower, " the most wretched and unfortunate creature that ever lived pro- strates itself at the feet of the most merciful king that ever was, desiring nothing but mercy and favour, not being more afflicted for anything than for the loss of that which has been this long time the only comfort it had in the world, and which if it were to do again I would not adventure the loss of for any other worldly comfort. Mercy it is I desire, and that for God's sake. Let either Freake or . . . ." Here the writing ceases : abject grovelling under the feet of the sovereign could go no further. She could call no angelic messenger of mercy to unbar her prison doors and lead her forth to freedom and to life. Fruitless alike were her appeals to the mercy or to the justice of the Crown. Months and years rolled away, and still she remained a captive. In November, 1613, she appears, however, in con- sequence of her ill-health, to have been temporarily residing, under some conditions, out of the Tower, and to have attempted a second time to rejoin her husband. This being unsuccessful, she was again sent back to the ' Bcojiost, p. 117. " Harl. 7003; 152. See /W, p. 119. Arabella Stuart. 67 Tower, where she ever after remained closely immured. Once again, however, she was brought before the king, for the gaolers of the Tower had reported that their prisoner was anxious to reveal the details of a secret and terrible plot. She appeared, her eyes sunken, her cheek shorn of its rosy and dimpled grace ; her form, once the cynosure of the artist and the model of the sculptor, emaciated and wan. The Council were assembled in silent and attentive audience ; but when the unhappy lady began to speak, the only words that issued from her lips were the ravings of a wandering and senseless mind. Her intellect never returned, and after spending five years in prison she at last, on the 27th September, 1616, in her fortieth year, died of dysentery in her apartment in the Tower. Immediately on the event being known at Court, Dr. Moundeford, the presi- dent, and Doctors William Paddy, Ed. Lister, Ric. Palmer, J. Argent, and Matt. Gwynn, Fellows of the College of Physicians, repaired to the Tower by Royal command, at eight o'clock in the morning, to inspect the body and report on the cause of death. This being done, her funeral was ordered without pomp or cere- mony, not one of her friends or of her old dependents being permitted to accompany her remains to the grave. In the dead" of night, while the peaceful citizens slumbered in their beds, and few even of the Council knew of her death, her body was solemnly and secretly borne to "Westminster Abbey. She was laid in the Chapel of Henry VII., and her cofl&n was placed upon that which contained the remains of her aunt, Mary, Queen of Scots. Hardly was the mortar dry which closed up the vault when it was again opened to receive the ashes of another scion of the royal house. Henry, Prince of F 2 68 Side-lights ox the Stuarts. Wales, the dearest friend and the kindest protector of Arabella that ever subject had in prince, fell a victim to cholera and died within a few days of his fair cousin. The two were laid together in the same vault, and the public, ever ready to see in the acts of the kings some heroic virtue or some startling deformity which will raise them above the standard of ordinary mortals, ascribed the deaths of Arabella and the Prince of Wales, occurring as they did about the same time and of the same supposed disorder, to the jealousy if not the actual violence of the reigning monarch. And however much we may discard the charge of actual violence by the king, it is impossible in the case of Arabella to acquit him of being guilty of her death. CruU's "Antiquities of Westminster Abbey "^ gives the following as the state of things in 1722 : — " In a vault on the north side of the Chapel of the Blessed Virgin Mary or King Henry VII. Chapel is a very large vault where are deposited the following persons : — Next to the north wall of this vault lies the corpse of the Lady Arabella Stuart, only daughter and heiress to Charles, Earl of Lennox, by the daughter of Sir WiUiam Cavendish, and cousin german to King James I. Her coffin is much shattered and broken, so that her skull and body may be seen. Upon the coffin of this lady stands the leaden chest which contains the body of Mary, Queen of Scots, and mother to King James; also Prince Henry Frederick, eldest son of James I., and Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, his only daughter." The power of perpetual imprisonment assumed by " Vol. i. p. 128, third edition, published 1722. Arabella Stuart. 69 the king as part of his prerogative in case of such infraction of his authority, was, I believe, without precedent. That he could have dismissed the lady from Court, have stopped her allowance, and in a hundred other ways have given expression to his displeasure, no one can dispute ; nor can it be disputed that the sovereign has always assumed to exercise a veto in the marriages of different members of the royal family ; but the difference between the withdrawal of royal favour and the infliction of a perpetual imprison- ment in order to abrogate a marriage, in other respects perfectly legal, gives rise to totally different con- siderations. Under a statute of Henry VIII. it was declared high treason to marry any of the king's children or their issue without the consent of the sovereign ; and when early in the last century a ques- tion arose as to whether King G-eorge I. was entitled, as of right, to the guardianship of the children of the Prince of Wales, afterwards George II., the judges, though deciding by a majority in favour of the right of the reigning monarch to control the maintenance and the marriages not only of his children but of his grand- children, refrained from expressing any opinion as to the sovereign' s constitutional right to prohibit marriages of collateral branches of the royal family. The case of Arabella Stuart was referred to in most of the judg- ments, but it was treated as having been one without precedent, and her application for a writ of habeas to have the matter determined by the ordinary courts of law was not referred to and was probably unknown. Stress was laid, I think unduly, upon the fact that the Countess of Shrewsbury was heavily fined and im- prisoned for being a party to the marriage and refusing to answer questions or sign her deposition, and it was 70 Side-lights on the Stuarts. said that she must have been guilty of a crime or she could not have been thus punished by the Council. Her offence, however, was of a twofold character, and added to it was the suggestion, which accounts for much of the rigour of her punishment, that she was in league with papists, and had attempted to pervert the Lady Arabella. The question, however, of the royal prerogative in this matter was felt to be in so unsatisfactory a condition, that in 1818, an Act (12 G-eo. III. c. 11) was passed declaring that no male or female descendant of King G-eorge II. (other than descendants of princesses married into foreign families) should be capable of contracting any marriage without the assent of the reigning sovereign, given under the great seal and enrolled in the Privy Council.^ The proviso was, however, added : that if the parties insisted on the marriage, notwithstanding the Crown withheld its consent, then that such marriage should be legal to all intents and purposes, upon notice being given to the Privy Council and a year elapsing without both Houses of Parliament expressly declaring their dissent from such marriage. After the death of Arabella, Seymour having made his submission, was pardoned, and permitted in January, 1617-18, to return home, and Lady Shi-ewsbury also was released from the Tower, where she had been confined .ever since her niece's escape. In 1618, how- ever, this unfortunate countess was again committed to the Tower for refusing to answer the Privy Council as to her belief of the existence of a child of Seymour and Arabella. She resolutely refused to give any in- ' Under that Act the marriage of the Duke of Sussex to Lady Augusta Murray was declared invalid, first by the Ecclesiastical Courts, and afterwards by the House of Lords, upon a claim of peerage by their only son. Arabella Stuart. 71 formation whatever, and appears to have been animated in that refusal by mere mahgnity towards the king. After five years' incarceration, however, having made her submission, she was released on payment of a heavy fine, and from the evidence of Anne Bradshaw and others there seems to have been no ground for King James's fears. His alarm appears to have been grounded upon the notion that it might be contended, that according to the spirit of the English Consti- tution no foreigner could be a lawful king of Eng- land, and that whereas he was a Scotchman born in Scotland, Arabella was an English woman born in England. Had this contention prevailed, then no doubt Arabella or her issue (if any) would have had a prior claim to himself and his children. And if this were indeed King James's view, the Countess of Shrewsbury during her confinement in the Tower, must at least have had the consolation of feeling that she was providing a number of unpleasant hours foi- her lawful sovereign. No such claim was, however, set up on behalf of Arabella, and neither then nor at any other time did Seymour ever allege that there had been any living issue of his un- fortunate marriage. Seymour married as his second wife. Lady Frances, daughter of the Earl of Essex, and his eldest daughter was christened Ai'abella. In other times, and under other circumstances, Lady Arabella Stuart would doubtless have been regarded as one of the heroines of the age. She was chaste, modest, and refined, at a period and in a society where refine- ment was exceptional, where modesty had ceased to be a courtly ornament, and where chastity was hardly regarded as a virtue. In culture, in beauty, and in misfortune, she was hardly inferior to Lady Jane Grey or to the celebrated Queen of Scots ; and yet while 72 Side-lights on the Stuarts. volume upon volume and age upon age have chanted the praises of the one and descanted on the fortunes of the other, hardly a single voice has been raised in memory of the Lady Arabella. Her name, which is scarcely mentioned by the historian, must, however, have been familiar and pleasing to the nation, for among the printed ballads of the period, no bad indication of popular opinion, numerous well written poems are to be found, telling with pity and with sympathy, the tale of her goodness and of her misfortunes, and speaking with no bated breath of the jealousy and tyranny that caused her death. APPENDIX OP LETTERS TO AND FROM LADY ARABELLA STUART. June, 1583. Mildmay to Walsingham, inclosing note from Arabella. Lady Arabella Stuart to Countess of Shrewsbury. Lady Talbot to Lord Burghley, inclosing post- script by Arabella Stewart. King James VI. of Scotland to Arabella. Lady Arabella to Edward Talbot. „ Countess of Shrewsbury. „ Earl of Shrewsbury. ,, Lord Cecil. Earl of Shrewsbury. Countess of Shrewsbury. )j Earl of Shrewsbury. Countess of Shrewsbury. Earl of Shrewsbury. Countess of Shrewsbury. The Earl and Countess of Slirewsbury. Feb. 8th, 1587 July 13th, 1588, Dec. 23rd, 1591 Eob. 13th, JJ Jan. 21st, 1603 Feb. 3rd, J) June 14th, )j „ 22nd, „ 23rd, Aug. 14th, J5 J) „ 23rd, Sept. 16th, Oct. 6th, „ 27th, Nov. 4th, 5J „ 6th, „ 28th, 15 Arabella Stuart. 73 Dec. 8th, 1603 „ 18th, )J „ 22nd, 31 -Jan. 2ncl, 160.3-4. „ 10th, y, „ nth, )» (No date) Oct. 3rd, : 1604. „ 18th, )> Dec. 24th, JJ» Oct. 18th, 1605. June or July, 1606. J) Aug. 26th, 1606. Oct. 24th, J? Mar. 9th, 1607. „ mh" )J Nov. 3rd, IJ Dec. 2nd, >» „ 8th, 1608. Monday, i> (No date) „ Mar. 28th, 1609. June 17th, n August i) Dee. 5th, }j „ 17th, it )» J) Feh. 20th, 1609-10. July 9th, 1610. )) 3) „ 16th, )) „ 23rd, )J Aug. 1st, U Oct. iJ JJ »J Mar. 7th, 1610-11. „ 13th, J3 „ 14th, '! ., 15th, '> 1610-11, Lady Arabella to Earl of Shrewsbury. „ Countess of Shrewsbury. „ Earl of Shrewsbury. „ Countess of Shrewsbury. Earl of Shrewsbury. ,, Countess of Shrewsbury. ,, Earl of Shrewsbury. „ Henry, Prince of "Wales. „ Sir Andrew Sinclair. Sir Andrew Sinclair to Arabella Stuart. Arabella Stuart to Sir Andrew Sinclair. Sir Andrew Sinclair to Arabella Stuart. Arabella Stuart to King of Denmark. Queen Anne of Denmark to Arabella Stuart. Henry, Prince of Wales ,, „ Arabella Stuart to Henry, Prince of Wales. „ Sir Eoger Wilbraham. „ Earl of Shrewsbury. „ Countess of Shrewsbury. „ Charles Gosling. ,, Earl of Shrewsbury. „ Lord Salisbury. Isabella Bowes to Arabella Stuart. Arabella Stuart to Earl of Shrewsbury. William Seymour's statement to the Privy Council. Lords of the Council to Sir Thomas Parry. Arabella Seymaure to thoLordsof the Privy Council. „ Earl of Shrewsbury. „ the Queen. „ Privy Council. „ Queen and the King. „ Queen. Alice Collingwood to Lady Arabella. King James to Bishop of Durham. Arabella Seymaure to the Lords. Lords of the Council to Sir William Bond. Arabella Seymaure to Lady Drummond. „ Good Cousin. Lady Drummond to Arabella Seymaure. Arabella Seymour to Lady Drummond. ,, William Seymour. 74 Side-lights on the Stuarts. May, 1611. Arabella Seymour to the King. J the Lord Chief Justice of England and the Lord Chief Justice of the Com- mon Pleas, the King. Viscount Fenton. „ (for Lord Northampton), the King (a draft), the King. Lord " "^ „ the King (a fragment). „ List of Lady Arabella's jewels said to have been stolen. June, „ Proclamation for arrest of Seymour and Lady Arabella. ,, List of persons committed to the Tower and else- where. „ Lady Arabella's requests as to her servants. (No date.) Abstract of declaration made by Edward Kodney upon his examination. (No date.) William Seymour to the Lords of the Council. (No date.) Lady Chandos to Dr. Montford. I. State Papers, M.Q.S., vol. xii. 83. Sir Walter Mildmay to Walsingham. nth Jiine,_ 1583. Sir, — After the closing up of my other letter to you, I received this little inclosed paper written with the hand of Lady Arabella, daughter of the late Earl of Lennox. She is about seven years old and learned this Christmas last,- a very proper child, and to my thinking will be like her grandmother, my old Lady Lennox. She wrote this at my request, and I meant to have shewed the same to her Majesty, and withal to have presented her humble duty to her Majesty, with her daily prayer for her Majesty, for so the little lady desired me. And now, by reason of my not coming at this time to her Majesty's presence, I shall pray you to do this which I should have done. IL Lady Arbblla to Countbss of Shrewsbury. Good Lady Grandmother, — I have sent yo' La^ the endes of my heare which were cutt the sixt day of the moone on Saterday laste, and with them a pott of gelly which my servante made. I pray God you finde it good. My aunte Cavendisshe was heare on Monday laste, she certified Arabella Stuart. 75 me of yo' La"" good health and dispositione, which I pray God longe to continue. I am in good health. My Cousin Mary hath had three little fittes of an agew, but now she is well and merry. This, with my humhle duty unto y' La"" and humble thankes for the letter you sent me last and craveing your dayly blessinge I humbly cease. From Fines. The VIII. of February 1587. Yo' La'''' humble and obediente childe, Arbella Stewart. Addressed on back outside in her handwriting : — ■ To the Eight Honorable my very good Lady and Grandmother the Countess of Shrewsbury.''' III. 13i!/j July, 1588. A letter from Lord and Lady Talbot to Lord Burghley, to take leave of him when going away, has a postscript by the Lady Arabella : * — Je prieray Dieu Mon" vous donner en parfaiote et entiere sante, tout heureun et bon succes, et seray tousjours preste a vous faire tout honneur et service. Arbella Steward. IV. Scot". Eliz. 47, 123. King James VI. of Scot", to Lady Arbella. Although the natural band of bloody my deare cousinc be sufficient for the good Intertenemts of amitye yet will I not absteine from these comon offices of Ires having now to long keeped silence till your fame and report of so good parts in you have interpelled me. And as I cannot hot in hearte rejoyce so can I 'not f orbeare to signifye to you hereby what con- tentment I have receaved hearing of your so vertiouse behaviour wherein I pray you most hartelye to continew not that I doubt thof being certi- fied of so full concurse of nature and nouriture, bot that you may be the more encouraged to prooeade in your vertiouse demeanour reaping y' fruit of so honest estimation, the encreasse of your honour & joye of your kindely and affected freindes, speciallye of me whome it pleaseth most to sie soe vertiouse & honorable symns arise of that race whereof we have both our discent. Now having more certane notice of the place of your abode I will the more frequentlye visite you by my Ires, w"** I would be ^ The original of this letter is in the possession of Mr. John Webster, Q.C., of Edge HiE, Aberdeen, an Advocate of the Scotch Bar, and lately Member for that county. It is written in a small and distinct print-like hand of the Italian school. ^ See Ellis's Original Letters, 2 series, vol. iii. p. 67. She was then about thirteen years old. ^6 SlDE-LIGIITS ON THE StUAKTS. glade to do in person, expecting also to knowe from time to time of your estate by your owen hand w"*" I looke you will not wearye to doe being firste sumoned by mo, & knowing how farre I shal bo pleased thereby. In the raeano while to next occasion of ford or knowledge of your state, after my hartiest comeiidacion, I wishe you my deare cousine, of God all honour & hartye contentm*' from Halroude house y" xxiij"' of Decemb' 1591. Your loving and aifeotionatt Cousin To our darrest Cousino James E. The Ladye Arbella.* V. Ballard's "Learned Ladies/' 177. Lady Arbella Stuaet to Me. Edward Talbot.'^ Noble Gentleman, — I am as unjustly accused of contriving a comedy as you (in my conscience) a tragedy. Counsellors are acquainted with both our badd hands, but whilst we may wash our handes in innocence, lett the grand accuser and all his ministers do theyr worst, God will he on our side, and reveale the truth to our most gratious soveraine, maugre all wicked and indirect practises whearwith some seeke to misinforme hir Majesty ; but I thanke the Almighty it pleaseth her Highness to deale most graciously with me, and by her Majesty's comaundment have liberty to chuse my frends, by whom I may bettor informe her Majesty of some matters nearely concerning myself and diverse of the very best frends yoir and I have ; thearefore I request you most earnestly to deliver a message from me to her sacred Majesty, which shall be greatly to her Majesties' contentment, your honour and behoofe, and is of groat impor- tance. It requireth great haste, and I have advertised a most honorable privy counsellor that I have sent for you to imploy you in her Majesty's service, so that you may not e.x^cuse yourself, or loose time in your owne respect whom it concerns more wayes than this. And of your own honourable disposition I doubt not but you would bestow a journey hither and so to the Court for my sake. I pray you in kindest manner commend me to my La. Ogle and sweet Mrs. Talbott whom I am very desirous, to see, and intreat her to hasten * I have found no trace of any answer to this letter, though probably such exists in the library at Edinbro'. No mention is made of this letter, as far as I am aware, in any notice or biography whatever. I dis- covered it among the papers in the State Paper Office, marked Scotland. Henry, Prince of Wales, was born at Stirling, 19th February, 1594, so that at this time evidently James, having been married above two years without prospect of issue, looked upon Arabella as his heir, in the event of his succeeding to the Crown of England. ^ Edward Talbot was the third son of George, sixth Earl of Shrews- bury, and his first wife, Gertrude Manners, daughter of Earl of Eutlimd. Arabella Stuart. 77 you hither, for the sooner you come the better for us all. Your father's love and your faithf ull frend Arbella Stuart. Indorsed (16 Fehy.) To my hon"' and good Freiid Mr. Edward Talbot. VI. Sloane MSS. 4161. Lady Arbella to the Countess of Shrewsbury. Madame, — I have sent my Uncle and you all the newes, that I had to write so that for your less trouble and the sparing of my eyes till some other time, I beseech you lett these few Lines serve to testify to you both my obedience in writing by every Messenger, though never so little. Thus praying for your Enorease of honour, comfort and happinesse, I humbly take my Leave. From Hampton Court the 21 January 1603. Your La. most affectionat neice to comaund Arbella Stuart. VII. Sloane MSS. 4161. Lady Arbella to the Earl op Shrewsbury. Having sent away this Bearer with a Letter to my Aunt, and not your Ld. with an intention to write to you at length by Mr. Cooke, I found so good hope of my " Grandmother's good Inclination to a good and reasonable Keconciliation betwixt herself and her divided family, that I could not forbeare impart to your Lop. with all speede. Thear- fore I beseech you put on such a Christian and honorable minde, as best bccommeth you to beare to a Lady so neare to you and yours as my grandmother is. And thinok you cannot devise to do me a greater honour and contentment than to let me be the onely mediatour, mode- I'ator, and peace-maker betwixt you and her. You know 1 have cause onely to be partiall on your side, so many kindenesses and favours have I receaved from you and so many Unkindnesses and Disgraces have I receaved from the other party. Yet will I not be restrained from chiding you (as great a Lord as you are) if I finde you either not willing to barken to this good motion, or to proceede in it, as I shall thinck reason- ably. Consider what power you will give me over you in this, and take as great over me as you give me over you in this, in all matters but one, and in that your Authority and persuasion shall as farre exceede theyrs as your kindnesse to me did in my trouble. If you thinck I have either ° Elizabeth, daughter of John Hardwicke, of Hardwick, in Derby- shire, Esqr. She married, first, Eobt. Burley, of Burley, in the same county, Esqr. ; second, to Sir William Cavendish ; third, to George, Earl of Shrewsbury. OMit February 13th, 1607-8. 78 Side-lights on the Stuarts. Discretion or good Nature you may be sure you may referre much to me. If I be not sufficient for this treaty, never thinck me such, as can adde strength or honour to your family. But Mr. Cooke persuades me you thinck otherwise than so abjectly of me. And so praying the Almighty you may [take] such a course both in this & all your other honorable Designes as may with your most honour and contentment bring you to those Endes you wish, whatsoever they be, I humbly take my Leave. From Hampton Court the 3 of February, 1603. I beseeche you bring my Uncle ' Henry, my "Aunt Grace up with you to London. They shall not long be troublesome to you, God wiUing, but because I know my Uncle hath some very great occasion to [be] about London for a little while, & is not well able to beare his owne charges, nor I for him, as I would very willingly, if I weare able to so very good an End as I know he comes to none: and thearfore, I beseech you, take that paines and trouble of bringing them up and keeping them a while with you, for my sake, & our families good. I have hear inclosed sent you a Letter to him, which if you will graunt him this favour I require of you, I beseech you send him, if you will not, returne it to me, and let him be not so much discomforted to see I am not able to obtaine so much of you for him. In truth I am ashamed to trouble you with so many rude & (but for my sake, as you say) unwellcome Eequests, but if you be weary of me, you may soon be dispatched of me for ever (as I am tolde) in more honorable sort then you may deny this ■ my very earnest Eequest. VIII. Sloane MSS. 4164, fo. 196. Lady Arbella to Lord Ceoill. My Good Lord, — I presume to trouble your Lop. in renewing that Eequest wh. when I last spake with you, it c'' not please you to graunt, or at least to let me know you w'' make me bound to you in that kind ; that is that it w'' please yr. Lop. to remember the King's maty of my maintenance, wh. if it be not a matter fit for you (as wh. your Lop. hath already dealt in) my Uncle of Shrewsby. is greatly deceived or hath deceived me. But I suppose neither & thearfor presume to much of your hon"" Disposition that you will endeavour to obtain me that, wh. it will be for his Maty's honor to graunt. And thearfore your Lop. in that respect (if there were no other) I doubt not will perform more than it was your pleasure to promise me, I thinck because you w"" have the benefit great comgs unpromised. And kSO wishing your Lop. Increase of honour and happinesse, I cease. From Sheen the 14 of June [1603]." Your Lop.'s poor frend. ' Henry Cavendish, aiterwards knighted, sou and heir of Sir William Cavendish, by Elizabeth, afterwards Countess of Shrewsbury. ' Third daughter of George, Earl of Shrewsbury, and wife of Henry Cavendish. ° She was at this time at Sheene, under the eye of the Marchioness of Northampton, as appears from a letter in the Lambeth MSS., 709. Arabella Stuart. 79 IX. Ballard, 178. Lady Arbella to Cecill. My Good Lord, — It hath pleased his Majesty to alter his purpose con- cerning the pension, whereof your Lo : writt to me. It may please you to move his Majesty that my present want may be supplied by his Highness with somme sumnie of money, which needeth not be annuall, if it shall so seeme good to his Majesty. But I would rather make hard shifte for the present^ than be too troublesome to his Highness, who I doubt not will allow me maintenance in such liberal! sorte, as shall be for his Majesty's honour, and a testimony to the world, no less, of his Highness Princely bounty, then naturall affection to me, which good intention of his Majesties, I doubt not but your Lo : will further, as you shall see occasion, whereby your Lordship shall make me greatly bounden to you as I already acknowledge myselfe to be. And so with humble thankes for your honorable letter, I recommend your Lordship to the protection of the Almighty, who send you all honour and contentment. From Sheene the 22 of June. Your Lo : poore frend, Arbella Stuart. Superscribed "To the Et. Hon"' my very good Lord the Lord Cecill." Indorsed 22 of June 1603. Lady Arbella Stuart to my Lord. X. Ballard, 178. Lady Arbella to Cecil. My Good Loed, — I humbly thanck your Lordship that it will please you amongst your great affaires to remember my suites to his Majesty for the alteration of my pension, I hope I shall shortly have the means to acquaint your Lop. with it myself. If I should name two thousand poundes for my present occasions it would not exceede my necessity, but I dare not pre- sume to crave any certain summe but referre myselfe wholly to his Majesty's consideration, and assure myselfe I shall find your Lop. my honourable good frend, both in procuring it as soone, and making the summe as great as may be. So with humble thanckes to your Lop. for your continuall favoures, I recommend your Lordship to the protection of the Almighty. From Sheene the 23 of June 1603. Your Lordship's poore frend Arbella Stuart. Superscribed " Tq the Rt. Honble my very good Lord, the Lord Cecill." XL Sloane MSS. 4161. Lady Arbella Stuart to Gilbert E. Shrewsbury. I humbly thancke you for your letter to my Lord Chamberlein Sidney ' in my behalf e, which I have not yet delivered, & for letting me under- ' Eobert Lord Sidney, created by King James I., 13 May, 1603, and on the 25th July following the Day of the Coronation of the king and his queen, appointed Lord Chamberlain to her majesty. So Side-lights on the Stuarts. stand your course whicli the' it liad been directly northward/ will not hinder you from thincking and lookeing to the South, where you leave me to take my lortune in an unknown climat, without either art or Instruction but what I have from you, whose skilfull directions I will observe as farre forth as they are puritan-like. And tho' I be very fraile, I must oonfesse, yet I trust you shall see in me the good effects of your prayer and your great Glory for reforming my untowardly Eeso- lutions and Mirth (for great shall the melancholy be^ that shall appear in my letters to you) which as the best preservation of Health I recom- mend to you whom I wish long life. Honor and all Happinesse. From Farnham'the 14th Augt. 1603. Your Disciple Arbella Stuaet. XII. Sloane MSS. 4161. Lady Arbella to the Countess of Shrewsbury. MadamEj — I have written to my Uncle how the world goes with me. I beseech you get him to write to my Lord Cecil in my behalf and also to take notice of his & my Lord H. Howard's crossing the King's In- tention for my allowance of Diett. I thinok that makes others deny me that the King graunted, and makes even himself thinck anything enough, when so wise counsellors thinck it too much. You know his inclination ti I be kind to all his kin & liberal to all he loves, and you know his protestations of extraordinary affection to me. Thearfore I am sure it is e\'ill counsell that withholds him so long from doing for me in as liberal sort, or more, as he hath done for any. The Queene was very desirous to have accompanied the King. When she speaks of you she speaks very kindly and honorably of you. Our great and gratious Ladies leave no Gesture nor fault of the late Queen unremembered, as they say who are partakers of their talke, as I thancke God I am not. Mr. Elphinston' is my very good freind & your much devoted. I pray you let me hear of my faults from you, when you will have me mend them, for I am sure you shall hear of them theare, & I neither those faults which are thought so, heare, nor those qualities good, tliat are most gratious heare. Now you are a by-staudcr you may judge and direct better than ever. I humbly take my leave, praying the Almighty to send you all happinesse. From Basing the 23 August (1603) Your Laf niece to comand, Arbella Stuart. ^ Lord Shrewsbury, in Deo. 1G03, was appointed Lord Justice in Eyre, north of the Trent, for life. * A letter from Elphinstone to tho Queen, 1609, complains of his being ruined in the queen's service and prays for relief. Arabella Stuart. 8i I beseech, you, comend me to my Uncle Charles and my Aiint and all my Cousins with you. S' W"- Stuart remembereth his service to you and my Uncle. XIII. Sloane MSS. 4161. Lady Arbella to the Countess op Shrewsbury. MadamBj — If you receive the letters I write I am sure you see I fail not to write often how the world goeth here both in particular with me and otherwise as fare as my Intelligence stretcheth. Wherefore I rather interpret your postscript to be a Caveat to me to write no more than how I do, and my desire to understand of your health, that is, no more than is necessary, than a new comandment to do that which I already do. But least in pleasing you, I offend my Uncle, I have adventured to write to him one superfluous letter more, and that I may include no serious matter in his, I send you all I have of that kinde, which is that the King hath under his hand granted me the aforesaid Messe of meate and £800 per annum, and my L. Cecil will dispatch it, I trust with all speede, for so his Lo'' promiseth. Your long expected messenger by whom I should have understood your mind, is not yet come, and the Queene is going hence to-morrow : but the change of place will not cease my expectation, till 1 can understand from you you have changed your minde in that matter, which if you do, I shall hope it is with a minde to come up shortly, and let me know it yourself, according to a bruit we have here, which I would fain believe. You shall not fail to receive weekly Letters, G-od willing, unless Lack of Health, or Means, or some very great occasion hinder me. Mr. Elphinstone, who you may see, is with me late as well as early, remembers his service to you. And so I humbly take my leave, pray^^ the Almighty to send you all honor, happinesse, contentment, &c. Your 'La'" niece to comand Aebella Stuaet, Indorsed 16 Sept. 1603. (from Oxford) XIV. Talbot MSS., K. 124. Lady Arbella to Ld. Shrewsbury. 16 Sept. 1603. At my return from Oxford where I have spent this day, whilst my Lord Cecil amongst many more weighty affairs was discharging some of mine, I found my Cousin Lacy had disburdened himself at my chamber of the charge he had from you and straight fell to prepare his fraught back, for hindering his back return to-morrow morning as he intendeth.^ I wrote to you of the reason of the delay of Taxis' audience; it remaineth to tell how jovially he behaveth himself in the interim. He hath bro' great store of Spanish gloves, hawks' hoods, leather for jerkins and moreover a perfumer. These delicacies he bestoweth amongst our Lords and Ladies, I will not say with a hope to effeminate the one sex G 82 Side-lights on the Stuarts. but certainly with a hope to grow gracious with the other, as he already is. The curiosity of our sex drew many Ladies and Gentlewomen to gaze at him betwixt his landing place and Oxford his abiding place, which he desirous to satisfy (I will not say nourish that vice) made his coach to stay and took occasion with petty gifts and courtesies to wia soon won affections, who comparing his manner with Mons' de Eosy's hold him their far welcomer guest. At Oxford he took some distaste about his lodging and w"* needs lodge at an Inn because he had not Christ's College to himself and was not received into the town by the Vice Chancellor in PontificaUbus which they never used to do but to the King or Queen or Chancellor of the University as they say ; but those scruples were soon digested and he vouchsafeth to lodge in a piece of the College till his repair to the King at Winchester.' Count Aremberg was here within these few days and presented to the Queen the Archduke and the Infanta's pictures most excellently drawn. Yesterday the King and Queen dined at a Lodge of Sir H^ Lee's 9 miles hence and were accompanied by the French Ambassador and a Dutch Duke. I will not say we were merry at the Dutchkin, lest you complain of me for telling tales out of the Queen's coach, but I could find it in my heart to write unto you some of our yesterday's adventure, but that it groweth late and by the shortness of your letter I conjecture you would not have this honest gentleman overladen with such super- fluous relations. My Lord Admiral is returned from the Prince and Princess, and either is or will be my cousin, before incredulous you will believe such incongruities in a counsellor, as love maketh no miracles in his subjects of what degree or age whatsoever.^ His daughter Kildare is discharged of her office and as near a free woman as may be and have a bad husband. The Dutch lady my Lord Wotton spoke of at Basing proved a lady sent by the Duchess of Holstein to learn the Eughsh fashions. She lodged at Oxford and hath been here twice and thinketh every day long tiU she be at home so well she Uketh her entertainment or loveth her own country ; in truth she is civil and therefore cannot but look for the like which she brings out of a ruder country. But if there were such a vertue as courtesy at the Court, I marvel what is become of it, for I protest I see little or none of it but in the Queen who ever since her coming to Newbury hath spoken to the people as she passeth and receiveth their prayers with thanks and thankful counte- nance barefaced to the great contentment of native and foreign people, for I would not have you think the French Ambassador would leave that attractive virtue of our late Queen EUzabeth unremembered or ' The Spanish Ambassador had his audience at Winchester on 24 Sep., 1603, when Lady Arabella was with the Court. (3 Lodge 39.) " Lord Nottingham, Lord High Admiral, the hero of the Armada, notwithstanding his great age, prided himself on his vigour of mind, and body, and danced so merrily at Winchester that he won the heart of Lady Margaret Stuart, cousin of Lady Arabella, whom he married in September, 1603. She was very young but very high-spirited. See ante, p. Arabella Stuart. 83 uncommended when lie saw it imitated by our most gracious Queen lest you should thmk we infect even our neighbours with incivility But what a Pleasure have rude I gotten unawares. It is vour own virtue I commend by the folly of the contrary vice, and so thinking on you my pen accused myself before I was aware. Therefore I will put it to silence for this time only adding a short but most hearty prayer for your prosperity in all kinds and so humbly take my leave. Your 1° niece Arbblla Stuart. From Woodstock this 15 Sep. [1603.] XV. Sloane MSS. 4161. Lady Arbblla to the Countess op Shrewsbury. Madam, — According to your commandment I send your La" a few scribbled lines, that I be now going in great haste to give my attendance with some company, that is come to fetch me. I am as diligently expected, and as soone missed, as they that perform the most acceptable service. And because I must return at an appointed time to go to my books, I must make the more haste thither. So praying for your happiness, I humbly take my leave. From "Winchester the 6th October 1603. Your LaP' niece to comand, Arbblla Stuart. XVI. Sloane MSS. 4161. Lady Arbblla to the Earl of Shrewsbury. I humbly thank youj Lo" for the (as to me it seemed, I assure you) short letter of two sheets of paper which I received from you by this Bearer Mrs. Nelson. The Letters to my Ld. Cecil and Sir Thomas Edmondes were deUvered, tho' not so soone as I wished, they being both absent from hence, so that Sir Thomas's was delivered to the Door Keeper of the Counsell-ohamber, and Sir Thomas not coming hither so soon as was expected Mr. Hersey thought good to fetch it from him, and how he hath since disposed of it, I know not, nor doubt not but he hath done with it as you would have him, for he seemes to me very well instructed in your minde. My Lord Cecil had his as soone as he came. My bad eyes crave truce till they may without theyr manifest Danger write a letter of a larger volume. And so praying for your Lo'"'-'' honor and happinesse in highest Degree that ever subject possessed, I humbly take my leave. From Fulston ^ the 27th of October, 1603. Your Lo'"'' niece, Arbblla Stuart. Foulston is near Sittingbourne, Kent. G 2 84 Side-lights on the Stuarts. XVII. Sloane MSS. 4161. Lady Abbella to the Ctess. op Shrewsbury. Madame,— I humbly thank you for your good advice against new- year's tide. I think theare will be no remidye but I must provide myself from London, though I be very loath to do so. I understand by Sir William Stuart/ how much much I am bound to you and my Uncle. I will bethinck myself against your long expected, trusty messenger come, now whatsoever he be, and that expectation shall keepe me from troubling you with so plain and tedious a discourse, as I could finde in my hart to disburden my minde withall to you. I humbly thank you for my servant G. Chaworth. And so praying for your happinesse, I humbly cease. From Fulston, the 14th of Nov., 1 603. Your La. niece to comand, Ahbella Stuart. XVIII. Sloane MSS. 4161. Lady Arbella to the Ctess op Shrewsbury. Madame, — Because I received a letter from you by this Gentle- woman, I dare not for incurring her Opinion of my Relapse into some unkiudnesse towarde you, but send you a few Lines. I will keep a note of the dates of my Letters. That letter of yours which I received since by Mr. Hersey I have answered by him. My eyes are extremely swolne, and yet I have not spared them, when I have had occasion to employ them for your sake. Therefore now they may boldly crave as cessation for this time, onely performing their office, whilst I subscribe myself such as I am, and ever will continue, that is Your La. neice to command. Indorsed 6 Nov. 1603. Abbella Stuaet. XIX. Sloane MSS. 4161. Lady Abbella to the Earl op Shrewsbury. I must onely return your Lo""'- humble thanks for the Letters I have received from you and reserve the Answer till I trust a few Dayes will make mo able to write without extreame pain in my head. Mr. Cooke can tell your 'Lo'' all the news that is here. And so praying for your Lo''''' happinesse I humbly take my leave. From Fulston 28 Nov. 1603. Your Lo''"' niece, Arbella Stuart. * A letter (Sloane 4161. 15.) from Sir Wm. Stuart to Earl Shrews- bury dated 12th September 1603, states that he had an interview with the King and Ld. Cecil concerning Ld. Arabella and has good hopes of his obtaining her desires. Arabella Stuart. 85 XX. Sloane MSS. 4161. Lady Arbella to the Ctess. op Sheewsbubt. Madame,— I humbly thank you for your Letters, Pill and Harts- horn. I have taken continued and increased and extreme colde. I mean to sweate to-day for it. Mr. Cooke can tell you how the world goes here. And so praying for your happinesse I humbly take my leave. From Fulston the 28th Nov. 1603. Your La. niece to command^ Arbella Stuart. XXI. Sloane MSS. 4161. Lady Arbella to the Earl of Shrewsbury. It may please your Lo""- to pardon me, if writing now in hast with a minde distracted with the several cares of a householde and those that this remove ^ and new year's tide add thereto, I omit sometimes that, which weare perchance more material to write than that I write, and forget many things, which according to the manner of us, that have onely after-wittes comme not to minde till your letters be gone, and then are too ancient news to be sent by the next. I received your Lo"" '• letter safely by Mrs. JSTelson, and that your in my Aunt's letter was plurall, so that I ment I had received your Lo""''- and hers, how ill soever I expressed it. I will amend my obscurity, God willing. Your Lo^- toneth my obscurity in the coment upon a part of some letter of mine you desire to have explained. But whatso- ever you tooke for the explanation of it, I am sure I sent you none, for I knew not what it was you desired to have expounded. I pray you take not that pro concesso in general which is only proper to some monsters of our sex. I cannot deny so apparent truth as that wickednesse prevaileth with some of our sex, because I dayly see some even of the fairest amongst us misled, and wittingly and willingly ensnared by the Prince of Darkness. But yet ours shall still be the purer and more innocent kinde. Theare went 10,000 virgins to heaven in one day. Looke but in the Almanack and you shall finde that glorious day. And if you thinck theare are some, but not many of us, that may prove saints, I hope you are deceived. But not many rich, not many noble, shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. So that richesse and nobility are hindrances from Heaven as well as our native Infirmity. You would thinck me very full of Divinity or desirous to show that little I have, in both which you should do me wrong, if you knew what business I have at Court, and yet preach to you. Pardon me it is not my function. Now a little more to the purpose. I have delivered your two patents signed and sealed to Mr. Hercy. If it be not an unexcusable presumption in me to tell you my mind unaskt, as if I would advise you what to do, pardon me if I tell ^ She was appointed State Governess, and had apartments assigned to her in the Court at Whitehall. 86 Side-lights on the Stuarts. you I thinck your thanoks will come very unseasonably so near New Yeare's tide, especially those with which you send any Gratuity. Thearfore consider, if it weare not better to give your New- Yeare's guift first to the Queene and your thanckes after, and keep Mr. Fowler's till after that good time. New Year's tide will come every yeare, and be yearly tribute to them you beginne with. You may impute the slow- nesse of your thanckfulnesse to Mr. Hercy or me, that acquainted you no sooner with your own matter. The Spanish Imbassadour invited Madame de Beaumont the French Imbassadour's Lady to dinner, requesting her to bring some English ladies with her. She brought my Lady Bedford,* Lady Eich,'' Lady Susan,' and Lady Dorothy with her, and great cheere they had. A fortnight after he invited the Duke,' the Earl of Mar and divers of that nation, requesting them to bring the Scottish Ladies, for he was desirous to see some natural Beauties. My Lady Armet Hay and my cousin Drummond went, and after the sumptuous Dinner were presented with two paire of Spanish gloves a piece, and after my Cousin Drummond had a Diamond Eing of the Valew of 200 crownes given her and my Lady Anne a gold chaine of Spanish work neare that valew. My Lady Gary went with them, and had gloves theare, and after a gold chaine of little links twise about her neck sent her. Yesterday the Spanish Imbassadour, the Florentine and Mde. de Beaumont tooke theyr leave of the Queene till she come to Hampton Court. Theare is an Imbassadour come from Polonia, and faine he would be gone again, because of the freezing of their seas, but he hath not yet had audience. The Venetian lately sent her Imbassadours with letters both to the King and Queene. One of them is returned with a very honorable dispatch, but he staying but few dayes, and the Queene being not well, he saw her not. The other stays here stiU. It is said the Turk hath sent a Chater to the King. It is said the Pope will send a Knight to the King in Imbassage. The Duke of Savoye's Imbassage is daily expected. But out of this confusion of Imbassages will you know how we spend our time on the Queene's side 1 Whilest I was at Winchester theare weare certain childe -playes remembered by the fayrc ladies, viz., I pray my Lord give me a course in your park ; Else pig and go ; One peny follow me, &c. And when I came to Court they weare as highly in request as ever cracking of nuts was. So I was by the mistress of the Eevelles not onely compelled to play at I knew not what (for tiU that day I never heard of a play called Fur) but even persuaded by the " Lucy Ctess. of Bedford, wife of Edward, Earl of Bedford, and dau. of John Lord Harrington. ' Penelope, wife of Eobt. Lord Eich, afterwards Earl of Warwick, and sister of the Earl of Essex. '* La. Susan Vere, dau. of Edw", Earl of Oxford, afterwards married to Sir Philip Herbert, afterwards Earl of Pembroke and Montgomerv. " The Duke of Lennox. Arabella Stuart. 87 Princely example to play the childe againe. This exercise is most used from 10 of the clooke at night till 2 or 3 in the morning, but that day I made one it began at twilight and ended at supper time. Thear was an interlude, but not so ridiculous (as ridiculous as it was) as my letter, which I heare conclude with many prayers to the Almighty for your happinesse, and so I humbly take my leave. From Fulston, the 8th of December, 1603. Your Lo""'" niece, Aebella Stuart. XXII. Sloane MSS. 4161. 'Lkvn Arbella to the Ctess. op Shrewsbury. Madame, — -I humbly thanck you for your . . . expressed many wayes and lately in the letter . . . from you by my cousin Lucies man. How defective . . . memory be in other wayes assure yourself I cannot . . . even for all matters concerning that great party much lesse such great ones, as, I thanck God, I was acquainted withall. Therefore when any great matter comes in question rest secure, I beseech you, that I am not interested in it as an actour, howsoever the vanity of wicked men's vaine Designes have made my name passe through a grosse — and a suttle lawyer's ' lippes of late to the exercise and increase of my patience and not theyr credit. I trust I have not lost so much of your good opinion, as your pleasant post-script would make one, that weare suspitious of theyr assured friends (as I never was) believe. For if I should not preferre the reading of your kind and most welcome letters before all court delights (admit I delighted as much in them as others do) it weare a signe of extreame f oUy ; and likening Court sportes no better than I do, and than I think you think I do, I know you cannot thinck me so transformed as to esteeme anything lesse than them, as your love and judgement together makes me hope you know I can like nor loving nothing better than the love and kindnesse of so honorable frends as you and my uncle. Whearfore I beseech you, lett me heare often . . . your love by the length and number of your letters. My . . . follies, ignorances will minister you sufficient matter for as many and as long letters as you please, which I beseech you may be as many and as copious as may be without your trouble. I have satisfied the honorable gentlewoman without raising any ex- pectation in her to receive letters from you, which is a favour I desire onely may be reserved still for myself, my Lord Cecil, and your best esteemed frends. I asked her advice for a New Year's guift for the Queene, both for myself who am altogether unprovided, and a great lady a f rend of mine, that is as in my case for that matter, and her answer was that the Queene regarded not the valew, but the devise. The gentle- woman neither liked Gowne nor peticoate so well, as some little bunch of rubies to hang in her eare, or some such dafte toy. I meane to give her Majesty two paire of silk stockins lined with plush and two paire ' ReferrintT to her name being brought into question at the trials at Winchester of Cobham, Ealeigh, and others in Nov., 1603. 88 Side-lights on the Stuarts. uf gloves lined if London aiFord me not some dafte toy I like better, whereof I cannot betHnok me. If I knew the vulew you would bestow I tliinok it neare no hard matter to get her or Mrs. Hartshide understand the Queene's minde without knowing who asked it. The time is short, and theai'fore you had neede lose none of it. I am making the king a purse, and for all the world else I am unprovided. This time will manifest my poverty more than all the rest of the yeare. But why should I be ashamed of it, when it is other's fault, and not mine t My quarter's allowance will not defray this one charge, I believe. Sir "VVm. Stuart continueth his charitable desire, but he cannot persuade me to loose my labour, how little soever he esteeme his owne to so good an end, which I wish but cannot thinck not fesible at least by me. Thus Praying for the Increase of youre happinesse every way, I humbly take leave. From Fulston, the 8th Dec' 1603. Yr. Ld. most aifectionat neece to comand, Arbella Sttjaet, XXIII. Add Mas. ■2-2, 563. Ladt Aebella Stuabt to the Earl of Shrewsbury. That night the Queene came hither, which was on Friday the 16 of December, I received your Lo. packett to me by one of my Lo. Cecill's men. Mr. Hercie's letter, I keepe it till I see him which will be very shortly as he lately told me. I humbly thanck you for your thanckes to my Lord Cecill for me. I am a witness not only of the rare guifte of speaoh which God hath given him, but of his excellent judgment in chusing most plausible and honorable Theames as the defending a wronged Lady, the clearing of an innocent knight &c. I humbly thanck you for your letter to my Lo. Bishop of Winchester, which if it be written (as I doubt not but it is) in that sort as may [pro tit] the recommended, is worth 10 favours of a greater valew that you had binne willing to graunt ; but if, dS being written invita Minerva, they be unto him like Uriah's Sealed letter, alas ! what have I done 1 Well, I suspect you not, thearfore now you may deceive me. And you deceive me (who am better perswaded of your judgment) if you do not perceive I cast that doubt only to make you merry with looking into the infinitenesso of suspition, if one will nourish it, not that 1 have the least doubt of your honorable dealing with any and especially myselfe. The invitation is very colde, if the Christmas guests you write of accept it not, for they knew theyr wellcome and entertainment in a worse place and yet were so bold to invite themselves tliither. I humbly thanck you that for my sake they shall bo the well- comer to you, who in regard of theyr nuarcncy of blood tti yourselfe and my Aunt must needes be so very wellcoui that (if you had not written it) I should not have thought they could have binne more wellcom to you in any respect than that. Your Venison shall be wellcom to Hampton Court and merrily eaten. I dare not write uuio you how 1 do, fur if 1 should say well, I weare Arabella Stuart. 89 groatly to Llunie ; if ill, I trust you would not beleeve me, I am so merry. It is enough, to change Heraolitus into Democritus to live in this most ridiculous World and enough to change Democritus into Heraclitus to live in this most wicked World. If you will not allow reading of riddles for a Christmas sport, I know not whether you will take this Philosophical folly of mine in good part this good time. I writt to your Lo. by a messenger of Mr. Hercies an answer of yours I received by my Cousin Lacies man, of such newes as then weare newes and now have I none to send but that the King will be heare to- morrow. The Polonian^ Imbassadoiir shall have audience on Thursday next. The Queene intendeth to make a mask this Christmas, to which end my La. of Suffolk and my La. Walsingham have warrants to take of .the late Queene's best apparell out of the Tower at theyr discretion. Certain noblemen (whom I may not yet name to you because some of them have made me of theyr counsell) intend another, certein gentle- men of good sort, another. It is said theare shall be 30 playes. The King will feast at the Imbassadours this Christmas. Sir John Hollis convoyed som new com Imbassadours to Eichmond, and it was said (but uncerteinly) to be a Muscovian. I have reserved the best newes for the last and that is the King's pardon of life to the not executed Traytours. I dare not beginne to tell of the Koyall and wise manner of the King's proceeding thearin, least I should finde no end of extolling him for it tiU I had written out a payre of badd eyes, and thearfore praying for your Lo. happinesse, I humbly and abruptely take my Leave. From Hampton Court the 18 of December 1603. Your Lo. neece Aebella Stuart. XXIV. Sloane MSS. 4161. La. Arabella to the Countess op Shrewsbury. Madame, — I received your La. letter by your old servant David three dayes ago, and his desire being I should speake to some of the Counsell in his behalfe and he knowing he bad brought a Letter of recommenda- tion to me, least he should think me disobedient to you, who willed me to do what I could for him, I offered to speake to the Duke of Lennoxe in his behalfe who is the only Counsellor, now my Uncle is away, that I wiU move in any such service. But I told him, it would be to so little purpose, that though at that present he seemed to desire his furtherance, I have not seen him since, and so upon better consideration I thinck he takes the right way and will spare that needlesse Labour of mine to speake to one for him that can do him little good. But whither I shall see David any more before his returne to you or not, I know not and thearefore Mr. Hercy having left this packet of Ires, with me to be sent by the first sure messenger, I could heare of, I have rather made bold with this Bearer, as he can tell you, then either stay it (for Mr. Hercy saith it requireth hast) or rely on the uncertainty of your Servant. The Polinian Imbassadour had audience to-day. Other newes here is none, that I know, and thearfore I beseech you make my excuses to go Side-lights on the Stuarts. my Uncle that I write not to him in this busy time and scarcity accurrents. And so praying the Almighty to send you both all happinesse I humbly take my Leave. From Hampton Court the 22nd of Dec' [1603]. Your La : most affectionat neece to comaund Aebella Stuaet. Mr. Hercy sent a packet by post wherein I writ to my Uncle and you in answer of those I received from you by my Cousin Lucie's man. I beseech you let us know if you received them safe. If I had thought they should have binne sent by post, I would have written more reservedly. XXV. Sloane MSS. 4161. Lady Ahbella to the Eael of Shebwsbukt. This Bearer coming to me in such hast, as he can tell your Lo : I only observe your commaundment in scribling never so little, never so ill and reserve all I have to write of to your Lo :, that is some Hardwick newes and such Vanities as this place and holy time afford me, till Emorye's returne by whom I have received a large Essay of your Lo : good cheere at Sheffield. I humbly thanck you and my Aunt for it. One Mr. Timsted, expected letters from your Lo : and came once him- selfe and said he would send to my chamber often in adventure you should send them to me. And thus praying to the Almighty to send your Lo : so much in- crease of honour and happinesse, that you may confess yourself to be the Kinge's happiest subject, and humbly take my Leave. From Hampton Court the 2nd of January 1603. Tour Lo : neece Akbella Stuart. I beseech you obtaine my pardon of my Aunt for not writing to her at this time. XXVI. Lady Aebella to the Eael oe Sheewsbtjry. This Bearer having Leave for a short time to visit the North, and not giving me time sufficient to write the Description of all the Maskes besides two playes plaid befor6 the Prince, since my last advertisement of these serious Affaires, I must beseech your Lo : to pardon the short- nesse of my Letter, proceeding partly of the short warning I had of his going downe, partly of the shortnesse of my Witt, who at this Instant remember no newes, but is either too great to be contained in my weake paper, or vulgar, or such as without detriment but of your Lo : expecta- tion may tarry the next messenger. I have heare inclosed sent your Lop : the B. of Winchester's " Letter in answer of yours. I beseech you lett me know what you writt and what ' Dr. Thos. Bilson. Arabella Stuart. 9T he answers concerning tlie party in whose favour I craved your Letter, that I may lett the good Warden know as soon as may be. My Lady of Worcester,^ commendeth her as kindly to yonr Lo : and not to my Aunt as you did yourself to her in her La : letter, and is as desirous to raise jelousy betwixt you two, as you are like to do betwixt them. Thus praying the Almighty to send your Lo : infinite and perpetual! honour and happinesse I humbly take my Leave. From Hampton Court the 10 of January [1604]. Tour Lo : neece, Arbella Stuart. XXVII. (P.S. to the last letter.) I had almost tried, whether your Lop : would have performed a good office betwixt two friends undesired ; for I had forgotten to beseech you to excuse me to my Aunt for not writing to her at this time. I thinck I am asked every day of this New Yeare 7 times a day at least, when you come up and I have nothing to say but I cannot tell ; which it is theyr pleasure to beleeve and thearfore, if you will not resolve them nor me of the truth, yet teach me what to answer them. My Lord Cecil sent me a faire paire of Bracelets this morning in requi- tall of a trifle I presented him at New Yeare's tide^ which it pleased him to take as I meant it. I finde him my very honorable Frende both in worde and deede. I pray you give him such thanckes for me, as he many wayes deserves and especially for this extraordinary and unexpected favour, whearby I perceive his Lo : reckneth me in the number of his frends, for whom onely such persons as he reserve such favours. Thus praying for your Lo : happinesse, I humbly take my Leave. Prom Hampton Court the 11 of January [1604]. Your Lo : neece, Arbella Stuart. XXVIII. Sloane MSS. 4161. Ladt Arbella to the Earl of Shrewsbury. I humbly thanck your Lop : for sparing me never so few Wordes in the time of your taking Physic, whiche I would not should have been more for doing you harme in holding downe your head at such a time, but when you are well, I hope to receive some Hardwick newes, which unlesse your Lop : be a great deale briefer than that plentiful! argument requirethj will cost you a long letter. My Aunt findeth fault with my Brevity, as I thinck by your Lo : Commaundment, for I know she in her Wisdom respecteth Cerimony so little, that she would not care in time of health for hearing from me every weeke, that I am well, and nothing else. And I know her likewise too wise to make that the cause of her offence, suppose iu poUicy that she ^ Elizabeth, wife of Edwd. Earl of Worcester : and daughter of Francis, Earl of Huntingdon. 92 Side-lights on the Stuarts. should thinok good to seeme or be offended with me^ whom perchance you now thinok good to shake oS, as weary of the Alliance. But I conclude your Lop : hath a quarrel to me, and maketh my Aunt take it upon her, and that is (for other can you justly have none) that you have never a Letter of mine since your going downe to make you merry at your few spare houres. Which if it be so, your Lop : may commaimd me in plaine termes and deserve it by doing the like, and I shall as willingly play the foole for your Eeoreation as ever. I assure myself, my Lord Cecill, my Lord of Pembrok, your honorable new Ally and divers of your old acquaintance, write your Lop : all the newes of . . that is stirring ; so that I will only impart . . trifles to your Lo : at this time as concerning myselfe. After I had once carved, the Queene never dined out of her Bed-chamber nor was attended by any but her cham- berers, till my Lady of Bedford's returne. I doubted my unhandsome carving had binne the cause thearof, but her Majesty tooke my Lideavour in good part, and with best words than that beginning deserved put me out of that Errour. At length (for now I am called to the Services I must hasten to an end) it fell out that the importunity of certeine great Ladies in that or some other suite of the like kinde had donne me this Disgrace, and whom should I heare named for one but my Aunt of Shrewsbury, who, they say at the same time stood to be the Queen's cup-bearer ? If I could have binne persuaded to beleeve or seeme to beleeve that whearof I knew the contrary, I might have binne threatned downe to my face, that I was of her oounsell thearin ; that I deeply dissembled with my Trends, when I protested the contrary, for I was heard to confer with her (they say) to that purpose. But these people do little know how circumspect my Aunt and your Lo : are with me ; I humbly thanck you for the example. I heare the marriage betwixt my Lo : of Pembrok and my cousin is broken, whearat some time I laugh, other whiles am angry, sometimes answer soberly, as though I thought it possible according as it is spoken in simple earnest, scorne, pollicy or howsoever at the least as I conceive it to be spoken. And your Lo : secrecy is the cause of this Variety (whearby some conjecture that I know something) because I have no certein Direction what to say in that case. I was asked within these 3 Dayes, whither your Lo : would be here within 10 Dayes, unto which (to me) strange question I made so strange an answer, as I am sure either your Lop : or I are counted great Dissemblers. I am none, quit yourself as you may. But I would be very glad you weare heare, that I neede not chide you by Letter, as I must needes do, if I be chidden either for the shortnesse, rarenesse or precisenesse of my Letters, which by your former Rules I might thinck a fault, by your late example, "Wisdome. I pray you reconcile your Deedes and Words together and I shall follow that course hearin, which your Lo : best allowes. In the meanetime I have applied myself to your Lo : former likeing and the plainnesse of my owne Disposition. And so praying for your Lo|: health, honour and happinesse, I humbly take my Leave. From Whitehall. Your Lop : neece Indorsed 1G04. Aebella Stuart. Arabella Stuart. 93 XXIX. SloaneMSS. 4161. Lady Abbella to the Countess of Shrewsbuey. Madame, — I was very glad to receive your letter and my Uncles from that party which delivered them to me, with some Newes which I am very glad of, and pray God send your La : and my Uncle as much joy thearof as yourselves desire. Mr. Cooke and your La : red Deer shall be very wellcome, or any Messenger or Token whearby I may understand of your weU being, and the continuance of your affection to one who will remaine Your La : neece to commaund Abbella Stuart. Indorsed 1 Oct. 1604. XXX. Sloane MSS. 4161. Lady Abbella to the Earl of Shrewsbury. I humbly thanck your Lo : and my Aunt for the sixe very good red Deare pies I have received from your Lo : by Mr. Hercy. My Aunt's thanokes, which I received for my plaine dealing with Mr. Booth, and the few lines I received last from your Lo : and my Aunt by Mr. Hercy, have relation to certain conditions and promises, as well on your Lo : part as mine and thearfore your Lo : confidence of my conditionall promise resteth not in me onely. I assure myselfe you are so honorable and I so deare unto j'ou, that you will respect as well what is convenient for me, as what you earnestly desire, especially my estate being so uncertain and subject to injurys, as it is. Your Lo : shall finde me constantly persevere in a Desire to do that, which may be acceptable to you and my Aunt, not altogether neglecting myself. And so I humbly take my Leave, praying for your happinesse. From Whitehall the 18 October 1604. Your Lo : neece Arbella Stuart. XXXI. Sloane MSS. 4161. Ladt Arabella to the Earl of Shrewsbury. I have sent sooner than I had time to write to your Lo : of any thing heere, and yet not so soone but I am sure I am already condempned by your Lo : and my Aunt either for slothfull or proud or both, because I writ not by the very first went downe after I received your Letters. So have I fully satisfied neither your Lo : nor myselfe and yet performed a due respect to a very honorable frend, whose honor and happinesse I shall ever rejoice at and thinck my owne misfortunes the lesse, if I may see my wishes for your Lo : and my Aunt's permanent happy and great Fortune take effect, and so I humbly take my Leave. From Whitehall the 24 of December 1604. Your Lo : neece Abbella Stuart. Though I have written your Lo : no newes, I have sent you hear inclosed very good store from Mr. Secretary Fowler. My olds good spy 94 Side-lights on the Stuarts. Mr. James Mourray desireth his service may be remembred to your Lo : and my Aunt, but if I should write every tenth word of his, whearin he wisheth you more good then is to be expressed at Court on a Christmas Eve, you would rather thinok this scribbled paper a short Text with a long Comment underwritten, then a Letter with a postscript. XXXII. Mcholl's Prog. K. James, vol. i. 563. Lady Abbella to Henry Pbince of Wales. Sib, — My intention to attend yr Highness to-morrow, God willing, cannot stay me from acknowledging by these few lines, how infinitely I am bound to yr Highness for that yr gracious disposition towards me, wh. faileth not to shew itself upon every occasion whether accidental or begged of me, as this late high favour and grace it hath pleased yr High- ness to do my kinsman at my humble suit.* I trust to-morrow to let yr Highness understand such motives of that my presumption, as shall make it excusable. For yr Highness shall perceive, I both understand with what extraordinary respects suits are to be presented to yr. Highness ; and without that yr goodness doth so temper yr greatness, as it en- courageth both me and many others to hope, that we may taste the fruits of the one by means of the other. The Almighty make yr High- ness every way such as I, Mr. Newton and Sir David Murray (the only intercessors I have used in my suit, or wiU in any I shall present to yr Highness) wish you ; and then shall you be even such as you are : and yr growth in virtue and grace with God and men shall be the only alteration we will pray for. And so in all humility I cease, Yr Highness most humble and dutiful Abbella Stuaet. [18 Oct. 1605.] XXXIII. Harl. 7003, 42. (Draft letter.) Indorsed "To my hon'''° good friend Sir Andrew Sinclair." My honble. good Fbiend, — I yield his Majesty most humble thanks that it pleaseth him to add that advertisement I received from you yesterday to the rest of the favors wherewith it hath pleased his Majesty to honor me, and I pray you assure his Majesty that next unto that I shall spend in my prayers for his Majesty's prosperity I shall think that breath of mine best bestowed which may add if it be hut a drop to the sea of his honor. I have observed his Majesty's behaviour as diligently as any and I may truly protest I never saw nor heard that deed or word of his which did not deserve high praise whereof I shall bear witness I doubt not with many more, for I assure you it is not possible for a Prince to leave a more honorable memory than his Majesty hath done here. And if any speak or understand it otherwise it must proceed of their unworthi- ness and be esteemed as a shadow of Envy which infallibly accompanies ' Probably making her cousin, Charles Cavendish, a Baron in May, 1605. Arabella Stuart. 95 the brightness of virtue. I spent yesterday at London and have not seen her Majesty since her sorrowful returning hither but I am assured her Majesty will perform all the offices of a kind sister to her most dear and worthy brother, in which cause I think myself happy. I beseech his Majesty this indiscretion of my La. Nottingham may not impair his good opinion of our sex or herself but that it will please him to retain the innocent in his wonted favor and especially myself who will not faU to pray for his safe and happy return with aU. other daily increasing felicities and remain y assured thankful friend \June or July, 1606.] A. S. XXXIV. Harl. 7003, 41. Sir Andrew Sinclair to Lady Aebella Stuart. Madam, — The king my mar has comanded me to write his gracious comands to y' Lap and to advertise y' Lap that my La Nottingham has written to me this morn^ a Ire wh. her Lap has made the K. my mar notice of some speeches his Maty sh'^ have spoken of her to her dis- advantage, as y' Lap may perceive by the Lre he has written to me, the which the K. has sent to the Q's Maty his sister. So his Mty desires that y' Lap wDl defend his Maty's innocence in such things as his Maty is assured that he is unjustly accused of. The Q's Maty will shew y' Lap the letter.^ Written ia g' haste A. Sinclair. XXXV. Harl. 7003, 48. Draft of a Letter (probably) to Sir Andrew Sinclair, inclosing Letters to Queen op Denmark. My honorable good Friend, — I yield both their Majesties most humble thanks for their gracious favors and have presumed to do so by letters to themselves which I must account one of their special graces ; that it pleaseth them to license me so [to] do, for by the patronage of so worthy a prince, so interested in them of whom my fortune depends and so graciously affected to me, I cannot doubt but at last to come to some such stay as shall give me perpetual cause to pray for his Majesty whose gracious favor so many ways experienced is of itself an especial com- fort and honor to me, and for you my honorable friend by whose good means I enjoy this happiness I can but acknowledge myself your debtor tiU God make me able better to express my thankfulness as I doubt not by God's grace but I shall be made by your good indeavours and the mediation of your most Gracious master. Whose favor of itself is so highly and duly esteemed by me that I hold myself so thoro'ly appaied (?) therewith as I should desire no more but the preservation of it j but that I perceive virtue is of itself and the neglect of offered bounty, would deprive them of the honor and contentment they receive ' See the Cabala for this letter of Lady Nottingham to the E. of Denmark. 96 SlDE-LIGIITS ON THE StUARTS. in well doing. Therefore when the first opportunity is offered that I may request your paine to come hither accompanied with his Majesty's gracious letters, upon any good anil hopeful occasion of mine, I will rely so much on your friendship that you will do so, and till the season serve, I will consult with my friends of some suits I have propounded to me whereof one hath a very great good appearance. But his Majesty's favour is so precious to me and I am so loth to trouble you without almost assurance to make you amends by partaking the fruit of your pains and friendship, that I will rather lose time than not be in very assured hope to prevail by these means when I employ them. And so requesting you to present these enclosed to their Majesties and to maintain me in their favor I take my leave. [Inclosing a draft letter to Queen of Denmark, thanking her for favors and for her accepting a piece of work.] XXXVI. Harl. 7003, 46. SiE Andbew Sinclair to Ladt Aebella Stuart. My humble duty being remembered right worthy Lady, it hath pleased both their Majesties to commend me to write their most gracious com- mendations to your Ladyship and to thank your Ladyship for the honest faith it has pleased your Ladyship to bestow on both their Majesties. The Queen in special esteems much of that present your Ladyship has sent her Majesty, and says that her Majesty will wear it for your Lady- ship's sake. The King has commanded me to assure your Ladyship, that there is no Honour, advancement, no pleasure, that his Majesty can do your Ladyship, but he shall do it faithfully and willingly, as one of the best friends your Ladyship has in the World. Surely I must confess with Verity that I never heard the prince speak more worthily of a princess, than he does of your Ladyship's good qualities and rare Virtues. Well ! I say no more, but I shall be a faithful! Instrument to entertain that holy friendship between his Majesty and your Ladyship. As touching my Lady Nottingham, the King is now very well content with her Ladyship, because her letter was written of a little choleric passion grounded on a fekless report ; for his Majesty did never think, that her Ladyship had responded — that only those that were the Eeporters of such foolish words to her. For if so had been, that he did speak some merry words in jesting, it was not the duty of men of Honour (for her Ladyship makes mention in her letters) to have reported again to her such things of no Effect. And as for my part. Madam, I protest before the living God, I showed not the King her letter by malice, but by duty towards my gracious Master. For if I had not showed him the letter I had been in danger of a perpetual disgrace. So I pray your Ladyship, that if any speak to my disadvantage in this matter in discharging my obliged Devotion to my Master, that your Ladyship will answer for nie, as for one, that has always dedicated liimself to do your Ladyship all the Honour and Service, that lies in my power, as T confess myself to he perpetually obliged to your Ladyshii). So in my inviolable honest devo- Arabella Stuart. 97 tion I take my Leave and commit your Ladyship to the Lord's eternal protection. From Court at ^ the 26 Aug. 1606. Your Ladyship's obliged tried Friend to do you service, Andrew Sinclair. To the Et. Honble. the Lady Arbella. xxxvn. Harl. 7003, 52. Ilustrisime Domiiie, humillimas ac debitas^ gratias Augustissimo Eegi ac Keginae per .... eorum erga me benignitate per has literas refe- rendas curavi, quas si in regias utriusque manus tua Excellentia dare voluerit verbisque suis me devotissimam et observantissimam utriusque Matatis profitebitur, per gratum et peramicum mihi officium et te plane dignum f ecerit, dum ea combrobaveris quae in ore omnium de te feruntur, le summuni scilicet dinum honorum (nostrse autem gentis percipue) apud regem fautorem esse. Cseterum humanitas tua erga me singularis, qui me tarn honorifica salutatione apud classem condecorasti, quod lubentius et confidentius hoc abs te petereni, in causa fuit. Deus opt. max, excel- lentia tua incolumem servet. Hamptoniae 24 Oct. 1606. Tuae excellentise quae bene precatur A. S. Illustrissimo Domino, Christiano Prin. Domino de Borebium, regni Daniae cancellario. XXXVIII. Harleian MS8. 6896. Queen Anne to Lady Akbella. 9 March, 1607. Well Beloved Cousin, — "We greet you heartily well. Udo GaP our dear brother's the King of Denmark's gent" serv' hath insisted on us for the licensing y'^ serv' 'J'hos Cutting to depart from you, but not with- out your permission, to our brother's service, and therefore vce write these few lines unto you, being assured you will make no difficulty to satisfy our pleasure and our dear brother's desire and so giving you the assurance of our constant favors with our wishes for the continuance or convalescence of y"" health, expect"^ y'' return, wo commit you unto the protection of God From Whitehall, 9 March, 1607 " " The name of this place is not very legible. In the original letter of Sir Andrew Sinclair in Harl. MS. 7003, fol. 47, it appears written thus, ' pioffenhassn.' The name, I doubt not, is Kiovenhaven, or Copenhagen, where Sinclair was Ambassador, and " the King " is not King James, Ijut the King of Denmark. ' Guido Gall. II 98 Side-lights on the Stuarts. XXXIX. Harlcian MSS. 6896. Prince Henry to Lady ARBELiiA. (Undated) Madam,— The Queen hath commanded me to signify to y' La. that she w^ have Cuttings y' La serv' to send to the Q. of Denmark, because he desired the Q. that she w* send him one that c" play upon the lute. I pray y' La. to send him back with an answer as soon as y' la. can. I desire you to commend me to my Lo. & my La. Shrewsbury and also not to think me any thing the worse scrivener that I write so ill but to suspend y' judgment till you come hither, when you shall find me as I was ever. Yr. La. loving Cousin and assured friend F. Henry. XL. Harleian MSS. 6896. 15 March, 1607. Lady Arbella to Prince Henry. May it please your Highness — I have reed y' H. letter whein I am lett to understand that the Q's Maty is pleased to command Cutting my serv' for the King of Denmark, concern^ the wh. y' H. requireth my answer to Her Maty the wh. I have accordly ref* by this Bearer, referring him to her Maty's good pleasure and disposon. And altho' I may have some cause to be sorry to have lost the contentment of a good Lute, yet must I confess that I am right glad to have found any occasion ■whereby to express to her Maty and y' H. the humble respect wh. I owe ■ you and the readiness of my disposon, to be confirmed to y' good pleasures ; whin I have placed a great part of the satisfaction wh. my heart can receive. I have accord^ to y'' H. direction, signified unto my Uncle and Aunt Shrewsbury, y' H. gracious vouchsafing to remember them who with all duty present their most humble thanks and say they will ever pray for y' H's most happy prosperity. And yet my Uncle saith he carrieth the same splene in his heart towards y' H. that he hath ever done. And so praying to the Almighty for y' felicity I humbly cease. From Sheffield this 15th of March, 1607. Y' H's ■Most humble and dutiful Arbella Stuart, XLI. St. P. Jac 1. D. 28. 85. Lady Arbella to Sir Roger Wilbraham. 3 Nov. 1607. After my very hearty commendations. Whereas this popr man Eichard Alborne hath a suit depending in his Majesty's Court of Requests concerning a copyhold wherein he hath an estate for his life, wh. as I luu given to understand is to receive a hearing before you to-morrow, ] am moved in icgiird of his ancient and diligent service in Court to Arabella Stuart. 99 solicit your lawful favor to be shewed unto him, on this behalf. Where- in you may do a very charitable deed. And give me occasion to rest very thankful unto you for the same. Thus reserving the poor man's whole estate to your grave consideration I bid jou heartily farewell. Whitehall this third of November 1607. Your very lovinge friend (Indorsed) Arbella Stuart.^ To the Et. Worshipful my very loving frind Sir Roger Wilbraham Knight, and the rest of the Masters of his Maty's Court of Eequests be this, &c. XLII. SloaneMSS. 4161. Lady Arbella to the Earl op Shrewsbury. Good Uncle, — I writ to you within these 48 houres by Mr. Stanley and am very glad of the occasion of so good a messenger and so honorable and kinde a Letter, as I received from your Lo. by Mr. Parker to scribble unto you againe and that a great deale the rather because this short time and calme climat affording none you have givea me the best Theame to write of, which is thanckes for your not checking my Impor- tunity in begging venison, but endeavouring to satisfy it in better sort then I presumed of, for the worst kinde of many, I am sure, in any one of your Grounds should be very wellcome hither, and then if it be possible to have so good a one as your Lo. wishes, you know what a delicate it will be to them, that shall have it and how wellcome such a testimony of your love and favour shall be to me. And beseeching your Lo. to remember me humbly to my Aunt for favuour and happinesse as for your Lo. I will pray, I take Leave. From Whitehall the 2 of December 1607. Tour Lo. neece Arbella Stuart. XLIII. SloaneMSS. 4161. Lady Arbella to the Earl of Shrewsbury. I was much ashamed to be overtaken by your Lo. letter by Mr. Fowler, before I had answered your former, but I presume of your pardon for such peccadillos. Good wishes can never come amisse, whether from amongst Cappes or Beades, and thearfore at all adventures I humbly thanck your Lo. For want of a nunnery I have for awhile retired myself to the Friers, wheare I have found by experience this tearme how much worse they thrive, that say, " Go ye to the plough " then " Go we to the plough," so that once more I am settling myselfe to follow the Lawyers most diligently. I pray God the cheese I hearwith send your Lo. prove as good as great (which few of you great Lords are, by your Leave) and truly I hope well of it, because the fellow of it, which is tasted heare, is so. And as I have sent your Lo. some of the stoppingst meat, that is so, I have sent you some of the sharpest saUet that ever I eat. A great * The signature only in the hand of Lady Arbella. H 2 100 SiDE-LIGIlTS ON THE StUARTS. person loveth it -well (as I tolde your Lo. at my being with you) and tliat is all I can say in the commendation of it. If you have of it in the countrey I pray you' let me know, that I may laugh at myself e for being so busy to gett this. God send you a good stomach and a good Digestion, shall be the motto to these two bodies of sallet and cheese, I hope with the good allowance of all the Impresa-makers by North Trent. And so beseeching the Almighty to send you all honour and happiness, I humbly cease. From Blackfriers the 8 of December 1608. Your Lo. neece, Arbblla Stuart. XLIV. Sloane MSS. 4161. Lady Arbella to the Countess op Shrewsbury. Madame, — I humbly thanck you for both your letters. I deferred to write to you till I had taken my leave heere & then I intended to have sent one to your La. & my uncle to deliver my liu'mble thanckes for so many kindnesses & favours, as I have received at this time of my being heere, from you both, & to take a more mannerly fare\\'eU than I could at our parting, but your La. hath prevented my Intention in sending this bearer,by whom in these few Lines I will perform that Duty (not complement) of acknowleding myselfe much bound to give for every particular kindnesse & bounty of yours at this time, which reviveth the memory of many more former ; & to assure you that none of my Cousins your Daughters, shall be more ready to do you service than I. The money your La. sends my La. Pembrok shall be safely & scone delivered her. And so praying for your La. happinesse, honour and comfort, in as great Measure, as yourselfe can wish, I humbly take Leave. From Hardwick this Monday. Your La. most affectionate neece to comand Abb. Stuart. I pray your La. commend me to my Uncle Charles & my Aunt & my two pretty Cousins. I thinok I shall many times wish myselfe set by my cousin Charles at meales.' XLV. Sloane MSS. 4161. Lady Arbella to the Countess of Shrewsbury. Madame, — This everlasting hunting, the toothache and the continuall meanes (by my Lord Ceoill) to send to you, makes me onely write these few Lines to shew I am not nnmindef uU of your commaundmeuts and reserve the rest I have to write both to you and my Uncle some few hourcs longer till my paine asswage and I have given my never-inter- mitted attendance on the Queene, who dayly extendeth her favours more " Her uncle, Sir Charles Cavendish, third son of !Sir A\'illiam Caven- dish and Less of Hardwick, married Catherine, daughter of Cuthbert, Lord Ogle, afterwards Baroness Ogle, and had three sons — Charles, who died an infant, William, and Charles. She refers to the two latter. Arabella Stuart. loi and more towards me. The Almight}' send you and my Uncle all pros- perity and keepe me still, I beseech you, in your good opinion, who will ever remaine Your La. neece to commaund Arbella Stuart. XLYI. Stowe MSS. Lady Arbella to Charles Gosling Charles Gosling, — L'"ppon yr good conceyt I have of you for a just well meaning man and well wishing to me, I have thowght fytt to wryte you this lettre desyring you to call to remembrauuce all you can and take your sonnes help wlierin he knoweth or both or eyther of you think you can learn owt anything of ye contract betwixt my cosen William Candish and Mrs. ]\Iargett Chaterton. That wryte to me so soon as you can, and if you can beleave I have powr to do you or your sonne good, expect my remembrauuce of what you do herein. And so I comytt you to god. From ye Cowrt at Whyt'ehall this 28th of :\Iarch 1609. Your loving frend Arbella Stuart.' Remember the old buck of Sherland and the rested tench I and other good company eat so sauorly at your house, and if thou be still a good fellow and an honest man show it now, or be hanged. XLVIL 3 Lodge 257. 17 June, 1609. Lady Arbella to Eabl of Shrewsbury. Because I know not that yr Lordship hath forsaken one recreation that you ha-\'e liked hitherto I presume in send you a few idle lines to read in your chair, after you have tired yourself either with affairs or any sport thatt bringeth weariness ; and know^ you well advertised of all occurrents in serious manner, I make it my end only to make you merry and show my desire to please you even in playing the fool, for no folly is greater, I trow, than to laugh when one smarteth ; but that my Aunt's divinity can tell you St. Lawrence deriding his tormentors even upon the gridiron bad them turn him on the other side, for that he lay on was sufficiently broiled, 1 shd not know how to excuse myself from either insensibleness or contempt of injuries. I find if one rob a house and ■build a church with the money the wronged party may go pipe in an ivy leaf for any redress ; for money so well bestowed must not be taken from that holy work tho' the right owner go a begging : Unto you it is given to understand parables, or to comand the coment ; but if you be of this opinion of the Scribes and Pharisees, I condemn yr Lo : by yr leave, for an heretic, by the authority of Pope Jone ; for there is a text saith, you must not do evil that good may come thof. But now from doctrine to miracles. I assure you within these few ' The signature and postscript only are in Lady Arabella's handwriting. This letter is printed in fac-simile in the catalogue of the Stowe MSS. purchased by the nation for the British Museum. I02 Side-lights on the Stuarts. days I saw a pair of virginals make good music without help of any hand hut of one that did warm, not move, a glass some 5 or 6 feet from them: and if I thought thus great folks, invisibly and far off, work m matters to tune them as they please, I pray yr. Lo : forgive me and I hope God will to whose holy protection I humbly recom" yr. Lo: From Broad bt. this 17 June 1609. , , . j I humbly pray yr. Lo : to bestow 2 of the next good psnges of yours shall fall on me, not that I mean to convert them to my own benefit, for tho' I go rather for a good clerk than a worldly vsdse woman, I aspire to no degree of Pope Jone but some good ends whof this bearer will tell yr. Lo : one. My boldness shows how honourably I beheve of yr. disposing such livings. Yr. Lo : neece, A. S. xLvm. St. p. Jac 1. D. xlvii. 108. Aug., 1609. My Honblb good Lord,— I yield to you humble thanckes for the honorable care it hath pleased you to have of me, both in the election and effecting of this suite ; which shall ever bind me to humble thanck- fuhaesse towards your Lo. For whose long life, honour and happinesse I pray to the Almighty and rest Your Lo' much bounden and assured frend Arbella Stuart. (Indorsed) — To the right Honble my very good Lord the Earle of Salisbury, High Tresorer of England. (Docketed), Aug., 1609. Lady Arbella Stuart to my Lord.' XLIX. Harl. 7003, 65. IsABBLL Bowes to Lady Arbella. Thanking her for favors. Wishing to know what house is to be fitted for her La. She has written to her brother St. Poole on the subject. Dated Walton, 5 Deer., 1609. L. St. P. Jac 1. D. 1. 70. Dec, 1609. (Indorsed) To the Et. Honble. the Lord High Tresorer of England. Wheare your Lo. willed me to sett downe a note of those 3 things wh'in I lately moved you. They are theise. The first that I am willing to return back his Mty's gracious graunt to me of the wines in Ireland, so ^ This holograph letter has a seal with a lion rampant. Arabella Stuart. 103 as yr Lo. will take order for the paying of my debts when I shall upon my honour informe you truly what they are. The next that his Maty will be gratiously pleased to augment my allow"" in such sorte, as I may be able to live in such honor and countenance hearafter as may stande with his Mty's honor and my owne comfort. And lastely that wheare his Mty doth now allow me a diett, that he will be pleased insted thearof to lit me have one thousand pounds yearely. Some other things I will presume to intreate y' Lops like favour in, that they may hand me in sted, but for that they are such as I trust y' Lo. will think his Maty will easily graunt, I will now forbeare to set them downe Your Lo' poore frend Arbella Sthakt. [Noted in pencil. Query about 17th December, 1609.] LI. St. P. Jac 1. D. 1. 69. (Indorsed) To the Et. Honble my very good Lord the Lord High Treasurer of England. Mt honoeablb good Lord, — Having binne a long suitor as y' Lop knowes whose honble favour I humbly thanck you, I have founde from time to time. I am now advised by some friends of mine of good judge- ment & experience to procure the great seale of England to my booke. Both because it will be a furtherance to a speedier dispatch of this suite in Ireland and that this businesse must be donne & executed by deputa- tion, which cannot be donne without the great seale heere first obf", with' wh. also the booke may receive alteration & a check theare. Thear- fore I humbly beseech your Lo. that by y' favour on which onely rely I may obteine the great seale of England to the booke herewith presented to y'^ Lo. For whose honour and happinesse I pray & so humbly take leave. Prom Puddle-wharf e the 17 of December 1609. Y' Lo. much bounden poor frend Arbella Stuart. LII. Harl 7003, fo. 59. Seymour's "Written Statement. (Dated) 20th Feby., 1609-10. To THE Et. Honble. my most singular good Lords, the Lords op HIS Majesty's most honble. Privy Council. May it please your good Lordships : Since it is your pleasure which to me shall always stand for law that I should truly relate under my hand those passages which have been between the noble Lady Arabella and myself, I do here in these rugged lines truly present the same to your Lordships' favorable censure, that thereby his most excellent Majesty may by your Lordships be fully satisfied of my duty and faithful a;llegianee (which shaU ever be a spur I04 Side-lights on the Stuarts. in me to expose my life and all my fortunes to the extremest dangers for his highness' service) that I will never attempt anything which I shall have certain foreknowledge will be displeasing unto him. I do therefore humbly confess that when I conceived that noble Lady might with his Majesty's good favor and no just offence make her choice of any subject within this kingdom, whicli conceit was begotten in me upon a general report after her Ladyship last being called before your Lordships that it might be; myself being a younger brother and sensible of mine own good, unknown to the world, of mean estate, not born to challenge any- thing by my birthright and therefore my fortunes to be raised by mine own endeavours and she a Lady of great honour and virtue and as I thought of great means, I did plainly and honestly endeavour lawfully to gain her in marriage, which is God's ordinance common to all, assuring myself if I could effect the same with his Majesty's most gracious favor and liking (without which I resolved never to proceed) that thence grow the first beginning of all my happiness, and therefore I boldly intruded myself into her Ladyship's chamber in the Court on Candle- masday last,^ at what time I imparted my desire unto her, which was entertained, but with this caution on either part, that both of us resolved not to proceed to any final conclusion, without his Majesty's most gra- cious favour and liking first obtained and this was our first meeting. After that we had a second meeting at Mr. Buggs his house in Fleet Street, and then a third at Mr. Baynton's, al both which we had the like conference and resolution as before ; and the next day save one after the last meeting I was convented before your Lordships, when I did then deliver as much as now I have written, both then and now protesting before God upon my duty and allegiance to his most excellent Majesty and as I desire to be retained in your Lordship's good opinions there is neither promise of marriage contract or any other engagement whatsoever lietween her Ladyship and myself nor ever loas any marriage^ by me or her intended unless his Majesty's gracious favour and approbation might have been first gained therein, the which we resolved to obtain before we would proceed to any final conclusion, whereof I humbly beseech you to inform his Majesty that by your good means joined to the clearness of an unspotted conscience and a loyal heart to his Highness I may be acquitted in his just judgment from all opinions of any disposition in me to attempt anything distasteful or displeasing to his Majesty as one well knowing that the just wrath and disfavor of my sovereign will be my confusion whereas his gracious favour and goodness towards me may be the advancenujnt of my poor fortunes. And thus my Lords according to your commands I have made a true relation of what was reiiuired hum- bly referring the favorable construction thereof to your Lordships, having for the farther hastening of the truth and ever to bind me thereto here- after subscribed my name the 20th day of Februarie, 1609. William Setmaurk. 2 February, Feast of the Purification. These words are underlined in the original. Arabella Stuart. 105 LIII. Birch MSS. 4161. f. 28. After our very hearty Commendations. Whereas it is thought fit, that the Lady Arhella should be restrained of her Liberty & choice is made of you to receive her, & keep her in your house : these are therefore to give you notice thereof, & to require you to provide convenient Lodgings for her to remain under your charge and custody with one or two of her Women to attend her, without access of any other person unto her untill his Majesty's pleasure be further known. And this shall be unto you a sufficient Warrant. From the Court at Whitehall this 9th of July 1610 Your very loving Friends E. Salisbury. E. Cant. T. Ellesmeee Canc. E. Worcester. 0. ISTOTTINGHAM. T. SuFFOLKE. To our very loving Friend, S'Tho. Parry, Knt. Chancellor of his Majesty's Duchy of Lancaster. July 9, 1610, LIV. S. P. Jac. 1. Dom. 56. 56. Juhj, 1610. To THE Eight Honou.vblb the Lords of His Ma''^ JIost Honorable Pkivy Counseilb Eight Honorable and very good Lords, — I humbly beseech you give me leave to become an humble suitor to you, to let his Ma'*' under- stand my hearty sorrow for his Ma'" displeasure. And that it will please your Honors to become intercessors to his Ma'^ for me. Whose errour T assuredly hope, his Ma'^ of his owne gratious disposition, will (by your good means) rather pardon, than any further expiate w"' imprison- ment or other affliction. Which and more if it weare to do his Ma'^ service or honour, I should endure w"" alacrity. But this is very grievous, especially as a signe of his Ma'' displeasure : on whose favour all my worldly ioy, as well as fortune dependeth, which if I may re-obtain, all the course of my life hereafter shall testify my dutifuU and humble ihanckfulnesse. Arbella Seymaure. Indorsed July, 1610. — Lady Arbella to the LI. that it will please them to be a means to his Maty for her. LV. Harl. 7003. 71.^ Indorsed " My La. Letter to my Lo : op Shr." (Draft.) If it please your Lo : There are divers of my serv'' with whom I tlio' never to have parted while I lived, and none that I am willing to part with. But since I am taken from them and know not how to maintain either myself or them, being utterly ignorant how it wiU please his Mty. io6 Side-lights on the Stuarts. to (leal with me, I were better to put them away now, than towards winter. Your Lo : knows the greatness of my debts and my unableness to do for them either now or at Michaelmas. I beseech your Lop, let me know what hope you can give me of his Mtys favor without wh : I and all mine must lie in great discomfort and make me so much bound to you as both of yourself and by means of any that you take to be my friends and pity me to labor the reobtain^ of his Mtys favor to me. So humbly thanks ygm. Jq . fgj tjjg Q^re it pleaseth you to have of me and mine and for your lion : offer I humbly cease. From Lambeth, the 16 of July, 1610. The poor prisoner, your neece, Aebella Seymaure. The bay gelding and the rest are at yr. Lo. comandment. The Earl of Shr. wrote to Ld. Salisbury on Behalf of Compton and Reeves as appears from Jac I. Dom. 57, 13. LVI. Landsdowne MSS. 1236, fo. 58. La Arbella Seymour to the Queen. May it please your most exct. jMajesty, since I am debarred the happiness of attending your Majesty, or so much as to kiss your royal hands, to pardon my presumption in presenting your Majesty in this rude form my most humble thanks for your Majesty's gracious favour and mediation to his Majesty for me, which your Majesty's goodness (ray greatest comfort and hope in this affliction), I most humbly beseech your Maty, to continue. So praying to the Almighty to reward your Maty, with all honor and felicity, both in your royal self and yours, in all humility I cease. From Lambeth, the 23rd of July, 1610. Tour Jlaty's Most humble and dutiful Subject and servant, Arbella Seymauee. To the Queen's most excellent Majesty.^ LVII. Harl. 7003. 92. To THE Et. Honble. the Lords op His Mtt's Most Honblb. Privy Council. Et. Honblb. and my very good Lords,— I am constrained to trouble you rather than be guilty of the danger of life wherein Hugh Compton and Edward Eeeves, two of my serv" lately committed to the Marshalsea for my cause remain. I am informed divers near that prison, and in it are lately dead, and divers others sick of contagious and deadly diseases. Wherefore I humbly beseech your honors to comiserate their distress and consider that they are serv" and accountable for divers debts and Fol. 60 same vol. a draft of this letter. \ ■ * F 4 I \ ■M^ llCil ^'^ ,^. 4- ^-\\ ( ^ .%,•! >i\x § i Arabella Stuart. 107 recknings, wh : if they sli'' die w'' be a great prejudice to me and others. And therefore I humbly beseech you to move unto his Mty. my most humble suit and theirs, that it will please his Mty. they may be removed to some other healthful aire. Abbblla Seymaure. In Jac. I. Bom. 57, 13. MS. (State Papers) is a Iter, from E. of Shrewsbury to Salisbury reoom^ La. A.'s petition. Dated Milbrooke, 10th Augt., 1610. Indorsed. — The La Arbella her petition to the LI. for the remove of her servts. to some better ayre. LA^II. Harl. 7003. 87. Oct. 1610. Indorsed Petition to the King. May it please yr. most excellent Mty., the unfortunate estate where- unto I am fallen by being deprived of yr. Mty's presence (the greatest comfort to me upon earth) tog' with the opinion is conceived of yr. Mty's displeasure towards me, hath brought as great affliction to my mind as can be imagined. Nevertheless touching the offence for wh : I am now punished, I most humbly beseech yr. Mty. (in yr. most princely wisdom and judgmt.) to consider in what a miserable state I had been, if I had taken any other course than I did, for my own conscience witnessing before God, that I was then the wife of him, that now I am, I c*" never have matched with any other man, but to have lived all the days of my life, as an harlot, wh : yr. Mty. w'* have abhorred in any, especially in one who hath the honor (how otherwise unfortunate soever) to have any drop of yr. Mty's blood in them. But I will trouble yr. Mty. no longer, l;iut in all humility attend^ yr. Mty's good pleasure for that liberty (the want whof depriveth me of all health and all other worldly comfort) I will never forgett to pray for yr. Mty's most happy prosperity for ever in all things. And so remain, Yr. Maty's Most humble and faithful subject and serv'." (Draft no date.) LIX. S. P. Jac. 1. Dom. 57. 118. May it please yr. most excellent Majesty. I presume to send herewith a copy of my humble petition to the King's Mty. whby. yr. Mty. may perceive with less trouble than ,any other relation of mine as much in effect as I can say of the condon. of my present estate and hard fortune. Now to whom may I so fitly address myself with con- fidence of help and mediation as to yr. Eoyal psn. (the mirrour of our sexe), and being for me yr. Mty's humble and devoted serv', and in a cause of this nature so full of piety and comiseration, I will wholly rely ' St. P. Jac. I Dom. 57. 118, Oct., 1610., has a letter to the Queen enclosing petition to the King, which however is not among those papers. io8 Side-lights on the Stuarts. upon your princp.ly goodnesse, whom I humbly beseech to vouchsafe to enter into a gracious consideron. of tlie true estate of my case and fortune, and then I nothing doubt, but that in the true nobL-ness of yr. Koyal mind your ^Ity. will be pleased to mediate for me, hi such sort, as in yr most princely wisdom and favor the same shall be moved. And I shall always pray for the everlasting honor and felicity of yr. jNlty. with all yr. Royall issue in all things and will remain for ever Your Mty's Most humble and dutiful suljjoct and serv', Arbblla Seymauke. Add'' "To the Qaeen's most excellent Majesty." Indorsed Ortobris, 1610. La. Arbella to the Queen with the Petition to the King's Mty. enclosed. On the back of this Ire. is apparently iu the hand of La. Ar: " The loss of thy late sister hath honnered thee w'' the service of my fayre flower." Also " J'ay perdu la sucoesseur mais non pas tu." Also "La perte de ta sceur te portoit Thonncur d'estro serviteiir de ma belle flour." LX. Harl. 7003. 82. (No date.) Draft of a petition to his Majesty. To THE R. May it please your most excellent Majesty. I do most heartily lament my hard fortune that I should offend your ^lajesty the least, especially in that whereby I have long desired to merit of your Majesty, as appeared before your Majesty was my sovereign. And tho' your Ifajesty's neglect of me, and my love to this gentleman that is my husband, and my fortune drove me to a contract before I acquainted your Majesty, I humbly beseech your Majesty to consider how impossible it was for me to imagine it would be ofl'ensive to your JIajesty having few days before given me leave to bestow myself on any subject of your Majesty, which likewise your Majesty had done long since. Besides having never been prohibited nor spoken to of any in this land by your Majesty these seven years that I have lived in your Majesty's house, I could not conceive that your INbijcsty regarded my marriage at all. Ami I protest if your Majesty had vouchsafed to tell mo your mind and to accept the freewill ofl^ering of my obedience I would not have oifended your Majesty, of wdiose gracious goodness I presume so much that if it were as convenient in a worldly respect as malice may make it seem to separate us whom God hath joined, your "Majesty would not do evil thg-t good might come thereof nor make me that have the honor to be so near your Majesty in blood the first preceilent that ever was, although cur own Princes may have loft some as little inimitable for so good and gracious a King as your Majesty as David's dealing with Uriah. But I assure myself if it please your Majesty in your own wisdom to consider thoroughly of my cause, there will no solid reason appear to Arabella Stuart. 109 debar me of justice and your Princely favor which I will endeavour to deserve whilst I breathe and never ceasing to pray for your Majesty's felicity in all things remain Your Majesty's Most humble. LXI. Jac. 1 Dom. 62. 88. 7 March, 1610-11. (Alice Collingwood to Lady Arbella.) To the most noble and renowned Lady, the Lady Arbella her Grace humbly theis. dd. Most Hon"" & Beloved Lady, — That which to the most seems great presumption for me (though thus dejected) to attempt this kind of enterprise unto so high a personage the more noble and illustrious that you are (most noble Lady) I presume you will the less take notice of my fault, as only looking to the things wherein your vertues may be exercised, which is the truest note of that same disposition all-disposed to virtue, holding all things else impertinent or not imagining that they have any being. And surely fame hath not been sparing to make known your honour's worthiness comprising both the virtues of this iiature as it doth most worthily contain the virtues of the highest qualities. Whereby resting confident that as charity is not usually separated from the rest, so I do assure myself it cannot be the least of them your honor is endowed with. "Which jointly lead me now to offer up my humble suit unto your honor, an occasion for your piety and pity to be seen the one in pardoning my boldness the other in relieving my necessity. Unto both whereof your honor may the rather be induced, being, that as want hath privilege to seek for succour everywhere, so it carrieth reason to be more lamented when it is occasioned by adversities, which fareth now with me whose fortune hath been such an enemy unto my birth, as hath brought my state to be unequal to my calling & keeps me from my lawful husband & all rights by him, which are of extraordinary value ; wherein being loth to be offensive to your honor by a tedious discourse I humbly leave it to your wisdom which is able to consider well of such distress. And both I and my poor children will daily pray for your honor's wished happiness. Tour honor's most humble suppliant at comand. This 7ih of March, 1610. Alice Collingwood.' LXIL Birch M8S. 4161. f. 5L King James I. to De. Willm. James Bishop of Durham. 13 March, 1610-11. James E. — Eight Eev'' Father in God & trusty and well-beloved, we ' See St. P., Jac. 1 D. vols. xvi. 51 and xxvi. 20. — Francis Colling- wood a lewd recusant, had been examined on account of slanderous words s^ to have been uttered by him against the King 24 Dec. 1606 — B"" of Winchester thinks he ought not to be publicly arraigned. no Side-lights on the Stuarts. greet you well. Whereas our cousin the Lady Arbella hath highly offended us in seeking to match herself without our knowledge (to whom she had the honor to be so near in blood) & in proceeding afterwards to a full conclusion of a marriage with the self same person whom for many just causes we had expressly forbidden to marry after he had in our, presence & before our council forsworn all interest as concerning her, either past or present with solemn protestations upon his allegiance, in her own hearing, never to renew again such motion again. For as much as it is more necessary for us to make some such demonstration now of the just gauge and feeling we have of so great an indignity offered unto us as may make others know by her Example that no respect of personal affection can make us neglect those considerations, wherein both the Honour and Order of our Goverment is interested : We have therefore thought good out of our trust in your fidelity & discretion, to commit to your care and custody the person of ou.r said Cousin requiring & authorizing you hereby to carry her down in your Company to such house of yours as unto you shall seem best and most conyenient there to remain in such sort as shall be sett down to you by directions from our Council, or any six of them, to whom we have both declared our pleasure for the manner of her restraint & have also given in charge upon confereuce with you to take order for all things necessary, either for her health or otherwise, this being the difference as you see between us & her that whereas she hath abounded toward us in dis- obedience & ingratitude, we are (on the contrary) still apt to temper the severity of our justice with grace & favour towards her, as may well appear by the course we have taken to commit her only to your Custodj', in whose House she may be so well assured to receive all good usage, & see more fruit & exercise of Religion & Virtue than in many other places, for all which this shall be your sufficient Warrant. From Eoyston this xiii. March, 1610. To the Eight Eev" Father in God Our right trusty & well-beloved The Bp of Durham. Lxm. See also Jac. 1. Dom. 62. 27. Harl. 7003. 58. Draft petition to the LL: May it please your Lordships : I protest I am in so weak case as I verily think it w'' be the cause of my death to be removed any whither at this time tho' it were to a place to my liking. My late discomfortable journey wh. I have not yet recov'' had almost ended my days and I have never since gone out of a few little and hot rooms and am many ways unfit to take the air, I trust y' Lo"" will not look 1 sh"" be so unchristian as to be cause of my own death, and I leave it to y' L"" wisdom to consider what the world w'' conceive if I sh"" be violently inforced to do it. Therefore I beseech y' L" to be humble .suitors in my behalf that I may have some time givi'u ine to recover my strength wh. I sh'' the sooner do if I were not Arabella Stuart. i i i so continually molested. And I wiU hope and pray. that God will incline his Mty's heart every way to more compassion towards me who rest Very humhly at y' L^" comand A. S. One of these 1'" has noted on it "hy Smith." Dated in State Papers, 14 March, 1610-11. Lxrv. Birch MS8. 4161. fol. 5.3. 15 March, 1610-11. S" William Bond. For as much as there is some occasion to make provision for one night's Lodging for the Lady Arbella, in respect that she cannot oon- viently recover Barnet some things being wanting for her journey this afternoon, contrary to our expectations : "We have thought good to intreat you not to refuse such a courtesy as the lending of a Couple of Chambers for her Ladyship ; because we doubt the Inns there are full of Inconveniences. By doing whereof you shaU give us cause to report well of you to his Majesty. And so we commit you to G-od. At Whitehall the xvth of March, 1610. Yo^r loving Friends, E Salisbury. H. Northampton. Nottingham. T. Suffolke. E Worcester. Gilb. Shrewsbury. To our loving Friend Jul. Caesar. Sir William Bond^ Knt. or, in his absence to the Lady his wife at High Gate. LXV. Harleian 7003. 70. Draft, with corrections. Good Cousin, — I think myself as much beholden to you as if my man had brot. me assurance of his Mty's favour by her Mty's means, because I think your kindness in remembering me and preventing suspicions. But I cannot rest satisfied till I may know what disaster of mine hindreth his Mty's goodness towards me, having such a mediatrix to plead so just and honest a cause as mine. Therefore I pray you with all earnest- ness let me know freely what hath been done concern^ me. So wishing you all honour and happiness I take leave. Yours. To the La : Drummond. And on the back is indorsed " 2 letters by Smith now." LXVI. Harl: 7003. p. 61. Good Cousin,— I pray you do me the kindness to present this letter of I I 2 SlDE-LIGIITS ON THE StUARTS. mine in all humility to lier Majesty and with all my most hnmble and dutiful thanks for the gracious Commisseration it pleased her Majesty to have of me, as I hear to my great Comfort, I presume to make suit to her Majesty because it pleases her Majesty to intercede for me, I cannot but hope to be restored to her Majesty's service and his Majesty's favour, whose just and gracious Disposition I verily thinlc, would have been moved to Compassion ere this by the Consideration both of the cause in itself honest and lamentable, and of the Honour I have to be so near his Majesty and his in blood, but that it is God's Will her Majesty should have a hand in so hon"" and Charitable a Work, as to reobtain his Majesty's favour of one that esteemeth it her greatest worldly comfort. So wishing you all Honour and Happiness I take leave and remain your very loving Cousin," A. S. LXVII. Harl. 70O3. Indorsed the Lady Drummond's letter to my Lady. Madame, — I received your last letter and with it another paper which was just the same words that was in the letter, but your Ladyship did not command me to do anything with it, so as I cannot imagine to what use ye sent it, always I shall keep it till I know your Ladyship's pleasure. Yesterday being Sunday I could have little time to speak with her Majesty but this day her Majesty hath seen your Ladyship's letter, her Majesty says that v/hen she gave your last petition and letter to his Majesty he did take it well aneuh (1), but gave no other answer than that ye had eaten of the forbidden tree, this was all her Majesty commanded me to say to your Ladyship in this purpose, but withal did remember her kindly to your Ladyship and sent you this little token in witness of the continuance of her Majesty's favour to your Ladyship. Now where your Ladyship desired me to deal openly and freely with you, I protest I can say nothing on knowledge for I never speak to any of this purpose but to the Queen, but the wisdom of this state with the example how some of your quality, in the like cause has been used, makes me fear that ye shall not find so easy an end to your trouble, as ye expect or I wish, this is all I can say, and 1 should think myself happy if my notions could give better testimony of my truly being your Ladyship's Affectionate friend to do you service, Jane Drumoxd.' LXVIII. Harl. 7003. 66. A. Seymoure. Draft Indorsed To my i-ion'"''- good cousin, Mrs. Drumond. Good Cousin, — I pray you present her "Majesty my nidst humble " Probably to Lady Drummond before her ilight. » 30 March, 1605.— A grant of £200 immediately, and £2000 in quarterly payments, was made to Jane Drumond on account of her services to the Queen, as a free gift. See Jiic. 1 D. 13. 43. Arabella Stuart. 113 thanks for the token of the continuance of her Majesty's favour towards me that I received in your letter which hath so cheered me as I hope I shall be the better able to pass over my own sorrow till it please God to move his Majesty's heart to compassion of me, whilst I may thereby assure myself I remain in her Majesty's favour tho' all other worldly comforts be withdrawn from me, and will not cease to pray to the Almighty to reward her Majesty for her gracious regard of me in this distress with all happiness to her Eoyal self and hers. I pray you likewise present her Majesty this piece of my work which I humbly beseech her Majesty to accept in remembrance of the poor prisoner, her Majesty's most humble servant — that wrought them in hope those Eoyal hands will vouchsafe to wear them, which till I have the honor to kiss I shall live in a great deal of sorrow. I must also render you my kindest thanks for your so friendly and freely imparting your opinions of my suit. But whereas my good friends may doubt my said suit will be more long and difficult to obtain than they wish by reason of the wisdom of this state in dealings with others of my quality in the like cause, I say that I never heard nor read of any body's case that might be truly and justly compared to this of mine which being truly con- sidered will be found so far differing, as there can be no true resemblance made thereof to any others : and so I am assured that both their Majes- ties, when it shall please them duly to examine it in their Princely wisdomes, wiU easily discern. And I do earnestly intreat you to move her Majesty to vouchsafe the continuance of her so gracious a beginning on my behalf, and to persuade hid Majesty to weigh my cause aright, and tlien I shall not doubt but speedily to receive that Eoyal justice and favour that my own soul witnesseth I have ever deserved at his Majesty's hands, and will ever endeavour to deserve of him and his whilst I have breath. And so with many thanks to yourself for your kind offices I take leave and rest Your very loving cousin Arbella Seymaure. LXIX. Harl. 7003. 150. Ladt Arbella to W"- Seymour. Sir, — I am exceeding sorry to hear you have not binne well, I pray you let me know truly how you do, and what was the cause of it, for I am not satisfied with the reason Smith gives for it. But if it be a colde I will impute it to some sympathy betwixt us having myself gotten a so swollen cheeke at the same time with a colde. For God's sake let not your grief of minde worke upon your body, you may see by me what inconveniences it will bring one to. And no fortune I assure you daunts me so much as that weaknesse of body I find in myself, for, si nous vivons I'age d'un veau, as Marot sayes we may by God's grace be happier than we looke for in being suffered to enjoy ourselves with his Majesty's favour, but if we be not able to live to it I for my part shall thinck myselfe a patterne of misfortune in enjoying so great a blessing as you so little a while. No separation but that deprives me I 114 Side-lights on the Stuarts. of the comfort of you, for wliearsover you be or in what state soever you are it sufficeth me you are mine. Eachel wept and would not be comforted because her children weare no more, and that indeed is the remedilesse sorrow and none else, and thearfore God bless us from that, and I will hope well of the rest, though I see no apparent hope, but I am sure God's book mentioneth many of his children in as great distresse that have donne well after even in this world. I assure you nothing the State can do with me can trouble me so much as this neues of your being ill doth, and you see when I am troubled I trouble you too with tedious kindnesse for so I think you will account so long a letter your- self not having written to me this good while so much as how you do, but sweet Sir I speak not this to trouble you with writing but when you please. Be well & I shall account myself happy in being your faithful loving wife. Arb : S : With La : Ar : seal. Indorsed, La. Ar. to Mr. W. Seymour. LXX. Harl. 7003. 80. No date. Probably from Highgate, May, IGIL May it please your most excellent Majesty. Tho' it hath pleased God to lay so many crosses upon me as I account myself the most miserable creature being, yet none is so grievous to me as the loss of your Majesty's favor, which apjjeareth not so much to my unspeakable grief in any of the effects of it (tho' the least of many it hath already brought forth is sufficient for my utter ruin) as in that your Majesty gives credence as I hear to those sinister reports which impute that to my obstinacy which proceedeth nearly out of necessity, not willing that I might be thought guilty of hastening my own death by any voluntary action of mine having first endeavoured by all good means to make my extreme weakness known to your majesty [by my Lord Fenton and by the Lords of your Majesty's most honorable Privy Council by writing, and many other ways before my remove. But my misfortune being such as not only any protestation of mine own but the reiterated testi- mony of such grave persons as advertized the like seemed of less weight than the traducements of some whisperers]. But nothing availing me certainly I had suddenly perished if your majesty had not speedily had compassion of me in granting me this time of stay for my recovery to which if it may please your Majesty of your gracious goodness to add three weeks more.' Mr. Dr. Moundford hopes I may recover so much strength as may enable me to travel. And I shall ever be willing whilst I breathe to yield your Majesty most humble and dutiful obedience as to my Sovereign for whose felicity for ever in all things I cease not to ' This was done, which makes the date May, 1611. See her letter w the king. No. LXX 11. yj-^ v^^^w^^ 'V Ann. Air»^ >'>^ '>ykU^„;c^ jrA^ 7r>^ yScr^ a^j^'hitcd M J- V yx^iUnJ Jo ^e ^yna m ^ j^^e Jrot^ Mc/t /i^J -fltfi,yt cant elt.^m'hJiH ^^ cOf*^t^^ \o ^c^y^aUi Z'^**^ ^ Jj ^ C0O&9ith^ -^ cJJ^^y^ Draft letter. Arabella Seymour to tke L.C.J, of England and the L.C.J, of the Common Pleas. — March, 1610-11. Arabella Stuart. 115 pray and in all fortunes rest your Majesty's most humble and faithful subject and servant A. S. LXXI. Harl. 7003. 152. Draft indorsed. No date. " To THE E'' HONBLB THE L" ChIBF JuSTICE OF ENGLAND AND THE L.C.J. OF THE Common Pleas." My Lobds, — Whereas I have been long restrained from my liberty which is as much to be regarded as my life & am appointed as I under- stand to be removed far from these Courts of Justice where I ought to be examined tried & then condemned or cleared, to remote parts whose Courts I hold unfitted for the trial of my oifence, this is to beseech your Lordships to enquire by an Habeas Corpus or other usual form of Law what is my fault & if upon examination by your Lordships I shall thereof be justly convicted, let me indure such punishment by your Lordships' sentence as is due to such an ofl'ender. And if your Lord- ships may not or will not of yourselves grant unto me the ordinary relief of a distressed subject then I beseech you become humble inter- cessors to his Majesty that I may receive such benefit of justice as both his Majesty by his oath, those of his blood not excepted, hath promised and the Laws of this Eealm afford to all other subjects. And though unfortunate woman I should obtain neither, yet I beseech your Lord- ships retain me in your good opinion & judge charitably till I be proved to have committed any offence against God or his Majesty deserving so long restraint or separation from my lawful husband. So praying your Lordships I rest your afflicted Poor suppliant A. S. LXXII. Harl. 7003. 89. Arbella. Draft petition to the King. No date or indorsement. Probably from Barnet, May, 1611. May it please your most excellent Majesty graciously to accept my most humble thanks for these halcyon days it hath pleased your Majesty to grant me. And since it hath pleased your Majesty to give this testi- mony of willingness to have me live a while, in all humility I beg the restitution of those comforts without which every hour of my life is discomfortable to me, the principal whereof is your Majesty's favour which none that breathes can more highly esteem than I who whilst I li-\'e will not cease to pray to the Almighty for your Majesty's prosperity, and rest Your Majesty's Most humble and faithful Almost ruined subject and servant Aebella S, I 2 ii6 Side-lights on the Stuarts. LXXIII. Harl. 7003. 153. (Draft letter.). Indorsed, To the R' Honble Visct Fenton.^ (No date.) My Lord, — The long acquaintance betwixt us & the good experience of your honorable dealing heretofore maketh me not only hope but be most assured that if you knew my most disoomfortable and distressed estate, you would acquaint his Majesty with all & consequently procure my relief and redress as you have done other times. I have been sick even to the death from which it hath pleased God miraculously to deliver me for this present danger, but find myself so weak This is all crossed out ly pen, and the draft continued on another sheet : — [by reason I have wanted those ordinary helps whereby others in my case be they never so poor or unfortunate soever are preserved alive at least for Charity, that unless I may be suffered to have those about me that I may trust, this sentence my Lord Treasurer pronounced after his Majesty refusing that trifle of my work, by your persuation as I take it, will prove the certain & apparent cause of my death, whereof I then thought good to advertise you that you both may be the better prepared in case you or either of you have possessed the king with such opinions of me, as thereupon I shall be suspected & restrained till help come too late and be assured that neither physician nor other but whom I think good shall come about me , whilst I live till I have his Majesty's favor without which I desire not to live & if you remember of old I dare to die so I be not guilty of my own death & oppress others with my ruin too, if there be no other way as God forbid to whom I commit you & rest as assuredly as heretofore if you be the same to me Y' Lo. faithful friend A. S. I can neither get clothes nor posset, all for example, nor any thing, but ordinary diet and compliment, fit for a sick body in my case when I call for it, not so much as a glister saving y' reverence.] The corrected draft continues : — that unless it please his Majesty to shew me mercy & that I may receive from your Lordship at least some hope of regaining his Majesty's favor again it will not be possible for me to undergo the great burden of his princely displeasure. Good my lord consider the fault cannot be uncom- mitted neither can any more be required of an earthly creature but con- fession & most humble submission which if it would please you to present to his Majesty whose favor I esteem far above any worldly comfort I cannot doubt but his Majesty would be pleased to mitigate his displeasure & let me receive comfort ['I wish your Lordship would in a few lines understand my misery for my weakness is such that it is very painful to *' Viscount Fenton was created Knight of the Garter in March or April, IGS."], and made his triumphal procession together with Lord KnoUeys, who was rrcatfd at the same time, in May, 161."). Vulv Chamberlain to C;ulton, two letters, Juc. Doiu. Ixxx. 102 & 10b. ■' Scored out in original. Arabella Stuart. i i n me to write & cannot be pleasant to any to read] which favour if I may- obtain from your Lordship now in my greatest necessity I shall ever acknowledge myself bound to you for it & the rest of my life shall shew how highly I esteem his Majesty's favor. The Almighty send you to health & make you his good means to help me out of this great grief. Y' lo. most distressed serv' Lxxrv. Cotton MSS. Vesp. F. III. p. 64. 1611. Sir, — Though you be almost a stranger to me but only by sight yet the good opinion T generally hear to be held of y' worth tog' with the g' interest you have in my Lo. of Northampton's favour makes me thus far presume of your willingness to do a poor afflicted gentlewoman that good office (if in no other respect yet because I am a Xtian) as to further ma with your best indevors to his Lo. that it will please him to help me out of this great distress & misery & regain me his Mty's favor wh. is my chiefest desire wherein his Lo. may do a deed acceptable to God & honorable to himself & I shall be infinitely bound to his Lo & beholden to you, who now till I receive some comfort from his Mty rest The most sorrowful creature living No date or address. Arbella Setmaur. LXXV. Harl. 7003. 78. Indorsed, Draft letter to the Q. Xmas., 1611. May it please youi most excellent Majesty to consider how long I have lived a spectacle of his Majesty's displeasure to my unspeakable grief, and out of that gracious disposition which moveth your Eoyal mind to com- passion of the distressed please it your Majesty to move his Majesty in my behalf. I have presumed to present your Majesty herewith the copy of my humble petition to his Majesty against the time when the rather I am sure bis Majesty forgiveth greater oft'ences as freely as he hopes to be forgiven. Tho' your Majesty's intercessions I know at any times were sufficient. Thus hath my long experience of your Majesty's gracious favour to me and all good causes encouraged me to presume to address myself unto your Majesty and increased the obligation of my duty in praying continually unto the Almighty for your Majesty's felicity in all tilings. And in all humility to remain Your Majesty LXXVI. Birch MSS. 4161, fol. 35. Ladt Arbella to the King. May it please your most excellent Majesty To regard with the ies of your royal and gracious Heart the unfortunate estate of one of your Majesty's handmaid, who knowing your gracious favour to her to be the greatest honour, comfort, and feeling that this World can afford, doth now feel any part of the contrary to be the most grievous affliction to her, that can be imagined. llS SiDE-LIGIITS ON THE StUARTS. Whereinsoever your Majesty will say fhave offended, I will not contest, tut in all humility prostrate myself at your Majesty's feet, only I do most humilily on my knees beseech your Majesty to believe, that that tliought never yet entered into my heart to do anything that might justly deserve any part of your Indignation. But if the necessity of my State and fortune, together with my Weakness, have caused me to do somewhat not pleasing to your Majesty, most gracious Sovereign, let it be all covered with the shadow of your royal Benignity, and pardoned in that most heroical mind of yours, which is never closed to those who carry a most loyal heart to your Sovereignty and most sincere and dutiful affec- tion to your person and that prayeth for the most happy prosperity of your Majesty^ our most gracious Queen and your royal Issue in all things for ever, amongst which Number Almighty God, who knoweth the secrets of all Hearts, knoweth me to be one who am also Your Majesty's most humble faithful Subject and Servant. LXX7II. Birch MSS. 4161, f. 54. Lady Aebella to My Loed, — The nobleness of your nature and the good Opinion it hath pleased your Lp. to hold of me heretofore, emboldeneth me to be- seech your Ldp. to enter into consideration of my Distress and to be touched with the Misery I am in for want of his Majesty's favour, whose Clemency and mercy is such that if it would please you to make my Grief known, and how nearly it toucheth my heart, that it hath been my hard fortune to offend his Majesty, I cannot doubt hut it would procure me both mitigation of the hard doom, and mercy in some measure to yield comfort to my soul overwhelmed with Extremity of grief, which hath almost brought me to the brink of the grave. I beseech your Ldp. deal so with me, as my prayer may procure you God's reward for what you do for his sake, which Tho' it be but a Cup of cold Water, I mean any small hope of Mitigation of his Majesty's Displeasure, shall be most thankfully received by me. And I doubt not but if it please your Ldp. to try your excellent Gifts of persuasion, his Majesty will lend a gracious Ear to your Ldp., and I should rest ever bound to pray for your Ldp's. Happiness, who now myself rest the most unfortunate and afflicted Creature living. A. S. LXXVIII. Birch MSS. 4161, f. 65. Lady Aebella to . My Lord, — My Extremity constraiaing me to labour to all my Friends to become suitors to his Majesty for his pardon of my Fault ; and my Weakness not permitting me to write particularly, I have made Choice of your Ldp. humbly beseeching you to move as many, as have any Compassion of my Affliction, to join in humble mediation to his Majesty to forgive me, the most penitent and sorrowful creature that breathes. Your distressed Cousin, A. S. Arabella Stuart. 119 LXXIX. Harl. 7003. 146. (A Fragment.) In all humility the most wretched and unfortunate creature that ever lived prostrates itself at the feet of the most merciful King that ever was, desiring nothing but mercy and favour, not being more afflicted for anything than for the loss of that which hath been this long time the only comfort it had in the world, and which if it were to do again I would not adventure the loss of for any other worldly comfort. Mercy it is I desire, and that for God's sake. Let either Freake or LXXX. Proclamation for the arrest of Lady Arbella and William Seymore. June 4th, 1611.* "Whereas we are given to understand that the Lady Arbella and William Seymore, second sonne to the Lord Beauchampe, being for divers great and heynous offences, committed the one to our Tower of London, and the other to a speciall guard, have found the means, by the wicked practises of divers lewd persons as namely, Markham, Crompton, Eodnej' and others, to break prison and make escape on Monday the third day of June, with an intent to transport themselves into foreign parts : We doe hereby straightly charge and command all persons whatsoever upon their allegiance and dutie, not only to forbeare to receive harbor or assist them in their passage anie way, as they will answer it at their parilles : but upon the like charge and paine, to use the best meanes they can for theirs apprehension and keeping them in safe custody, which we will take as an acceptable service. Given at Greenwich the fowerth dale of June. per ipsum Eegem. LXXXI. Harl. MSS. 7003. A note of such jewels as my La. Arbella affirmeth to be wanting and desireth they may be inquired after. Item. A poignard diamond Ring. Item. A fleur du lys set with diamonds which she thinketh is in a little box of wood and left amongst her jewels. Item. In the same box was a ship wherein was set a little sea water green stone called an egmeryn (aqiia-marine f). Item. A little jewel like a corn with a great yellow stone called a jacynth with opals and rubies, this was also amongst her jewels. lii'W,. A jewel like a star set with opals. Item. A piece of a chain of gold set with rubies and pearl. * Eymurs' Fredera, vol. xvi., p. 710. I20 Side-lights on the Stuarts. Item. Some four pearls set upon a cord with 8 other less pearls. Item. A watch left in Mistress Bradshaw's trunk near Barnet. It<>,vi. A little chest with wates (sic). LXXXII. Harl. 7003. 140. Persons comttd. by the LL : on the 4th and 5th of June, 1611, upon occasion of the La. Arbella and Mr. Seymour's escape. The Countess of Shrewsbury comitted to the Tower. Sir Jas. Crofts comitted to the Fleet. Dr. Momford close prisoner at the Gatehouse. Adams, the minister's wife, to the Gatehouse. Bates to the Bailiff of Westminster. Pigott sent to the E. of Shrewsbury to be forthcoming. John Baisley, waterman, comd. to Davy Eoden, a messenger. Batten, Mr. Seymour's barber, comd. to the Dungeon in the Tower by Mr. Lieutenant. Saladin a Frenchman comd. to the Porter's lodge in the Tower. Mr. Seymour's Butler comd. to the Tower. Cowe the Skipper to Newgate. The Skipper of Ipswich to tJie Gatehouse. To be exd. To some other place in the Tower : Released : Fleet Gateh : Bonds Marsh : R. Bonds. Loos his place. To be sent to yc ambassador. To be delivered. in the Tower. LXXXIII. Harl. 7003. 143. Persons comd. by the Lords. The La. Arbella The Ctess. Shrewsbury Hugh Crompton gent : Edward Reenes Mris. Bradshawe Batten Mr. Seymour's Barber Mr. Seymour's Butler Wm. Markham gent : Sir James Crofts ; in the Fleet. Doctor Mountford a Adams, the mynister's wife ( Surson, the skipper of Ipswich ( Edward Kirton gent : j Tassin Corve the french skipper ) John Baisley waterman j i" Newgate. Bates the E. of Shrewsbury's man with the Bailiff of Westmr. in the Gatehouse. Arabella Stuart. 121 LXXXIV. Harl. 7003. 72. The Lady Arbella desireth those her servants that are now in the Tower, or so many of them as shall he thought fit he allowed to her. That Peter who attended Mr. Seymour an ancient servant of hers, may be her Bottleman. To have likewise another servant an Imbroiderer, whose name is Roger Fretwell. For a woman she desireth the Lady Chaworth. Her desire is that Mr. Yelverton may receive her money and jewels. That Smith her servant may have access unto her. There must of necessity be linen bought both for her wearing for sheets and Table linen, whereof there is not any amongst her stuff. She hath 32 servants, for which same, order wd. be taken. Indorsed (Memorial concerning the La. Arbella). No Date. LXXXV. Birch MSS. 4161, f. 27. William Seymour to the Lords of the Council. May it please your Ldps. Since his Majesty is so highly offended with me, that I have not as yet (fearing further to incur his Majesty's disfavour) offered any manner of petition to his princely hands before the way be made more easy, I only address myself to your hon'^'' Ldps. being now bereft of my nearest Friends thro' his Majesty's Indignation, humbly beseeching you to be intercessors to his Majesty, that it would please him, of his gracious and accustomed bounty, to restore me to his most wished for favour & my former Liberty ; or if that may seem too large a suit, that it would please his Majesty in the meantime to grant me the Liberty of this place, for the recovering of my former Health, which thro' my long and close Imprisonment is much decayed, and will not easily I fear me be repaired, whereof the Lieutenant can well certify your Ldps. I must confess I have offended his Majesty w""" is my greatest sorrow, yet I hope not in that measure that I should desire my utter ruin & destruction, since I protest my offence was committed before I knew it to be an offence. Wherefore I humbly beseech your Ldps since the bottom of this Wound is searched to be a means, that it may be healed. Thus relying on your Lds. hon"' dispositions I humbly take my Leave resting always To be commanded by your Ldps. W. S. LXXXVI. Birch MSS. 4161, f. 26. An Abstract of the Declaration which I made to the Lords upon my Examination. About Whitsuntide meeting with Mr. Seymour at Lambeth amongst other speech, which he used to me, it pleased him to acquaint me with T22 SiDE-LICHTS ON THE StUARTS. his resolution concerning his marriage, but so sparingly and in such general terms, that he never spake unto me of the means, which he used in the reobtaining her love, nor once mentioned unto me either Letter, Token, Message, or ought else which had passed between them, only, that since it pleased her to entertain the matter, having the King's con- sent to make her own Choice without exception, and since he found himself bound in conscience by reason of a former pledging of his faith unto her, that he resolutely intended it, engaging me by Oath unto him, that I should not reveal it, until he absolved me, seeming to me to fear no other Lett or Obstacle than his Grandfather, my Lord of Hertford. From that time till the marriage day, he used no more words to me con- cerning it, at what time he requested me to accompany him to her chamber at Greenwich, to be a witness of his marriage there to be solem- nized, to which I consented, all this while nothing doubting of the King's Consent. "Whither we came about twelve o'clock at night, where staying till next morning at which time they were married. I came away to London. This is briefly the Declaration which I made, dijBfering in nothing but in prolixity, rising out of some excusing Words which doubled the quantity. Edward Eodbby. LXXXVII. Birch MSS. 4161, f. 68. Lady Chandos to Dr. Montford. Doctor Montford, — I desire the Widow's prayer with my humble service may beg you be presented to the Lady ArbelJa, who I hope God WiU so fortify her mind, as she will take this Cross with such patience as may be to his pleasing, who, as this day signifies, took upon him a great deal more for us : & when he seeth time he will send comfort to the afflicted. I pray you if you want for the hon"' Lady what is in this House, you will send for it ; for most willing the Master and Mistress of the House would have her Ladyship command it. If the Drink do like my Lady spare not to send. The Knight & my Daughter remembers their kind Commendations unto your self. So I commit you to God and rest as Your Eriend, Francis Chandos. To my Friend, Mr. Dr. Mounford at Barnet. III. WITCHCRAFT. It is a generally-received and a popular opinion, that kingcraft and -witchcraft came in with the Stuarts and went out with them. This, like many other popular prejudices, is not very well founded. Kingcraft and witchcraft were well-known factors in English political life long before the time of King James I., though it is true that this monarch developed and accentuated both these ideas, and he and his progeny, by their folly and perversity, delivered us from both by pushing their pretensions to the limits of absurdity. In this sense, perhaps, kingcraft and witchcraft may be said to have gone out with the Stuarts, for which, amongst many other things, we owe them our thanks. It is also fair to the Stuarts to say that, so far as it is possible to examine the records of these cases, it appears that there were at least as many charges of witchcraft under the Common- wealth as under the reign of either Charles or James, so that the Puritans, no less than the Cavaliers, suffered from the overflow of this particular superstition, and, indeed, there is every reason to believe that the actual consort of evil spirits with human beings was more implicitly accepted by the Calvinists during the seven- teenth century than by the professors of any other form of religion. The crime of witchcraft (the female criminal being a 124 Side-lights on the Stuarts. witch, and the male a wizard or conjuror) consisted in the party having sold his or her soul to the devil in consideration of being endowed with the power to work evil upon any person against whom the wizard or witch might have an enmity. It was originally of ecclesiastical cognizance, under the name of sortilegium, and was treated as a species of heresy, for which, on the first offence, after penitence, the Ecclesiasti- cal Courts would punish the offender, but on a conviction without abjuration, or on a relapse after abjuration, the offender was handed over to the secular power to be executed by authority of the writ de hceretico comhurendo} After a time, however, statutes against witchcraft were enacted by Parliament ; and the civil power both tried and punished for this offence. If at the present time a man were to say that he had sold his soul to the devil, in return for the power to give his neighbours aches and pains, to make them vomit pins and needles, to sour their milk, or to blight their crops, and that, as an earnest of the bargain, the demon had taken him a flight through the air, or had given him the power of super- natural locomotion, we should either laugh at him as an impostor, or lock him up as a lunatic. But in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries English people believed these things, aye, and people of the highest rank, of the most sincere religion, and of the greatest learning ; and not only in England, either, but in all parts of Europe ; and not only in the Old World, but in the New. Kings and statesmen, lawyers and divines, irrespective of party or of denomi- nation, equally believed in the existence of witchcraft ' Hales' p. C, vol. i. p. 383. Witchcraft. 125 and in the personal communication of witches with evil spirits. For centuries in this country, strange as it may now appear, a denial of the existence of such demoniacal agency, and of such personal communications, was deemed equal to a confession of atheism, and to a disbelief in the Holy Scriptures themselves. Not only did Lord Chancel- lors, Lord Keepers, benches of Bishops, and Parliament after Parliament attest the truth and the existence of witchcraft, but Addison, writing as late as 1711, in the pages of the Spectator, after describing himself as hardly pressed by the arguments on both sides of this question, expresses his own belief that there is and has been witchcraft in the land.^ We live in a more en- lightened or a more cynical age, and witchcraft is no longer a possible crime in our penal code, but it is none the less interesting to the student of history to consider when it originated, when it culminated, and when it disappeared. In considering cases of witchcraft it must be borne in mind that the essence of the crime was the compact with the demon, and that various occult and super- stitious practices were sanctioned by the credulous spirit of the age, as not involving the crime or the penalties of witchcraft. Thus there existed a general belief in omens ; astrologers, fortune-tellers, prophets and soothsayers, who, like those of old, advised upon the flight of birds, or the appearance of the heavens, or on the in- spection of rare plants and precious stones, were regarded, not perhaps altogether without suspicion, but certainly not as practising witchcraft. So again it was thought there might be an innocent use of magic, but as to this King James says, and his saying has passed into a ^ Spectator, No. 117. 126 Side-lights on the Stuarts. proverb. " Who sup witli the devil have need of long spoons," ' and if a woman had been found to have been practising magic, it would, I fancy, have gone hard Avith her, not to have been burned as a witch. The almanack-makers also, Lilly, Heydon, Partridge, and others, practised their calling, which included that of prophecy and of advice, with much honour and pecu- niary success.* A belief in lucky and unlucky days was universal then, as indeed it is now. Oliver Cromwell is known to have believed in auspicious days. Laud believed in omens, and registered his dreams,^ and Charles I. consulted astrologers at the principal periods of his life. All the Stuart Kings believed in and practised touching for the King's evil, and there was an odd superstition which lingered on to the eighteenth century, that the seventh son of a seventh son had the same miraculous power of curing by touch that was possessed by an anointed monarch. Chemists and others still believed in and sought for the philosopher's stone, whose touch would turn all metal into gold. They believed in the curing of diseases by sympathetic powders, and in the discovery of secret murders and of springs of water by the divining rod. The power of second sight and the evil eye were as commonly believed then as they are now in most parts "To spcake trulie, for mine owne parte I desire not to make so neere riding : for in my opinion our enemie is over oraftie and we over weake (except the greater grace of God) to assay such, hazard, wherein he pleases to trap iis. For accordinge to the Proverbe, ' They that suppe keile [cabbage] with the Devile have neede of long spoones.'" — " Dsemonologia," p. 15. '' The weekly Mercuries and Diurnals of the time of Charles II. and for long after the Kestoration contain numerous advertisements of astrologers. ' Burnet, p 17. Witchcraft. i 2 7 of Italy and of tlie East, and the wearing of amulets and of charms against witchcraft and fascination was almost universal. No old family in England but has even now in its repositories some of these relics of a bygone age, and it was reported as an ordinary cir- cumstance when Monmouth was captured, that many charms and spells were found tied about his person, and that his tablet-book was full of astrological figures that no one could understand.' These things, therefore, though vain superstitions, were not to be confounded with that blacker art which was founded on the personal compact of the witch with the foul fiend or one of his emissaries. A belief in witchcraft still exists in vigour among the uneducated tribes of the New, as of the Old World ; as also amongst the Arabs and the Egyptians. The North Americans Indians are steadfast believers in witchcraft, and in the influence of malignant demons, the spirits of departed redskins, who take various means of plaguing their survivors, and who are only propitiated by votive offerings of pemmican and tobacco. Some of the older chiefs also believe in the power of magicians to inflict pains by torturing an effigy of the victim, and for this rea- son will not permit any of their tribe to be photographed or sketched. It was commonly believed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, that Joan of Arc was a witch, and this seems to me to be the only palliation of the mode in which Shakespeare dealt with her character in the play of Henry VI. It was also believed that Charlemagne's mistress enchanted him with a ring, which as long as she had about her, he could not suffer her dead body to be * He told Colonel Legge, who had him in custody, that he had got these various things from Scotland, but that he now found them to be onlj' foolish conceits. — Burnet, p. 414. I2.S SinE-LK;HTS ON THE StUARTS. carried out of his chamber to be buried. A bishop, with a view to the interment, having taken it out of her mouth, the emperor grew to be as much bewitched with the bishop as he had been with his mistress. And the bishop, naturally cloyed with this excess of fervour, having thrown the ring into a pond, the emperor's chiefest pleasure, till his dying day, consisted in walking round and round the sacred lake. A legend of a somewhat similar type is recorded of Sir Robert Tresilian, Chief Justice of England, executed for treason in 1388, regard- ing whom it is reported in the State Trials that when he came to the place of execution he said, " So long as I doe wear anything upon me I shall not die," whereupon the executioner stript him, and found " certain images painted like to the signs of the heavens, and the head of a devil painted, and the names of many of the devils wrote in parchment." These being taken away, he was strung up naked at Tyburn, and after he had hanged some time, that the spectators should be sure he was dead, the sheriff's assistant cut his throat.' During this period, also, there was a very general faith in " Garnet's Straws," and people of all classes believed that each of the straws with which Grarnet's scaffold was strewn, and which received a drop of his blood, retained ever after the image of the priest with his flowing beard, and was capable of effecting miraculous cures. The author of a little book entitled " Memoyres of the Raigne of King James " (London, 1658), says (at p. 35) that he had one of these straws in his hands, and found, " as may be in all straws else, the resemblance of a beard, and something fancy was, at that time, apt to cast into the mould of a face. Yet these, no doubt, are sold, and passe at this ' Stuto Trials, vol. i ji. 1 1 7. Witchcraft. 129 day for reliques, as I know they did twenty years after Garnet's death," This ancient belief in witchcraft was, however, by no means without religious sanction. " Let not a witch live," is the Divine command in the 22nd chapter of Exodus, and similar injunctions as to wizards, necromancers, enchanters, witches, and persons with familiar spirits are to be found in Leviticus and Deutero- nomy. The history of the witch of Endor,* of the Ephesians burning their books of sorcery, of Simon and Elymas, the sorcerers, the story of Tobit,^ and numerous passages in the Old and the New Testaments refer to witchcraft and necromancy as evils existing at that time, and we have seen decrees, proclamations, and acts of various rulers and Parliaments, one and all founded on a recognition of the existence of the crime of witchcraft, and the necessity for its suppres- sion. Sir William Blackstone, in an early edition of his Commentaries on the laws of England,' says, " To deny ' 1 Samuel xxviii. With, regard to the "Witch of Endor, who is described as " a ■woman with a familiar spirit/' it does not appear that Saul ever with his own eyes saio Samuel, but rather that he was content to accept the witch's description, which he recognized as a true por- traiture of the prophet. It being thus a case of pure witchcraft. In the Bishops' Bible of 1568 the commentators, in their marginal note to this passage, say that Saul called for Samuel in his ignorance, not know- ing the condition of the saints after death, and that Satan has no power over them. They also say, commenting on v. 14, that Samuel appeared to Saul " to his imagination, albeit it was Satan, who, to blind his eye, took upon him the forme of Samuel as he can doe of an Angel of Light." " Book of Tobit, viii. Tobias' ^wwas watched over by an evil spirit, who on her wedding night killed every husband to whom she was married. To frustrate this, the angel instructed Tobias to make a smoke by burning the heart and liver of th.e fish on the embers of perfumed wood, which the evil spirit smelling, he flew away to the uttermost part of Egypt, where the angel bound him. ' Blackstone's Commentaries, p. 60 (16th Ed. 1825). K 130 Side-lights on the Stuarts. the possibility, nay, the actual existence, of witchcraft and sorcery is at once flatly to contradict the revealed Word of God in various passages of the Old and Kew Testaments, and the thing itself is a truth to which every nation in the world hath, in its turn, borne testimony, either by example seemingly well attested, or by pro- hibiting laws, which at least suppose the possibility of a commerce with evil spirits ;" and Sir Matthew Hale, in a trial of witches at Suffolk in 1665, stated in the course of his summing-up to the jury, "that there were such creatures as witches, he made no doubt at all." The Church even now requires a belief in the personality of the devil, and in the existence of good and bad angels, and it is but a short step further to assert that Satan moves in a mysterious way through the medium of evil spirits having an individuality of their own. Attempts have continually been made to show that the wizard and witch, as denounced in the Old Testa- ment, absolutely ceased to exist under the Nevr Dis- pensation, and that the witch and sorcerer of the Christian era were different in character, in object, and in constitution from those of the earlier date. I cannot concur in this view. I see no practical difference between the witch of Endor, who professed to raise the spirit of Samuel, and Agnes Simpson, who communicated with the devil, so as to raise a storm and sink the king's ship, and I fancy that Elymas the sorcerer and Simon the magician differed in no essential respect from the wizards of the court of Pharaoh or the soothsayers of the Ohaldees. The only practical difference that I see between the earlier witches and the later is this, that in later days, when jurisprudence gradually assumed the position of a science, it became necessary, in order to support a Witchcraft. 131 criminal charge, that the actual crime of witchcraft should be defined with precision, and that then, accord- ingly, for the first time, proof of an actual compact with Satan was made a necessary part of the evidence to ensure a witch's conviction. The earliest case of witchcraft, at all events, of any importance, recorded in this country, was in 144<1, when Elinor Cobham, daughter of Lord Stirbrough, and wife of the Duke of Gloucester, uncle of Henry VI., was convicted of practising witchcraft. It does not appear that she herself ever made a compact with the demon, or that she was herself a witch, but she suborned certain witches and wizards to do her work. Being in love Avith the Duke of Gloucester, who did not immediately return her affection, she employed one Margery Gurdmann, a witch, and one Roger Bolinbroke, a wizard, to work upon the duke, and turn his affection towards her. This they did by compounding potions and medicines, to be secretly administered to the duke for this purpose. These, combined with the personal attractions of the Lady Elinor, who is described as one of the most beautiful women of the age, had the desired effect, as the duke at once fell desperately in love with and married her. She and her two accomplices were, some time afterwards, tried for witchcraft, and convicted. Mary Gurdmann was respited, but having "had a relapse" (i.e. having been caught practising witchcraft after having abjured Satan and all his arts),* was in due course burnt at Smithfield. Roger Bolinbroke was hanged, drawn, and quartered forthwith ; but the duchess, I suppose in consideration of her rank and beauty, was only enjoined to do penance. This she performed on Monday, November 13th, 1441, by walking, with a taper in her hand, from Temple Bar, through Elect Street, to St. K 2 132 Side-lights on the Stuarts. Paul's, where she offered her taper at the . High Altar. On the "Wednesday and the Friday following she per- formed a similar penance, approaching St. Paul's from different parts of the City, and on each occasion in what must almost have been a triumphal procession, for she was accompanied by the Lord Mayor and the Sheriffs, the various crafts of the City of London, and an immense concourse of people whom the fame of her beauty and her misfortunes had collected together. This penance completed, she was committed for life to Chester Castle, with an allowance of 100 marks yearly for her main- tenance. It is, however, a tradition in regard to this lady that she had endeavoured in some way to bewitch the king, so that it was found necessary, for various reasons of state, to remove her from his path. In 14<80, Pope Innocent VIII. issued a Bull for the discovery and burning of witches, and from that time forward witchcraft seems, with varying extent, to have settled down as one of the iustitutions of European society. In the time of Henry VIII. , the increase of witchcraft necessitated a statute ^ making it a felony to practise conjuration, witchcraft, enchantment, or sorcery to get money. This having reduced the number by reducing the profits of the witches, the statute was repealed by Edward VI. In 1614, Bishop Jewell, preaching before Queen Elizabeth, warned her of the great increase of witches and sorcerers within the last - fouf years, and accordingly, another Act was passed declaring ' the increase of witchcraft, and making its practice a felony without benefit of clergy. This was in 156^, and ^/ under it many witches were burnt. I find that on the 26th of July, 1566, certain witches were tried at Chelms- = 33 PlMiry VIIT. c. 8. Witchcraft. i^^ ford, and one was executed. On tlie 5tli of July, 1589, three witches were executed at Chelmsford. And in 1563, the King of Sweden, going forth to war against the Danes, paid the unique compliment to the witches of taking four of them with him to battle.' Among others in 1593, three witches of "Warboise in Huntingdonshire, viz. John and Alice Samuel, father and mother, and Agnes Samuel, their daughter, were sentenced to death for bewitching' five daughters of Richard Throckmorton, Esq., and seven maidservants, being twelve persons in the same house, and also for witching to death the Lady Cromwell. These persons, and par- ticularly the old woman, who was over eighty years of age, were charged with practising on Mr. Throck- morton's daughters and causing them to have fits. The charge appears to have arisen from one of the girls seeing old Mrs. Samuel sitting in the chimney- corner, with a black cap on her head, and calling out that she was an old witch, she immediately afterwards had a fit. In due course the other girls also had fits, and the old woman was from time to time called up to the house under the belief that her presence alone would stop the attacks. On one of these occasions Lady Cromwell, whose husband was landlord of the house in which the Samuels lived, being present when the old woman was sitting in the corner, abused her, called her a witch, pulled off her hercher, cut off some of her hair, and had it burnt as a charm. The same night Lady Cromwell dreamt of mother Samuel and a cat, and woke up in a fit, and fifteen months afterwards she died. The father and daughter persist- ently to the last denied any comphoity with ' witch- craft, and for a long time the old woman also denied ' Hutchinson, p. 26. 134 Side-lights on the Stuarts. the charge ; but at last, by the coaxing of the girls, by threats of Mr. Throckmorton and others, and by promise of intercession on her behalf, she was induced to confess that she had bewitched Lady Cromwell and the girls, and was accordingly sent for trial, together with her husband and daughter, at the Hunts Assizes, before Justice Fenner in April, 1693. They were all three convicted, and the girl, with much courage, when it was suggested to her by persons anxious to obtain a respite with a view to saving her life, that she should plead she was with child, replied that though they might condemn her as a witch, she could not go to her grave under a charge of immorality. The old woman, however, did not hesitate to avail herself of this suggestion, and when her plea, she being then close upon eighty years of age, was received by the crowd with shouts of laughter, mother Samuel, as we are informed, heartily joined in the merriment. John Samuel was hanged, Alice and Agnes were burnt. The perpetration of this crime was for many genera- tions kept green in the memory of the people of Huntingdon, by the action of Sir Henry Cromwell, husband of the bewitched lady. Upon the conviction of these witches, their goods to the value of 4*01. became forfeited to Sir Henry Cromwell, as Lord of the Manor, who not wishing himself to benefit by the confiscation, put the money in trust for the endow- ment of a minister whose duty it would be, once everv year on the anniversary of Lady Cromwell's death, to preach a sermon against the tolerance of witchcraft. This sermon was preached regularly till a recent date, when the charity was diverted to some more useful purpose, it having in the meantime been extended, amongst other benefactions besides the sermon, to Witchcraft. 135 defraying tlie expenses of an annual festivity by the Mayor and Corporation. In 1694 Ferdinando, Earl of Derby, died under the belief that he was bewitched to death, though the actual witch was never traced. At the end of the sixteenth century the witches met with a fierce and royal opponent in the person of King James VI. of Scotland, who took a direct personal interest in the subject, and was himself present at the examination of various witches, who at that time infested the kingdom of Scotland. At the age of twenty-three he personally took the examination of various confessed witches, and amongst others, of Agnes Sampson, " the wise wife of Keith," who on that occasion confessed among other things that she had been at North Berwick Church, having sailed there on a sieve at eleven of the clock at night, with about 200 other witches. They had black candles set round the pulpit, and the devil in a black gown and hat preached to them, that they should keep his commandment of doing all the ill they could. Then they opened three graves and took the fingers, and toes, and noses, of the dead people ; and she had a winding-sheet and two joints for her share. She also, vouched by other witches, gave an account of the proceedings, which were modelled in some respects on the practice of our House of Commons ; for no one was ever to be referred to by name, and on one honourable warlock being so named, the whole assembly of wizards and witches hooted and howled the speaker to order, much after the fashion of our own House. They also had a clerk and a registrar, and at the end of the session the various wizards and witches filed past the devil, who was then in the chair, or rather in the pulpit, and 136 Side-lights on the Stuarts. saluting him after the fashion in vogue at the Court of his Satanic Majesty, went home. During this session, how- eyer, Agnes Sampson and another great witch, called Agnes Thompson, had an altercation with the devil, by reason of his having failed to produce before them a reputed warlock whose presence had been promised, and the devil having struck one of the witches, these two struck him back, and were only subdued after much beating. The first effect of these extraordinary revelations upon 5ing James was fco make him at once declare the great witch and her colleagues to be " extraordinary liars ; " but Agnes Sampson having asked for a private confer- ence with the king, related to him the details of a conversation which had taken place between himself and his queen under such circumstances that it could only have been known to themselves. This seems to have staggered the king, who 'declared that no human being, other than the queen and himself, could have known what had passed between them on that occasion, and he no longer refused to believe the witches' confessions. This Agnes Sampson or Simpson was, according to Sir "Walter Scott,* " not one of the base or ignorant class of ordinary witches, but a grave matron, com- posed and deliberate in her answers, which were all to some purpose. She was," he says, "about fifty years of age, and a native of Haddington. How far this con- fession may have been partly founded on fact, or wholly on delusion, I know not ; but there is, I think, good reason to believe that the professors of the black art did at this period violate the sanctuaries of the dead, for the purposes of this actual or supposed witchcraft." * " Dssmonology and Witchcraft." Witchcraft. 137 The Eegistrar of this particular order of witchcraft was one Dr. Man or Train, alias John Cunningham, a parish schoolmaster who had a great reputation as a warlock or white witch, and was alleged by the witches to have sat under the devil, and to have con- ducted the proceedings while Gray Malkin kept the door. He was brought before the king and council, together with the witches, and refusing to confess, was put to torture, first by the binding of a twisted cord round his head, a Scotch invention causing the most excruciating agony, and afterwards by the torture of the Boots. Under this infliction he became speechless. " Search his tongue ! " cried the witches in chorus, and his mouth being forced open, two long pins were found driven up to their heads under his tongue. " Now is the charm stinted ! " shouted the women : and stinted it was, for he at once confessed to the whole of the statements made by the others, and added that the devil having visited him in prison, urged him to be con- stant and contumacious, and not to divulge any of his practices. He was remitted to prison, showed great penitence, and made further confession ; and the guard over him being relaxed in consequence of his supposed submission, he made his escape. He was soon recap- tured, and being brought a second time before the king and council, he recanted all his previous confessions, declaring that he was entirely innocent of the charges, and that his former confessions were only extorted from him by the pains that he had endured ; the king, however, believing that his recantation was only the device of Satan, recommitted him to prison to undergo further tortures, fully described in the Scotch papers, but the very enumeration of which would fairly sicken the reader. He bore these pains with fortitude, and, still 138 Side-lights on the Stuarts. asserting his innocence, was hanged first and afterwards burned on the Castle Hill, Edinburgh, January, 1591-2/ Amongst other confessions of these witches they alleged that some had set out to sea, and others had used incanta- tions on land to sink the ship in which the king was re- turning from Denmark with his bride, but the special pro- tection of Heaven prevented the storm which they raised being fatal to the king or his ship. Soon after this King James had his portrait painted, and as will be seen from the accompanying engraving, the ship that the witches endeavoured to sink occupied a prominent place in the picture. These examinations, with the depositions of the witches, appear to have been printed and published at the time, for I have seen a pamphlet published in 1592, with the following title : — " News from Scotlond declaring the damnable Hfe and death of Dr. Train a notable sorcerer who was burned at Edinburgh in January last, 1591 : which doctor was Kegester to the Divell, that sundry times preached at North Barricke Kirke to a number of notorious witches. With the true examinations of the said doctor and witches, as they uttered them in the presence of the Scotish King : discovering how they pretended to bewitch and drown his Majesty in the sea coming from Denmark, &c. Published according to the Scotish copy." Following upon these examinations King James in 1597 published in Edinburgh his celebrated work on Dsemonology." " The fearful abounding at this time in this country of these detestable slaves of the devil, the " See Gougli's "Topography of Edinboro," vol. ii. p. 672. Gentle- man's Magazine, August, 1777. " This was reprinted and republished in England by King James after his accession to the English throne. The original MSS., with additions lACOBUSVIRE^^ JAMES VI. OF SCOTLAND. Witchcraft. 139 witches or enclianters, hath moved me (beloved reader) to dispatch in post this follovring Treatise of mine not in any wise as I protest to serve for a show of my learning and ingine, but only (moved of conscience) to preasse thereby, so far as I can, to resolve the doubting hearts of many, both that such assaults of Satan are most certainly practised, and that the instru- ments there of merit most severely to be punished." Thus he begins, and he goes on to inquire with much minuteness into the natural history and classification of witches. According to his Majesty there are eight different kinds of witches, who work various evil designs against mankind ; of these again there are white witches and black witches, of which the white witches are the worst. These again are all divided into arted witches, and pacted witches, the former relying for their power on their supernatural knowledge of the arts and sciences to bring about certain disastrous results, and the latter having made a " compact with the demon against all rules and orders of nature, art or grace." The demons also have their classification, some being of high class "and not to be spoken of foolishly or idly," others are of an inferior grade, and the lowest, of whom assumably it is lawful to use what language we please, in the king's handwriting, was sold at the sale at Fonthill for 101. 5s. Where it is now I have not been able to ascertain. Tlie Dsemonologia (a copy of which is in the British Museum) was published in London in 1 603 " from the copy published in Edinburgh." It is a small square book of about eighty pages, closely printed, in the form of a dialogue, with a preface. A good account of the " Dsemonologia " is to be found in the Retrospective Review, vol. v. p. 86 (1822). It is suggested, in a little book written some time ago to prove that Lord Bacon wrote the plays of Shakespeare, that he (Lord Bacon) wrote "Macbeth " out of compliment to King James's Scotch descent, and that he introduced the witches out of compliment to his " Dsemonologia." 140 Side-lights on the Stuarts. are composed of " the damned souls of departed con- jurors." These are the devil's imps who fetch and carry, and are told off to attend on the pacted wizards and witches, and generally to do the dirty work of his Satanic majesty. Among the various oflBces which these demons perform for their patrons they bring fire from heaven, transport bodies through the air, conjure corn from one field into a^nother, render things visible and invisible, make dead bodies appear as if alive, cause pinches and diseases in the human body, produce evil passions in men and women, and amongst other things they raise the wind, not exactly, however, in the sense in which King James himself in his later years became a considerable adept in the art. Of these various practices the dealing with corn was one of the oldest forms of witchcraft, one of the laws of the twelve tables being specially directed against the conjuring of corn from one field to another. The sale of winds was also a common stock in trade of witches on various sea coasts, those of Finland, Norway, and the Isle of Man being the chief dealers in this commodity. The mariner who dealt with these ladies, purchased certain knots tied in pieces of rope, the first knot when untied giving a favourable wind, the second knot a moderate gale, and the third a tempest. The witch having made her compact with the demon, was then duly baptized, had a mark made on some secret place which was thenceforward impervious to pain, and known as the stigma or devil's mark, so that he might know his own again, and she had an imp or imps assigned to her. And here one is struck by the meanness and pettiness of the thing, for in almost every investigated case of witchcraft, the witch appears to have been actuated by no lofty motive, however mistaken or Witchcraft. 141 criminal, but merely by petty spite or malignity against some more prosperous neighbours. This also appears to be remarkable, that the devil did not pursue his business so as to encourage others to join the army of lost souls, for he deserted his witches immediately on their being arraigned, which, being as was said a liar from the beginning, was his natural course, and was taken in evi- dence against the witch. And whether by some special dispensation of Providence or through the general alarm created by the prevalence of witchcraft, it also seems as if every one concerned in these inquiries were for the time entirely deprived of all sense of humour, for the inquirers appear to have dealt with the oddest and quaintest combinations with all the seriousness and solemnity of the proverbial Scotchman before the trepan- ning. The king then describes the proceedings of the demon and his slaves or witches ; their making of various magic circles, sometimes round, sometimes triangular, some- times quadrangular ; their using of holy water and crosses to mock the papists, the presenting of some living thing to the demon ; the choosing of certain seasons, days and hours for their revels, sometimes in churches, but gene- rally away from^where the witches live. Then he says, they mutter and mumble and hurry through their con- jurations " like a priest despatching a hunting masse," and if they step out of the circle through fear of the apparition, for the demon appears in all manner of shapes, the devil flies ofE with them body and soul.'' At a later period he gives some directions for the detection of witches, amongst others by their inability to shed tears and to repeat accurately the Lord's Prayer, by marks upon their body supposed to be the devil's ' " Dsemonologia," p. 1 7. 142 Side-lights on the Stuarts. marks ■which, are insensible to any nipping or pricking, by being watched till their imps come, generally in the shape of an animal which cannot, however, be caught or killed, and by being walked up and down incessantly till they make a confession. The ordeal by water was also a favourite test. The witch to undergo this was tied left hand to right foot, and left foot to right hand, and thrown, in this condition, into running water, in which event, if she sank, it was to be concluded that she was not a witch, but if she floated and the water, which is the element used in making the sign of the cross in baptism, refused to receive her into its body, she was to be taken to be a witch and treated accordingly.^ The mode of swimming a witch appears to have been as follows. The witch-finders and the spectators being divided into two parties, one on either side of the river or pond, a rope was tied round about the supposed witch and held at each end by persons on either side of the water. The witch being thus tied and cross-bound hand and foot, was then put into the middle of the water to undergo her * " There are two good helpes that may be iised for their triale : the one is the finding of their marke and the trying the insensibility there- of. The other is their fleeting on the water : for as in a secret murther, if the dead carkasse be at any time thereafter handled by the mur- therer, it wil gush out of blood, as if the blood were crying to the heaven for revenge of the murtherer, God having appoynted that secret super- naturale signe for tryale of that secret unnaturale crime, so it appears that God hath appoynted (for a supernaturale signe of the monstrous impietie of witches) that the water shall refuse to receive them in her bosome that have shaken off them the sacred water of Baptism and wil- fully refused the benefit thereof : no not so much as their eies are able to shead teares (threaten and torture them as yee please) while first they repent (God not permitting them to dissemble their obstinacie in so horrible a crime) albeit the women kind especially be able other waies to shead teares at every light occasion when they will, yea altho' it were dissemblingly like the crocodiles." — " Dsemonologia," p. 79. Witchcraft. 143 trial. If she sank, she was pulled out and declared no witch. If she swam, she was led off to the nearest justice of the peace with a view to being forthwith com- mitted to the next assizes or quarter sessions. It is obvious to us now that such a trial was palpably fallacious, for whether she sank or swam might depend not only on the weight or the fashion of her clothes, but also on her condition of body. The tightness or slack- ness of the rope might also be used either voluntarily or involuntarily to affect her position, and it has been strongly urged against Hopkins and other witch-finders that by careful management of the cord they could sink or swim their victims according to their pleasure. And this swimming of witches and wizards, or trial by water as it was termed, went on sometimes as a judicial investiga- tion, sometimes, I suspect, as a village pastime, till the year 1712, when Lord Chief Justice Parker declared that if the trial by water caused the death of a suspected witch he would hold every person concerned in it guilty of wilful murder. The king then proceeds to discuss the various phases of witchcraft, and amongst other difficult problems asks why there are so many more witches than wizards. This he answers by ascribing it, as I understand, to the natural inherent malignity and wickedness of the female mind, and he suggests that it was owing to this infirmity that the devil in the form of the Old Serpent gofc into such good terms with the Mother Eve and worked such incalculable mischief upon the human race.'' To this another contemporary writer ' " What can be the cause that there are twentie women given to that crafte where there is one man "i " The reason is easie for as that sexe is frailer than man is, so is it easier to be intrapped in the grosse snares of the devil, as was over well prooved to be true by the serpente deceiving of Eva at the beginning, which makes him the homelier with that sex sensine." — " Dsemonologia," p. 43. 144 Side-lights on the Stuarts. on deraonology adds that the word fosmina in Latin is derived from fe fi or ; which means fides and minus meaning less, women having naturally less honesty and religion than men. So far as they account for the pre- valence of female over male practitioners of sorcery and witchcraft, these explanations may by some persons be considered satisfactory, but I have never seen any reason suggested why the devil should have chosen ugly old women as his special agents rather than good-looking and young women, whose powers to do evil and work enchantments one would have thought to have been far more pronounced when they were young and blithe than when they had grown old and decrepid. With regard to the general appearance of witches, the king makes the following statements : — " Witches are not generally melancholic ; but some are rich and worldly wise, some are fat and corpulent, and most part are given over to the pleasures of the flesh ; and further experience daily proves how loth they are to confess without torture, which witnessethe their guiltinesse." Under these circumstances the king naturally concludes with the question. Who is safe ? and he answers it by say- ing that the only safe person is the magistrate, actively employed in bringing witches to justice. One IHiaffias ^«^ Scott, Esq., however, hop-grower and brewer of Smeeth, in Kent, a persistent disbeliever in and ridiculer of witch- craft, who had the courage to break lances with the king and the Bench of Bishops in contemporary pamphlets, and is called by the king, an " Englishman of damnable opinions," irreverently answered this question by saying that the only safe person was the king himself, as his sex prevented his being taken for a witch, and the whole kingdom was satisfied that he was no conjuror. The infliction of torture which the king here recom- ^ViM Witchcraft. 145 mends, was always hateful to the English nation, and it had become disused in this country, long before it ceased abroad. As early as the time of Queen Elizabeth it was considered dastardly and unworthy of an English sovereign, and having been employed in some occasional cases of conspiracy against the Queen, Lord Burleigh put forth a memorandum of excuses, and Elizabeth her- self issued an order peremptorily forbidding the torturing of state prisoners, under any pretext whatever. James, having freely practised torture in Scotland (where it survived to the time of James II.), endeavoured to revive it in England as part of his Royal Prerogative, and in the case of Peacham, in 16 14, it was actually had recourse to by the aiithority of Sir Erancis Bacon. There is also reason to believe that an unhappy schoolmaster named Peacock, was, as late as 1620, put to torture in the Tower, on a suspicion of witchcraft, by the order of James himself. It may, however, notwithstanding these exceptional instances, be taken to have long since disappeared from the law and the practice of the courts of this country, and undoubtedly in 1628, when it was proposed to apply the rack to Fenton, whose cruel murder of the Duke of Buckingham deprived him of all sympathy, the judges authoritively declared that the infliction of torture was not permitted by the law of England. But although the law was thus laid down in regard to criminals in our gaols, the unhappy persons suspected of witchcraft were beyond its pale. It may be that the rack and the thumb- screw were not applied to them in English prisons in the seventeenth century, but the so-called tests to which they were freely subjected, amounted to the worst form of torture, and time after time drew statements from the victims, who like too many prisoners of an earlier date, hoped to find in a confession of what their persecutors L 146 Side- LIGHTS on the Stuarts. sought to prove an easy or at least a temporary escape from their afflictions. The system of torture was founded on the exploded ecclesiastical doctrine, that a confession, however obtained, is the only conclusive evidence of guilt, and confessions having been obtained by threats, by terror, by pain, and by starvation, 'the unhappy victims were never allowed the benefit of a retractation ; but were left to their miserable fate. In the letters from the English agents at the Scotch Court, constant reference is made to the anxiety of the king, whose mind is much exercised and alarmed at the prevalence of witchcraft throughout his dominion. And certainly, to judge from cotemporary records, the king's life was mainly passed in discovering, examin- ing, and discussing at great length on the subject of witches and their abominable practices. The following among various other memoranda on the same subject are found scattered through the State Papers, during the time of King James, and show the mode in which the subject of witchcraft found its way into the every-day life of the people, and the great importance attached to it by the Court. The papers from which these extracts are taken, are mostly original letters of Queen Elizabeth's representatives in Scotland to their chief or to their friends in England, and of various political personages in England, writing general and political news to their friends and colleagues abroad. As early as June, 1565, the year of King James's birth, we find Eandolph writing from Scotland to the Earl of Leicester, that the Queen of Scots is bewitched ; " the doers are named, and the tokens, rings, and bracelets, found which contain the sacred mysteries," and there- upon is an humble supplication to the Queen of Scots for the punishment of all such horrible crimes as now abound Witchcraft. 147 in Scotland, as idolatry, blaspHemy, SabbatH-breaking, witcbcraft, sorcery, &c. ; and numerous witches, it is added, -were caught in consultation. In July, 1574, we have an account of Earl Argyle's Progress, of his holding Justice Courts, of the numbers of persons executed, and the treatment of those suspected of witchcraft. In 1583 the Bishop of St. Andrew's is ordered from Berwick, is suspended, and threatened with excommuni- cation, on account of some errors in his sermons before the king, but more particularly for his extraordinary favour towards a witch at Berwick, in saving her from that due punishment which should have been inflicted on her. In 1590 King James comes on the scene, and on July 4th receives a visit from a Dutch witch in Edin- burgh, with the result that on July 23rd the Dutch Prophetess and various other witches are arraigned. In the following November the examination of sundry witches is taken, with the result (probably under the torture recommended by that monarch in his works), that the confession previously referred to is made by Agnes Sampson or Simpson, the great witch to the king himself. The year 1591 opened with the confessions and the burnings of various witches on the 23rd of February, and the burning of the great witch Sampson, whose papers are thus endorsed : — -" Certaine notes of Agnes Samsone, her confession, 27th Januarie, 1590-1. Q"^ upon sche was convict be ane assise, and brint in Edinburgh 28 day for ane witch." And Bowes, the English agent at the Scotch Court, quaintly says, that amongst their various confessions, the witches confessed against him that he (Bowes) had charmed a toad to hurt the king. These stiff proceedings so frightened many of the Scotch L 2 148 SiDE-LIGIITS ON THE StUARTS. witches, that, like others of their compatriots, they made their way into England with no intention of ever returning. But the Scotch Government, not content with getting rid of these troublesome subjects, insisted on their being caught and restored to the country of their birth and their allegiance. But, indeed, the year 1591 was a very bad one for his Majesty; for no sooner had he disposed of the Dutch Prophetess and the great witch, Agnes Sampson, than in May, 1591, he sent Bothwell to the Castle for conspiring his death by sorcery, in conjunction with one Richie Graham, a warlock. The particulars of this charge were collected and recorded; and, in the meantime, Barbara Napier, a witch, was arraigned, on the 9th of May, for conspiring with the devil and other witches, at the insti- gation of Bothwell, against the king. She was acquitted of the treason, but convicted of witchcraft generally, so that her life was in the king's hands. But so greatly was his Majesty dissatisfied at the result of the trial and at the mode in which it was conducted, that he ordered another inquisition, at which he attended in person, on the 8th of June, and made a great speech, explaining in detail and at length the cause of his unusual presence in the Tolbooth, extolling his own impartiality, and giving a historical survey of the rise of witchcraft, the enormity of the crime, its punishment according to Scripture, the ignorance of thinking such matters mere fantasies, the cause of his own interference in the matter, the ignorance of the assize in the late trial, the cause of their finding, and his own opinion of what witches really are.^ Barbara Napier having so far escaped, Richie Graham was sent for, and confronted with Bothwell in the Castle, ' St. p., Scotland, vol. xlvii. 57, Witchcraft. 149 and although he also got off the charge of high treason, it was not of much use to him, for in February, 1592, an order went forth that Graham and others were to be executed for witchcraft. What became of the others we know not, but the burning of Richie Graham took place on the 8th of March, 1592, on which occasion he adhered to whatever accusation he had made against Bothwell. In May, 1591, Chermside is reported as "hunting witches," and in June one Effie Mackallum, a woman of some rank, was tried and convicted of witchcraft, and suffered the penalty of her crime .^ In the meantime, Bothwell had been confronted with the king in person, and vowed that — " If he could not prove sorcery, or at least the consultation with sorcerers and witches on the part of his adversaries, then he would admit the truth of all that was objected against him."^ This, however, was naturally enough not very satisfactory to the king, and accordingly, on the 10th of August, 1593, Barbara Napier and Richie Graham being well out of the way, the Earl of Bothwell was brought to trial for witchcraft in association with Graham and others. The names of the earls, lords, and barons empanelled on this assize are set out in the Scotch papers, and a long account is given of Bothwell's speeches and the deposi- tions of various witches. In the result he was acquitted of the witchcraft, and we are left to conjecture what happened to the witches who made the confessions. In June, 1595, the hill-sides of Edinburgh were lighted up by a grand burning of witches; and in June, 1597, the king went to St. Andrew's to superintend in person certain proceedings against witches, and having proved their service to the devil, " many were executed." - St. P., Scotland, vol. xlvii. 66. ' Ibid. Appendix. 150 Side-lights on the Stuarts. But tlie severities practised against the witches, rather increased their numbers than otherwise, and we accord- ingly find, in Aug., 1597, that Bowes, writing again from Scotland to Lord Burghley, says : — " The king is much pestered with witches who swarm in thousands and confess to practices against the life of the king and the young princes." After James's arrival in England I find him more mercifulthan in Scotland, for there is an entry in April, 1G04, of a pardon for witchcraft, in the county of Norfolk, to Christian "Weach. A similar pardon in 1605, to one Simon Read, convicted of witch- craft, and in 1610, a second pardon to Christian Weach for the murder of Mary Freeston by witchcraft (her second conviction). In July, 1611, he sends a letter to the Bishop of Bangor and the Justices of Assize, to inquire into the witching of six young maids, and on the 12th of October, the king in person, at Leicester, in- vestigated a charge of witchcraft, and discovered the imposture of the boys said to be bewitched. Some time afterwards, however, certain witches were tried for this very witchcraft, and, being convicted, were hanged by order of Justice Winch. This was considered, however so impertinent an invasion of the king's preroo-ative that the judge was disgraced for having allowed the case to be tried after the king himself had decided it. Under the date of February, 1620, I find that one Peacock, a schoolmaster, was tortured in the Tower for practising sorcery on the king ; and in February, 1625, Lady Pearbeck was committed to prison for witchery on her husband and the Duke of Buckingham. She was released, and the charges of witchcraft were dropped on 12th of March ; but she was afterwards rearrested and convicted on other charges. While king, privy counsellors, judges, and Quarter Witchcraft. 151 Sessions were thus busy with the more or less serious cases of witchcraft, the Ecclesiastical Courts, were, according to their wont, exercising themselves with the petty cases, and punishing their offenders with enforced penance, confession, or penitence before the congregation. The following extracts, which, with many more, are to be found in Archdeacon Hale's "Precedents of Pleadings in Criminal Causes " in thg Diocese of London, from 1475 to 1640, will sufficiently show the course of Ecclesi- astical procedure during that period : — 12 Feb. 1475. Nazareth Tarbery was brought before the Commissary of London, for consulting a magician, called Thomas Barley, for stolen goods, who made certain conjurations and showed him the thief in a beryl stone. 1480. Job Stokes, for using incantations and sorcery for fevers. Jan. 1480. Richard Lankister, for obtaining 2 masers from Margaret Geffrey, widow, under pretence of getting her a husband worth £1000, by means of " a conynge man " whom his wife knew. (The said Richard and Margaret were both ordered to do penance, and the money to be restored.) 1482. Joan Beverley of Oowcross, a watch, combined with 2 other witches to procure that Robert Stanton and another gentleman of Grayysyn, should love her and her only — which two gentlemen had fought for her, and one nearly killed the other and had frightened her husband away, &c. 10 June, 1490. John Benet, a sorcerer, wanted the figure of the man in order to make a waxen image, and a wax candle to be placed before it, so that as the candle was burnt so should the man be consumed. 26 Apl. 1497. John White ■ of the parish of Sancte Marie Magdalene in Oldefisshestrete for practising magic 152 Side-lights on the Stuarts. arts by means of a psalter and key, to find a silver spoon lost by John Ryan. 13 July, 1602. Alienora Dulyne for using divers arts of magic over her husband. 1st February, 1527. William Brown for collecting herbs, over which he had used incantations and thus cured horses " a mqrbo vocato the fasshyns " [farcy]. July, 1554. William Haselwood of Hornsey being cited saith, " That in July war twelve monythe last past he having then lost his purse with xiiii. grootes in the same, and thereupon remembering that he being a chylde dyd hear his mother declare, that when any man had lost anything, then they wold use a syve and a payre of sheers to bring to knowledge who hadd the thing lost ; and so he did take a seve and a payre of sheeres and hanged the seve by the pointe of the sheeres and sayed these words — by Peter and Paule he hath yt, namying the party whom he in that behalf suspected." 4th July, 1566. Alice Gardner, of Boram, Essex, " for that she gave counsell to one mason's wief of Boram who was a witch, that she shulde confesse nothinge, for yf thow dust, thow wolt dyve for it ; and thowe wilt turne thy neighbours to treble." 30th Oct. 1575. Joan Allen of Leigh, Essex, "that she came to Widowe Jackson a witche for counsell, as the talk goeth." She appeared and said " that she did make a lye that she was with a coninge woman." 8th June, 1576. James Hopkinne of Homehurst, Essex, " that he went to mother Persore at Navestoke, a conninge woman, to know by what mens his master's cattale was bewytched." 26th April, 1585. John Shonnke, Senior, of Romford, Essex, is cited " For that he went to faither Parfoothe for helpe for his wicf, which Parfoothe is suspected to Witchcraft. 153 be a wiche." Slionke duly appears " and saetlie that for the helpe of his wief he went to him and if it were again he would do the like to help his wief ; which Parfoothe is counted to be a wiche and is allowed for a good wiche." His confession was accepted and he was ordered to do penance. 12 April, 1599. Thomas Ward, of Purleigh, Essex, was presented for " that he having lost certain cattell, and suspecting that they were bewitched he went to one tailer in Thaxted, a wysard, to knowe whether they were bewitched or not, and to have his helpe." 14 August, 1632. Maria Cutford was brought be- fore the Commissary " for that she did most wickedlie wishe herself to be a witche for a tyme that she might be revenged of her adversarie Ann Daudrye." Con- fessing her fault she was dismissed. According to a tabulated statement published in Dr. Hutchinson's Essay on Witchcraft (] 718), it appears that in 1485 Cunanus burnt forty-one poor women for witches in the county of Burlia in one year, having caused them to be shaved first, that they might be searched for marks. One inquisitor about this time burnt one hundred in Piedmont, and proceeded daily to burn more, till the people rose against the inquisitor and chased him away. In 1515, 500 witches were burnt at Geneva in three-/ months. About 1525, a thousand were burnt in the'^-^" diocese of Como in one year, and one hundred per annum' f^^ afterwards for several years in succession. From 1580 ^^ to 1595, 900 were burnt in Lorraine. As many more ,1 fled from the country to save their lives, and fifteen laid ?<- violent hands on themselves, rather than endure the;^ tortures that were in store for them. Great numbers :^ also were tortured and burnt in Spain and Germany. In ^^ 1594 the crime of witchcraft was so common in Bordeaux 154 Side-lights on the Stuarts. that the parliament jails -would not hold the prisoners, nor had they judges enough to hear their causes. In the latter part of Queen Elizabeth's reign a man named Bankes had a performing horse called Marocco, referred to by Shakespeare * as the dancing horse, who in addi- tion to other feats went to the top of Old St. Paul's up the steps, showed himself on the leads, and then came down again. Amongst other places where Bankes and Marocco went through their performances was the city of Rome, where the horse and his owner were both tried and convicted of practising magic, and burnt at the stake. Acting upon what I doubt not was an honest belief in the prevalence and the sinfulness of witchcraft, King James, immediately upon his accession to the English throne, caused a Bill to be introduced making sorcery and witchcraft felony without benefit of clergy. This probably, out of respect to the known wishes of the new sovereign, was passed by both Houses without amend- ment, and received the assent of the entire bench of Bishops.^ The latter also gave a formal if somewhat qualified benediction to the Act, by a canon providing that no clergyman should use prayers for casting out devils without a licence from his bishop for that purpose * first had and obtained. It is always a matter of doubt whether legislation of this stringent character does not stimulate the offence it is intended to suppress. Expe- rience certainly teaches us that the effect of such excep- tional legislation is to multiply the number of charges and prosecutions, and in this way, at all events, to make it appear as if the particular ofEence were greatly on " " Moth : How easy it is to put years to the word three and study three years in two words, the dancing horse will tell you." Love'n Labour Lost, act i. so. 2. '- Jac. I. c. 12. " A licence to cu.sl out dcvilt; was actually issued by the Bishop of Cheater in the year 1603. Witchcraft. 155 the increase. It also invariably brings upon the scene extortioners and informers, who do their best, aided by the fears of the ignorant or the malignity of the base, to work the Act for their own pecuniary benefit. Started accordingly, with, this impetus, and encouraged by the royal favour, the campaign against witches went gaily on. Poor old women and girls of tender age were walked, swum, shaved, and tortured ; the gallows creaked and the fires blazed ; and there rose in the country a number of witch-finders, who brought to death hundreds of probably half-witted and innocent persons, from many of whom the administration of torture or the influence of delusions wrung confessions of the most remarkable and incredible description. In one year it was said that no less than sixty witches were hanged on the testimony of Matthew Hopkins, of Manningtree, in Essex, the Titus Gates of the witch- finders, who visited various towns, accompanied by a man and a woman as his assistants, charging twenty shillings a town when his ministrations were accepted, and roundly abusing the towns when they were declined. The result of his perseverance was that in the counties of Suffolk and Essex, which were the chief fields of his labour, this man, from first to last, indicted over 300 witches, of whom more than half suffered the extreme penalty of the law. The following, among many, are some of the more remarkable cases of witchcraft subsequent to the accession of King James I. : — On the 14th of June, 1613, Mary Wood, a reputed witch, was examined before the Privy Council as to giving a powder to Lady Essex, who wished to have a child.' There is no record, however, of the result of the inquiry. ' State Papers, vol. Ixxiv. p. 3. 156 Side-lights on the Stuarts. In 1616, a very celebrated case of witchcraft was tried at King's Lynne," of whida the following were the very remarkable facts elicited at the inquiry : — Marie, wife of Henry Smith, glover, of King's Lynn, having been tried for witchcraft, confessed that, being possessed of a wrathful indignation against some of her neighbours in regard that they made a proj&t of their buying and selling cheese, which she could not, she oft- times cursed them; and in the midst of these discontent- ments the devil appeared to her in the form of a black man, and willed that she should continue in her malice, envy, hatred, banning, and cursing, and then he would be revenged for her upon all those to whom she wished evil. This promise was uttered in a low, murmuring, and hissing voice, and at that present they entered into terms of a compact, he requiring that she should forsake Grod and depend upon him ; and she condescending in express terms to renounce Grod and betaking herself unto him. The devil also, according to her confession, appeared to her divers other times in different forms, once as a mist, once as a ball of fire, and on two occa- sions he appeared to her in prison with a pair of horns, and tried to persuade her not to confess, but to rely upon him. The evidence of the acts of witchcraft was as follows : John Orkton, a sailor, banged her boy, whereupon she cursed him, and hoped his fingers would rot off, which it was said they did two years afterwards. She quarrelled with Elizabeth Hancock about a hen, which she said Elizabeth had stolen, but which Elizabeth in gtrong language denied. Thereupon the witch told her to go in, for she would repent it ; and the same night ' Howell's State Trials, vol. ii. p. 1049. From an account published in 1616, by the Kev. Dr. Eoberts, preacher of God's Word at King's Lynn. \A'lTCHCRAFT. I57 Elizabeth had pains all over, and her bed jumped up and down for the space of an hour or more. Elizabeth on this consulted her father, who took her to a wizard named Drake, who taught them to make a witch-cake from various detestable compounds, to be applied to the afflicted parts with certain words and conjurations. This had the desired effect, and for the time Elizabeth was cured. After this, however — being in the meantime married to James Scott — a great cat which kept with the witch frequented their house ; and upon doing some scathe her husband thrust it twice through with his sword, which, notwithstanding those wounds received, ran away ; then he struck it with all his force upon the head with a great pikestaff, yet could not kill it, but it leapt upwards afterwards almost a yard, and then crept down, which he perceiving willed his lad to drag it to the muck-hill, but was not able, and he thereupon put it into a sack, but it still moved and stirred. Where- upon they put it out again, and cast it under the stairs, intending in the morning to get more help and carry it away, but then it could nowhere be found, though all the doors that night were locked, and they never heard what afterwards became thereof. This cat was, how- ever, afterwards sworn to have sat on the chest of Cicely Balye, and to have nearly suffocated her, because she quarrelled with Marie Smith about her manner of sweeping her door, who thereupon called her a fat-tailed sow, and said her fatness should shortly be abated, which it was accordingly. Edmund Newton swore that he had been afflicted with various sick- nesses, and had been banged in the face with dirty cloths, through underselling Marie Smith in Dutch cheeses. She also, as he swore, sent to him a person clothed in russet, with a little bush beard and a cloven 158 SiDE-LIGIITS ON THE StUARTS. foot, together with her imps, a toad and a crab. One of his servants took the toad, and put it into the fire, when it made a groaning noise for one quarter of an hour before it was consumed, during which time Marie Smith, who sent it, did endure (as was reported) tor- turing pains, testifying the grief she felt by the outcries she then made. There were also charges against her relating to other persons, which she denied, and as they rested on report only of what other persons had said, they were not pro- ceeded with. Upon the evidence then given, and upon her own confession as regarded John Orkton, Elizabeth Hancock, Cicely Balye, and Edmund Newton, Marie Smith was convicted and sentenced to death. She ac- knowledged her errors on the scafEold, prayed God's forgiveness for the wrongs done to her four neighbours, and for her other sins, desired that a hymn of her own choosing should be sung, " Lord, turn not away Thy face," ^ and thus ended her life. Apart from the woman's confession, the evidence was not such as would be accepted at the present day ; but the fact that she voluntarily confessed to various acts of witchcraft and to a compact with the devil, and that she suffered death without attempting to save her life by recantation, gives a serious and a mysterious aspect to this as to many another case of this period. In 1619 Joan Elower and her two daughters, Marga- retta and Phillipa, formerly servants at Belvoir Castle, were convicted, and the two younger were executed at " " The Lamentation of a Sinner : '' — " Lord, turn not away Thy face from him that lies prostrate, Lamenting sore his sinful life before Thy mercy gate, Which gate Thou openest -wide to those that do lament their sin ; Slait not this gate ayauist me, Lord, but let mo enter in." Witchcraft. 159 Lincoln, their mother having died in prison, after a trial before Sir Henry Hobart and Sir Edward Bromley, for having bewitched to death two sons of the sixth Earl of Rutland, of whom it is recorded on their monument in Bottesford Church that they died in infancy "by wicked practice and sorcery." The young women are said to have confessed their crimes. In 1633 occurred the remarkable case of the Lancashire witches. Eighteen women, some married and some single, of Pendle Forest, in Lancashire, were tried for witchcraft at Lancaster assizes. Of these seventeen were convicted and sentenced to death, on the evidence of a man named Eobinson and of his son, a boy eleven years of age. The judge not being satisfied with the verdict, the convicts were reprieved, and the Bishop of Chester was requested to look into the matter. The bishop not being better satisfied than the judge, four of the women, named respectively Margaret Johnson, Frances Dicconson, Mary Spencer, and Mrs. Hargrave, were sent up to London and committed to the Fleet, where much money was made by the warders, who according to the practice of the time, daily exhibited them to the public. Here they were examined by the king's physicians, by the bishops, by the Privy Council, and ultimately by King Charles him- self, with the result that they were ultimately released, and the boy and his father committed to different prisons as cheats and impostors. The two being thus separated, the boy made a full confession, declaring that the whole story was the concoction of his father carried out by himself.^ This was not, however, the only investigation which King Charles I. made into the science of witchcraft. ' The depositions of the boy Eohinson and his father are printed at length in Hutchinson's " Essay on Witchcraft," p. 212. i6o SiDE-LiaiiTS ON THE Stuarts. Being at Newmarket with his Court in the early part of his reign, he was informed that there hved at a lonely house on the borders of the heath a woman who was reputed to be a witch. With a view to learn the truth of this, he deputed Dr. William Harvey, the celebrated discoverer of the circulation of the blood, his physician- in-ordinary, to see the woman and judge for himself. Dr. Harvey, who was no believer in the possibility of witches, found the woman alone, and describing himself as a wizard and making some contortions to show he had a magical face, and thus to satisfy the lady's doubts, desired to see her familiar and to have some converse on their common trade. She thereupon set a saucer of milk on the floor, and making a chucking noise a big toad came out from under a chest and drank the milk. The doctor having given the woman, whom he describes as " melancholy and poor," a shilling to get some beer from an alehouse about half a mile away, took advantage of her absence to dissect the toad, finding in it the milk it had just drunk, and that it was in fact " a plain, arrant, natural toad." The woman, on her return, discovering tlie miserable condition of her familiar, threw down the jug of beer, flew like a tigress at the doctor's face, made short work of his old black coat, and would not be per- suaded that her toad, which he had killed, was other than a devil and an emissary of Satan. Upon being told, however, that he was the king's physician, sent to apprehend her if he found her to be a witch, but to reason with her if he found she was not, she let him sro. after freely and often consigning him to the protection of the- evil one, and calling him all the old rogues and vaga- bonds comprised in her vocabulary.^ ' A letter dated Ash Wednesday, 1685, giving a long account of this exploit of Dr. Harvey, was published in the Gentleman's Ma i-J i8o Side-lights on the Stuarts. name of John Powel, both of whom sat in the Common Pleas at the same time, during the reign of Queen Anne, one of whom, called by way of distinction. Justice Powel of Gloucester, was afterwards promoted to the Queen's Bench, and died at the end of that queen's reign, having been much associated with Chief Justice Holt.' Hathaway's case, to which I have referred, and which illustrates the popular feeling and belief on the subject of witchcraft in the reign of Queen Anne, was of a some- what remarkable character.* On the 2nd March, 1702-3, Richard Hathaway, apprentice to Thomas Welling, a blacksmith in Southwark, was tried before Chief Justice Holt at the Surrey Assizes for being a cheat and impostor, in falsely alleging that he had been bewitched by Sarah, wife of Edward Morduck, a waterman of Southwark. His statements were that he had been rendered unable to eat or drink for the space of ten.weeks together, that he had been afflicted with various pains, that he had constantly vomited crooked pins and nails, and had been from time to time deprived of speech and of sight, through the witch- craft of Sarah Morduck, and further that he was from time to time relieved of these various disorders by scratch- ing the said Sarah, and drawing blood from her.^ On these charges, and on Hathaway's evidence, supported by that of some of his friends who witnessed these supposed mani- festations, Sarah was committed by the magistrates, and was tried for her life as a witch at the Guildford Assizes, in February 1700-1. For the defence it was proved, ' Woolrych's " Life of Jeffreys," p. 299. ' State Trials, vol. xiv. p. 639. ' It was one of the popular superstitions of the clay that if the victim could find the witch and draw her blood, she was at e compelled to cease her fascination. Witchcraft. igi amongst other things, that the Rev. Dr. Martin, minister of the parish of Southwark, hearing of this alleged witchcraft, and that Hathaway had been instantaneously cured by scratching and drawing blood from the supposed witch, desired to try the experiment himself, and for that purpose repaired to Hathaway' s room during one of his fits of semi-consciousness and complete blindness. The room was full of Hathaway's friends, together with some friends of the doctor's, and Sarah Morduck,and thereupon the doctor, professing to give to Hathaway the arm of Sarah, gave in reality the arm of a woman whom he had met in the street and persuaded to try the experiment. Hathaway, having carefully felt the arm, but keeping his eyes shut, scratched the wrong woman, and immediately professed to recover both his senses and his sight. On findinghis imposture discovered, he looked much ashamed, and had nothing to say, upon which the minister upbraid- ing him for his deception, warned him to attend to his proper business, and to play no such tricks for the future. The people, however, nothwithstanding this exposure, were no more convinced than were Lord Hale and his jury, thirty-five years before, and immediately on Dr. Martin and his friends leaving the room, they went with Hatha- way to Sarah Morduck's house, compelled her to come forth and be scratched, beat her, tore her hair and her face, stripped her of her clothes, threw her on the ground, jumped on her, and left her bruised from head to foot. They also suggested that the woman whom the minister had brought in to play the trick on Hathaway was herself a witch, and she had to endure the execration of the mob, together with a beatino- from her own husband. It was also proved that Hathaway had been searched on one of the occasions on which he alleged he had been vomiting crooked pins and i82 Side-lights on the Stuarts. nails, with the result that some hundreds of packets of pins and nails were taken out of his pockets, and on his hands being tied behind him, the vomiting of pins and nails immediately ceased. Upoii this and some further evidence, the jury found that Hathaway was a cheat, and Sarah Morduck, who appears to have been a quiet and well-con- ducted woman, was acquitted of being either a witch or a magician. But even this trial and verdict had not the effect of satisfying the minds of the citizens of South wark, who still persecuted Sarah Morduck, mobbed Dr. Martin, and had prayers put up in the churches, and a public collec- tion made for Richard Hathaway in his great distress and misfortune, in not having his enemy convicted as a witch. One of these prayer-meetings ended in a riot, in the course of which a magistrate. Sir Thomas Lane, who joined in the popular belief, called Sarah before him, ordered her to be scratched by Hathaway in his presence, and then sent her upstairs in his own house, to be stripped and searched by two women and a doctor for devil's marks in proof of the accusation against her. No such evidence, however, being forthcoming, he committed her as a witch to the Wood Street Compter, refusing bail to the extent of 600L However, Dr. Martin and some other gentlemen vigorously interfered on her behalf, and she was ultimately released on reasonable bail. In this state of things it was determined by the Crown to take further proceedings to vindicate the law, and to support the finding of the jury at Guildford, by indicting Hathaway as a cheat, and himself and his friends for riot and assault on Sarah Morduck. The evidence given at Morduck's trial was repeated, and it was further proved that Hathaway when in prison, being in bad health, was removed from the Marshalsea to the custody of one Dr. Kensey, a surgeon, who wi slung to test the Witchcraft. 1S3 truth of his fasting, made holes in the walls of his com- partment through which the doctor and his friends could watch Hathaway's proceedings inside, and food and drink being offered him by Mr. Kensey's maid, he was seen day after day for about a fortnight, during the whole of which time he pretended he was fasting through the witchery of Morduck, eating and drink- ing; and on one occasion the maid having given him an extra allowance of spirits, he got very tipsy, played a tune on the tongs, and danced before the fire. For Hathaway's defence, persons were called who spoke to having seen him vomit pins, recover sight and speech after scratching Sarah Morduck, and further deposed to having watched him somewhat intermit- tently and seen him take no food or drink for many days. A woman, Mrs. Willoughby, was also called, who incidentally spoke to having been bewitched herself when a girl, and made to fly over the heads of the people, being held up by spirits, one on each side and one behind, although she was unable to give the names of any persons who saw her in the air. A Doctor Hamilton was also called, who said he rejected as evidence of witchcraft everything but the fasting, as except for that it might be the work of cunning or legerdemain ; but that a person should fast for fourteen days was beyond the power of nature. "Doctor," said the Lord Chief Justice, "do you think it possible for a man to fast a fortnight ? " De. Hamilton : "I think not, my Lord." LoED Chief Justice : Can all the devils in hell help a man to fast so long ? " De. Hamilton : " No, my Lord, I think not." Under this evidence the jury, without leaving the box, found Hathaway guilty, and he was sentenced by Lord 1 84 SiDK-LTCIITS ON THE StUARTS. Holt to pay a fine of one hundred marks, to stand in tlie pillory on the following Sunday for two hours at South- wark, the same on the Tuesday at the Royal Exchange, the same on the Wednesday at Temple Bar, the next day to be taken to the House of Correction to be whipped, and afterwards to be kept to hard labour for the space of half a year. The question of witchcraft or no witchcraft was not directly raised in this case, so that we have no direction or opinion of the judges declared on that point, for Sarah Morduck having been formally tried and acquitted of that offence, it was not again suggested that she practised witchery or magic. The only question for the jury was whether the defendant falsely pretended he had been betwitched, well knowing he had not been bewitched, or whether, on the other hand, he was non compos mentis, or under any delusions which would acquit him of wilful falsehood. It is somewhat remarkable, however, that, although the Lord Chief Justice showed some natural scepticism as to the flying feat of Mrs. Willoughby, yet no doubt was cast either by himself or by any of the counsel on the existence or the diabolical orip-in of witchcraft. Mr. Brodrick, in opening the case for the prosecution, said it was brought not only in the interests of justice, but of religion, which was much affected by these fraudulent pretences, Serjeant Jenner, speakino- for the defendants, said that it could not be suggested that it was contrary to religion to say that there were such things as witches in the world, and the Lord Chief Justice, in his summing up, when referring to Hathaway's alleged fasting, and the evidence of the doctors, used this remarkable expression : " Tricks the devil may play, but not work a miracle, it is not to be thought that God would let him loose so far." Witchcraft. 185 Thus giving a tolerably clear, though a limited, sanc- tion to what was even then the popular belief on this subject. There appears, also, to have existed some kind of in- ternational sympathy with regard to witches or warlays, or magicians, for I find that in 1715, one Dominico Mucciolanti, a wizard, having escaped from Italy, where a prosecution was preparing against him, came to London. And thereupon advertisements were circulated among the Italians in London, giving an account and a portrait of this wizard, in order that all persons might thus avoid the contamination of so horrible a monster. And cer- tainly, if the portraits circulated were at all like the original, nature herself had provided a sufl&cifent warning in his personal appearance, which was more that of a malicious baboon than of a human being. It may well be a matter of doubt whether the last execution for witchcraft was in 1712 or 1716, but even accepting the former date, it took place during our Augustan era of literature and civilization, and marked the expiring tenure of the last descendant of the House of Stuart. What, however, may have been the actual date in England, it appears clearly, from Sir W. Scott," whose ofl&cial position gave him means of knowledge, that so late as 1722 a woman was burnt as a witch in Scot- land by Captain Eoss, sheriff-depute of Sutherland. In January, 1731, an old woman of Frome, in Somerset, having the reputation of a witch, was dragged from her bed where she lay sick of an ague, put astride on a saddle, and swum in a mill-pond for about an hour, in the pre- sence of over two hundred people. It was said she swam like a cork, but on her being taken out of the ^ " Dasmonology and Witchcraft." 1 86 Side-lights on the Stuarts. water she expired. A coroner's inquest was held on the body, but no one could or would denounce the ring- leaders, and three persons only were committed for manslaughter, with no result as far as is known.' The incredulity of the public, however, gradually in- creased, mainly owing to the publication of numerous pamphlets on the subject of witchcraft, and to the detection of many impostures. The Rev. Dr. Hutchin- son wrote in 1718 a history of witchcraft, with a view to expose its various phases of credulity and invention. The judges charged juries altogether in favour of acquittals. Steele had a paper in the Tattler, burlesquing a trial for witchcraft, and Butler ridiculed the witch-finders in the pages of Hudibras. It has been even said that during his later years King James, on account of the numerous impostures, some of which he was himself instrumental in detecting, wavered a good deal in his views as to witchcraft, and that he com- municated these views to his son, but such statement seems to me to rest almost entirely on conjecture. In 1751 Chief Justice Parker's threat was carried out by the hanging of one CoUey for drowning a supposed witch on July 30th of that year, under circumstances of great barbarity. The crowd, however, who Avitnessed the execution, stood aloof from the gallows, deeply sympathizing with the cruel fate of the convict, who had rid the world of what they believed to have been a wicked and dangerous woman, and soundly abusing the sheriff who executed the warrant. Notwithstanding: this lesson, however, popular investigations into witch- craft occasionally took place in the country districts. In February, 1769, one Susannah Hannoker, of Win- ' Extract from Frame Daily Journal, of January 15th, 1731. Gen- tk'iiKni's Maij., 1830. Witchcraft. 1S7 grove, near Aylesbury, was charged by a neighbour, avLo offered to make oath of it before a magistrate, with having witched her spinning-wheel. Thereupon, Han- noker, the husband, insisted that his wife should be tried by the Church Bible in the presence of her accuser. Accordingly, as the report says, she was conducted to the parish church, where she was stripped of all her clothes to her shift and under-coat, and weighed against the Bible ; when, to the no small mortification of her accuser, down went the witch and up went the Bible, and having thus outweighed the sacred book, she was honourably acquitted.^ In June, 1760, at the Leicester Quarter Sessions, two men were sentenced to gaol for a month, and to stand in the pillory twice, for ducking some old women as witches. In July, 1785, a woman at Mears Abbey, Northampton, was swum for a witch, but, having immediately sunk, was rescued, amid loud cries of " No witch ! " and met with the sympathy of the whole parish. In April, 1827, William Watkins and three others were convicted at Monmouth Assizes of an assault on a supposed witch. They stripped her, searched her for marks, scratched her, beat her, and tried to throw her into a pond to see if she would svnm. And Sir Walter Scott speaks of a case of supposed witchcraft within his own knowledge in the year 1800. Public opinion had, however, by the middle of the eio-hteenth century, entirely turned against the belief in and the punishment of witchcraft, and the tribunals had long ceased to exercise themselves in pushing spectral evidence and insisting on the stigmata, or the devil's marks. It had also been stimulated in a great degree by the spread of intelligence and information, to which the ^ U'liflcman's Mag., 34, Feb. 1759. 1 88 Side-lights on the Stuarts. exertions of the Royal Society mainly contributed. This Society, founded in 1645, and greatly encouraged by Cromwell, was afterwards incorporated by Charles II., and it did good and strenuous work in this direction, both during the Commonwealth and after the Restora- tion. The German princes also finding no cure, but rather an increase of the crime, had stayed their hands against wizards and witches early in the century; and about 1672 the King of France, shocked by the increase of tortures and of executions, ordered the judges to release all prisoners and to entertain no further prose- cutions for witchcraft. And thus, as people ceased to believe in witches, the witches ceased to believe in them- selves ; and so the whole tribe of witches, wizards, con- jurors, and witch-finders passed silently away, and soon there was not a wizard or a witch to be found from Land's End to John o' Groat's. Here and there some silly country wench might be defrauded of her earnings to purchase her horoscope, or some silly person of a higher station might consult the stars ; but these prac- titioners are not now swum in rivers, hung on the gallows, or burned at the stake. In the place of these tortures, an Act of Parliament (9 Geo. II., c. 5) makes such practices misdemeanours, and entails on the wizard or the witch the penalties of a cheat. But after all one is perplexed to answer the question which naturally arises — What explanation is to be given of this phase of our history ? Were there, in fact, any such compacts, any such spiritual manifestations — in other words, any such witchcraft — as alleged in the seventeenth century? And if so, were these manifesta- tions the production of heated brains or of villany and imposture ? To sustain a charge of imposture is to suppose a combination between the accusers and the Witchcraft. 189 accused; for in many, if not in most, cases the party accused confessed tlie crime. Much has been said of the unsatisfactory character of the evidence on which these charges rested, and I admit that where the accused denied their guilt the evidence was not such as to justify a con- viction upon the principles now apphcable to criminal investigations, but where the parties freely confessed the charge (apart from the administration of torture, which ought to invalidate any confession), then it seems to me that if we once admit the possibility of witchcraft, the evidence was amply sufl&cient to corroborate the con- fession, and was, indeed, as in the case of Marie Smith, all the evidence that could reasonably be required. Our ancestors were not greater fools than ourselves, and probably in common sense and in breadth of view on public questions they were at least our equals. And although the vulgar herd, or, as they were called in the seventeenth century, the mobile, might be governed by vain fears and superstitions, yet among men of posi- tion and of education there must have been many who had satisfied themselves that in one case at least the existence of witchcraft and the communion of men with spirits of evil was indisputably proved. One clearly authenticated case would establish the principle, and on the whole T am disposed to agree with Addison that there were about this time certain vague and supernatural spiritual manifestations ; but the records of these, as of all the old inquiries, are vague and obscure, and I cannot say that in any particular case that I have read I am satisfied in my own mind of the guilt of the accused. Nor is the question ever again likely to be raised in a practical form. The intelligence, if not the scepticism, of the age precludes the possibility of any revival of the belief in sorcery and witchcraft. Rome no longer burns igo SlDE-LrCHTS ON THE StUARTS. her heretics or thunders her anathemas against other religions. The various shades of Protestantism revelling without hindrance or molestation each in the practice of its own peculiar worship, no longer seek to fix upon their opponents a direct communication with the spirits of evil, and a stricter and more logical administration of the law forbids that hearsay evidence upon which many con- victions of witchcraft were founded. Sir Roger de Coverley, with his family pride, his generous impulses, and his popular prejudices, may perchance find his counterpart in many an honest country squire of the present day; but Moll "White, the parish witch, will never again be a possible character in the drama of English life. APPENDIX. INDICTMENTS FOE WITCHCEAFT ON THE WESTERN CIRCUIT' FEOM 1670 TO 1712 INCLUSIVE. Extracted from " The Gaol Books." WiHsbire Elizabeth Peacock. Lameing of Thomas 1670, Webb by witchcraft. Not guilty. July. Devon, Elizabeth Eburye. Lameing of Richard August, 1670. Erost by witchcraft. Not guilty. Aliena "Walter, wife of Lameing of John Pellaoki Thomas Walter. by witchcraft. Not guilty. Somerset, Anne, wife of William Bewitching Anne Wrent- 12 August, Slade. more, an infant, to 1670. death. Not guilty. Murder. Ditto Lameing of Elizabeth Penney by witchcraft. Not guilty. Cornwall, Isaaoh Pearoe, Martha, Feloniously lameing of March, his wife, Honor Georgeby witch- 1671. John Score. craft. Not guilty. " This does not include Bristol, for which there was always a separate oomniissiou. Witchcraft. 191 Devon, Margaret Heddon. Lameing and pineing of April, Margaret Bright by 1671. witchcraft. Not guilty. Murder. Ditto Murdringe of Mary Len- — ' don by witchcraft. Not guilty. Johanna Elford. Lameing and pineing of Alice Pay nter by witch- craft. Not guilty. Wilts, Elizabeth Peacocke,' Feloniously lameing of Not guilty. March, *Juditha Witchall, Thomas Webbe by Guilty. 1672. *Anna Tillinge. witchcraft. Guilty. [Tried by Sir Eichard Eaynsford, L.C.J., and left for execution.] Murder. Elizabeth Peaeocke. Killing and murdring of Mary eTanner by witch- craft. Not guilty. Murder. Ditto Killing and murdring of Margery Neale by witchcraft. Not guilty. Murder. Ditto Killing and murdring of Mary Sharp by witch- craft. Not guilty. Murder. Ditto Killing and murdring of Margery Browne by ■ witchcraft. Not guilty. Eliz. Peacock, Killing of 8 gueldinges Juditha Witchall. and 7 mares, value £150, of goods of Henry Dennynge by witch- craft. Not guilty. Judith Witchall. Lameing of Julyan Webbe by witchcraft. Not guilty. Elizabeth Mills, alias Lameing of Alice Webb Williams. by witchcraft. Not guilty. Ditto Lameing of Thomas Peters by witchcraft. Not guilty. Devon, Phelippa Bruen. Eeloniously lameing of August, John Cann by witch- 1672. craft. Not guilty. Murder. Ditto Killing John Lange by witchcraft. Not guilty. Ditto Lameing of Blzabeth Cann by witchcraft. Not guilty. Ditto Lameing of Helbert Knapman by witch- craft. Not guilty. Somerset, Margaret, wife of John For lameing Jane Bayne- 1672. Stevens. ham by witchcraft. Mary Bridge Not guilty. by witchcraft. Not guilty. She had been tried on a similar charge in July, 1670. 192 Side-lights on the Stuarts. Southton, 1674, August. Southton. July, 1675. Murder. John Knipp. Agnes Knipp. Martha, Eylens. Murder. Ditto Murder. Murder. Murder. Cornwall, March, 1676 Murder. Devon. 1676. Murder. Ditto Ditto Ditto Mary Clarkson. Feloniously lameing of Eleanor, wife of Wm. Ansel) by witchcraft. Not guilty. Thos. Peese by witchcraft. Not guilty. Feloniously killing of Mary, the wife of Tho- mas Lorde by witch- craft. Not guilty. Feloniously bewitching of John Palmer to death. Not guilty. Bewitching of John Alerye to death. Not guilty. Bewitching of Mary Peerse to death. Not guilty. Bewitching of John Spradborowe to death. Not guilty. Murdring of Isabella Hook, daughter of Francis Hook, of the age of eleven yeares and half by witchcraft. Not guilty. Susannah Daye, wife Bewitching of Joan of John. Peerse, wife of Stephen Peerse, to death. Not guilty. Somerset, Anna Bawlins. Bewitching Grace Atkins, 1680. spinster, by which she is much consumed, wasted, pined, and lamed. Not guilty. Devon, Temperancia Lloyd. Bewitching Lidia Bur- li August, man to death. Not guilty. 1682. *Ditto . Witchcraft — consuming Murder. the body of Grace Tho- mas. Guilty. *Susanna Edwards. Witchcraft — consuming the body of Dorcas Coleman. Guilty. *Marie Trembler. Witchcraft — consummg the body of Grace Barnes. Guilty. [Tried by and left for Somerset, March, 1683. Devon, 20 March, 168 k Sir Francis North, Chief Justice, and Sir Thomas Raymond, execution.] Elenora Harris, Su- sannahHarris, Marie Harris, Anna Clarke. *Alicia Mclland. Committing witchcraft upon Charles Atwell. Not guilty. Witchcraft on the bodies of Jane Snow, Wilmot Snow, andAgnesFurze. Guilty. Witchcraft. i9; [Tried before Chief Baron Montagu, and left for execution.] Devon, eptember, Jane Vallett.- 1685. Ditto Ditto 1686. Jane Nicholas. Cornwall. Somerset. Honora Piiippan. Ditto Abigail Handford. M. Parle. Dewnes Knumerton. Elizabeth Hengler. *Margareta Young. Devon. 1687. Wilts. Dorset. Bewitching Wm. Mundy. Guilty. Bewitching of Grace Bad- cock. Not guilty. Bewitching of Anne Foa- sett. Not guilty. Witchcraft. Not guilty. Committing witchcraft on John Tomkiiis. Not guilty. Committing witchcraft on Martha Willing. Not guilty. Committing witchcraft on Catherine Goodson. Not guilty. Bewitching Grace Greist. Not guilty. Bewitching Anne Prit- chett. Not guilty. Bewitching Nathaniel Scorch. Not guilty. Bewitching Anne Payne. Not guilty. Somerset. 1689, Wilts. July. [Tried by Sir Eobert Atkyns, Chief Baron. Sentenced to death, and left for execution, but afterwards reprieved.] Ypiana Dunne. Bewitching Wm. Mundy. Not guilty. Anne Moore, Bewitching Mary Hale, Elizabeth Farrier. spinster. Katherine, wife of For pineing, consumeing, wasteing, and lameing Elizabeth Brally by witchcraft Murdering Susan Cost by witchcraft. Murdering Jane, wife of .John Ham, by witch- craft. Pineing, consumeing, wasteing, and lameing Susannah Sogers by witchcraft. Bewitching Roger An- selbe, jr. Maria, wife of John Bewitching Philadelphia Day.' Row. 1690. Somerset. Devon. 1693-4. Murder. Murder. John Williams. Dorothy Case. Ditto Ditto 1694-5. Clara Roach. 1696. Devon. Not guilty. Not guilty. Not guilty. Not guilty. Not guilty. Not guilty. Not guilty. 2 This woman was tried by JefEreys, between two batches of fugitives fi-om Sedgemoor. 3 Mary Day or Guy was charged with having caused Philadelphia Row to vomit pins, straws, and feathers, and also with appearing to the girl in her fits. 194 SiDE-LIC.HTS ON THE StUARTS. Murder. Wilts. 1698-9. Dorset, August, 1700. Devon, March, 1701-2. Wilts, 1702-3. Somerset, 1707. Elizabeth Horner, alias Gurner.'' Ditto Ditto Ruth Young. Anne, wife of John Grantly, Margaretta Way. Susanna Hannover. Joanna.wife of Stephen Tanner. Mai-ia Stevens Killing Alice Oorbett by witchcraft. Not guilty. Bewitching Sarah Bovett. Not guilty. Bewitching Mary Bovett. Not guilty. Bewitching Jane Mel- sham. Not guilty. Using and practising witchcraft on Frances Gallway whereby she is Not guilty, very much consumed, wasted, pined, and lamed in her body. Not guilty. Bewitching Isaaok French. Not guilty. Using and practising witchcraft on Eebeoca Talbot, spinster, where- by she is very much consumed, wasted, pined, and lamed in her body. Not guilty. Bewitching Dorothy Eeece. Not guilty. "" Elizabeth Horner was charged with bewitching three childi-en of William Bovett, of whom one had died. The children vomitted pins, and were bitten, and pinched, and pricked, whereof the marks appeared. They said that Bess Horner's head would come ofi and go into their bellies. The children's mother said that one of them walked up a smooth wall till her feet were nine feet high, and said Bess held her up. The children also said she was sucked by a toad, and many other odd things. — Hutchinson, p. 45, from notes of L.C..I. Holt, who tried the case. 195 IV. KING CHAELES I. The central point in any history of the Stuarts, if not in any history of the EngHsh nation, must necessarily be the trial of King Charles I. Central, not only from its chronological position as being half-way between the accession of the first James and the deposition of the second, but from its political position as the turning- point in the struggle for popular rights in this country, the culmination of the attempts upon our Parliament and our liberties, and the day from which, practically speaking, our present happy constitution took its rise. The merits and demerits of the king, the character of Cromwell and of the Parliament which would have placed him on the throne, have been discussed over and over again till persons somewhat tire of the theme, but our younger citizens, many of whom look forward to an active social and political life, and most of whom will in some form or other take part in making the history of the future, should at least have a knowledge of the history of the past. And they may well, as part of their poli- tical education, bestow some moments of reflection upon the subject of this monarch's fate and upon the trials and the sufferings of the men who were constituted his judges. Unfortunately, as I believe, the political character of Charles I. has been so far misrepresented by succeeding generations, the inviolable not to say the sacred position 2 196 Sjde-lights on the Stuarts. of kingliood has been so stereotyped by successive writers both before and after the^ period of Hume, and so fully accepted by a sympathetic and not too discriminating public, that the nature and the necessity of the deposition and execution of the king have hardly received that consideration to which I think they are fairly entitled. For two hundred years, from 1660 to 1860, the Church set apart the 30th of January as a day of fast and humiliation.^ Charles was described in the service as a " Sacred King," " the Anointed of Heaven," and a " Blessed Saint and Martyr." The first lesson for the day (2 Samuel, chap, i.) recounted the slaughter by David of the young Amalekite who had killed the dying Saul, and the second lesson (Matthew, chap, xxviii.) gave the trial and condemnation of the Saviour. "We were required to forget everything but the king's tragic fate, and to recognize in the manner of his death both a mur- der and a sacrilege. Memorials of the king have been sought for and almost worshipped. His autographs, his prayers, his books, locks of his hair, are preserved as sacred relics in the depositories of the nation and in the closets of many noble families. Ashburnham Place (the residence of the king's friend and companion) has been many times the scene of pilgrimages by the loyal and devout, and the place that the king has assumed in the minds of the sympathetic and the sentimental, is rather that of a martyr dying for the Christian faith than that of a monarch, who, however estimable in all the private re- lations of life, undoubtedly did his utmost to curtail our ' In 1859 the Queen, on the advice of a Conservative administration upon an address from both Houses of Parliament, ordered the discon- tinuance of the Stuart Services, viz. Gunpowder Plot, Martyrdom of Charles I., and Eestoration of Charles II. The Healing Service, as performed by the Stuarts, seems to have disappeared about the time of Queen Anne. King Charles I. 19; liberties and to enslave our people. By this means, intentionally at first, unwittingly afterwards, English people have been led away by reflections on the closing scene of the monarch's career from a consideration of the facts preceding, justifying, or at the very least palli- ating it. And indeed that scene was one of a touching and impressive character. The king, who, unlike his father or his children, was a man of unblemished personal character, so much so that the staunch republican, Lucy Hutchinson, said, " All men wondered how so good a man could be so bad a prince," had some qualities at least to endear him to his friends and to the nation. He possessed dignity, sobriety, and personal courage. He firmly believed in his own sacred position, and was kindly and lovable in the different relations of life. His face was handsome and refined, and though in stature he was not above medium height, his figure was graceful and soldierly, and his demeanour dignified and regal. His language was free from the oaths and profanity which distinguished alike his father and his sons, but he spoke with a lisp and had a slight impedi- ment in his speech, which, added to his indecision of character, gave him an indecision of manner. Judging from his books that have been preserved, he read much of the literature of his day, both polite and political. On his escape from Hampton Court he dropped in the mud and left behind him a bound volume with his auto- graph on the title-page, of the political tracts of the day.^ The old Romans were too tender-hearted to try Manlius in sight of the Capitol, and it is difficult, though it is necessary, to discuss the conduct and the faults of the king in the sight of the ever-present spectacle of his sorrows and his death. li we wander round the time- This is now in the British Museum, and* is known as The Mud Book. 198 Side-lights on the Stuarts. honoured ruin of some ancient cathedral, stroll through its cloisters, and examine its aisles, we are struck with the incongruous architecture of the place. We find the labours of the Saxon, the Norman, and the Gothic work- man, hopelessly intermingled ; we meet an ugly buttress here, a modern chimney there ; we see decoration mis- applied, old monuments defaced or removed, and new- fangled vulgarities erected in their place, and we feel a sentiment of pain as we reflect that the hand of the reformer must be ruthlessly applied ere the building can be restored to its pristine beauty. But let us leave the ancient town, and, as we mount the hill that parts us from the city, let us look back upon the structure that we have contemplated so 'closely and criticized so keenly. We no longer see its faults ; we recognize only the building in its noblest aspect. All its incongruities, all its defects, all its barbarisms, all its vulgarities disappear, in our contemplation of the whole. The eye is incapable of receiving the details of the scene, and as we cross the brow and the sun sets in the valley, the retreating image of the noble pile is imprinted on the memory for ever. So with King Charles I. We remember the closing scene. We see the sunset of his career on the scaffold at Whitehall. Contemplating the surroundings of his death, we ignore the failings of his life. Our sentiments become the offspring of our heart rather than the deli- beration of our mind ; our judgment is captured by pity when it should alone be surrendered to reason. Before going to the details of the king's trial it will be well to consider shortly the state of the country at that particular time. The king and the Parliament had been at war since 1642. Their respective successes had varied, but ultimately the power of the Parliament had prevailed, and the king had become a prisoner. We King Charles I. 199 know something even now-a-days of the violence of political feeling — how it disturbs the mind and controls the actions of the strongest and the best of men even when no sentiment of religion is invoked. How much greater then must have been the distortion of mind at this period, when one party believed they were contend- ing for liberty and for freedom of thought, action, and religion against popery and despotism, and the other believed they were engaged in a holy war in favour of a sacred king endowed by heaven and by his royal descent with many of the attributes of the Divine Majesty. And this feeling against popery was by no means a matter solely of intolerance or of religious bigotry, for the Par- liamentary party, as afterwards appeared, were disposed to grant to the papists as citizens the same right of a free exercise of religion that they themselves demanded. But popery to the people meant foreign supremacy, despotism, and bloodshed. The fires of Queen Mary were yet hardly cold in the memories of the people, the Gunpowder and other popish plots had shaken their faith in the security of the government, and above all the massacre of St. Bartholomew and the wholesale immi- gration of persecuted Protestants into this country were facts sufficiently recent and notorious, to come home to the minds and the hearts of all our countrymen. The Catholics in England during the latter part of the six- teenth and the early part of the seventeenth centuries played a very remarkable part and held a very peculiar position. They were mostly true to the crown and to the country, and at the time of the Spanish Armada had been second to none in their loyalty and their patriotism. But they were distrusted by all governments. They had their own secret means of intercommunication both at home and abroad, and exercised an influence over the 200 Side-lights on the Stuarts. affairs of the country which has, I think, been much under-rated. There are to be found among the MSS. in various public and private depositories volumes of their secret correspondence on their public and their private affairs. Few, however, of these documents have been transcribed, and the true social and political history of the English Catholics during the reigns of Elizabeth, of James, and of Charles is one that has yet to be written. The religious question, to deal with that first, stood in this position. In the time of Queen Elizabeth there were three distinct classes of religionists : the papists, who existed in large numbers and with power and wealth ; the State Protestants, adherents of the Church of England as by law established; and the Puritans, or Precisians, as they named themselves, who, strongly opposed to the papists, were also opposed to any religious establishment involving prelacy and formal services of the Church. The Puritans, at first weak in numbers and persecuted by the other two, gradually became strengthened in numbers and position by a manly and vigorous exposition of their views and by a strictly moral tone of life, a contrast which gradually became more palpable and more favourable to the Puritan section during the twenty years that King James ruled the country, observing outward signs of probity himself, but keeping a court which set at nought all rules of decency and decorum. As the Puritan element became stronger and obtained a greater hold upon the country, it gained numerous adherents from that class of the community which, without any particular religious senti- ment or political feeling, is attracted towards a rising power either by ambition or by prospect of plunder, and by its want of steadfastness and moderation usually brings in its train more discredit than strength. In the King Charles I. 201 meantime the State Protestants, in order to subdue the Puritans, had more or less openly allied themselves with the papists ; and the Puritans in the course of the civil war, had themselves become divided into two parties, the Presbyterians and the Independents ; the former approaching more nearly in their views to the State Protestants, and inclining towards a constitutional monarchy, and the latter objecting to papists and pre- latists alike, preferring in their hearts a republican to a monarchical form of government. Meanwhile the bond between these two sections of Protestant nonconformists, founded on their common love for liberty and their common hatred of popery, both as a form of government and as a creed, was cemented by the action of the royal party. As that party, during the two reigns of James and Charles, got more conglomerate by the marriage of Charles, the Prince of Wales, to a papist, and by the mixed marriages of papists and State Protestants, which followed, and as the course of life among the aristocracy became more loose, and their licence and disregard of the law more unbridled, the Puritan party became more and more fierce in their denunciation of sin, and in their hatred to popery, to whose evil influence they in great measure attributed it. The Court caterpillars and men of Belial were openly denounced from the Puritan pulpits, with the assent of a great part of the nation, in- cluding many of the nobility, many of the great land- owners and merchants, and nearly the whole of the City of London. On the other hand, no term was too scurrilous, no libel too base to be hurled by a royalist against a Puritan. Mistress Lucy Hutchinson (a daughter of Sir Allen Apsley, of Pulborough, in the county of Sussex, Governor of the Tower, and wife of Colonel Hutchinson, of Owthorpe, Notts, the gallant hero of the siege of 202 Side-lights on the Stuarts. Nottingham), in one of the most delightful of cotem- porary records, thus describes the position of the Puri- tans during the latter part of the reign of the first Stuart king.^ " The payment of civill obedience to the king and the lawes of the land satisfied not ; if any durst dis- pute his imposition in the worship of God, he was pre- sently reckoned among the seditious and disturbers of the public peace and accordingly persecuted : if any were grieved at the dishonour of the kingdome or the griping of the poore, or the unjust oppressions of the subject, by a thousand wayes invented to maintain the riotts of the courtiers and the swarms of needy Scotts the king had brought in to devoure like locusts the plenty of this land, he was a Puritane : if any out of mere morallity and civil honesty dis-countenancedthe abominations of those days, he was a Puritane, however he conformed to their super- stitious worship : if any shewed favor to any godly honest person, kept their company, relieved them in want, or protected them from violent or unjust oppression, he was a Puritane : if any gentleman in this country main- tained the good lawes of the land, or stood up for any public interest, for good order or government, he was a Puritane ; in short all that crossed the viewes of the needie courtiers, the proud encroaching priests, the theevish projectors, the lewd nobilitie and gentry, who- ever was zealous for God's glory or worship, could not endure the blasphemous oaths, ribbald conversation, pro- phane scoffers, sabbath breach, derision of the word of God, and the like: whoever could endure a sermon, modest habitt or conversation, or aniething good, all these were Puritan es : and if Puritanes then enemies to the king and his government, seditious factious hypo- ' " Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson," by his widow, Lucy Ijublished from the original MSS., London, 1810, p. Ili2. King Charles I. 203 crites, ambitious disturbers of the public peace, and finally the pest of the kingdome . . . whom they branded besides as an illiterate, morose, melancholy, dis- contented, crazed sort of men, not fit for humane con- versation : as such they made them not only the sport of the pulpitt, which was become but a more solemns ort of stage, but every stage and every table and every puppett- play, belched forth prophane scoffes upon them, the drunkards made them their songs, all fiddlers and mimicks learnt to abuse them, as finding it the most gamefull way of fooling." To this it must be added, that the clergy adhering to the State Church and the royal standard, were, many of them, so far afraid of being taken for Puritans, that they ran into the other extreme, mixed themselves up in the troubles of the times, became worshippers of Bacchus rather than of Minerva, esta- blished a reputation for being good company, and were the fountain stock of the race of wine-bibbing and cock- fighting parsons, under whom the country suffered at a later period, and of whom it was wittily said, that like their favourite Madeira, " they were better in the bottle than in the wood." This class of clergy, from the highest to the lowest, hated equally the Catholic and the dissenter, so much so, that one of the royal chaplains, after thanking Grod in one of his sermons, that though something of a poet himself, he had never read a line of Chaucer, proceeded to describe the true religion, as standing, like the royal arms, between two rampant beasts, the papist and the Puritan, though which of the two was the king of the forest and which the creature of mythology he forebore to say. The position occupied by the small band of Puritans during the reign of James, was considerably modified during the reign of his successor, and although many of 204 SiDK-LIGHTS ON THE StUARTS. the great leaders of the party eschewed that fantas- tical solemnity and austerity of demeanour which have been assumed to be their historical characteristic, yet there can be no doubt that many of the more violent enthusiasts did assume a role of austere solemnity as a necessary part of their creed ; and that many more, who were neither enthusiasts in religion nor Puritans in morals, aped and accentuated the manners of the more violent, in order, for the time, to be considered enthusi- astic adherents of the Puritan cause. And thus did the insolence and intolerance of each party tend to separate the two, and to prevent that interchange of ideas and compromise of opinions which might possibly have prevented the misery and bloodshed which followed. 1 only say possibly, for England, as has been truly said, loves not coalitions, and the robust heart of our people has always gone out in sympathy to the party who, whether in religion, in morals, or in politics, knows how to fight a battle and to win a victory. The political position stood practically thus : Parlia- ment assumed to represent the nation, and to regard the king as responsible to Parliament for his government of the country ; and, with a view to enforce this position, they desired to have a substantial security for religious and political freedom, for a pure administration of justice, for a control over the taxation of the country, and for a due and regular recurrence of Parhaments. The king, on the other hand, assumed himself to be above Parliament and the law, to be the anointed of heaven and not the elected of the people, and to be compellable, in conscience only, to grant to the nation those laws and those liberties which he considered best fitted for their temporal and eternal happiness. Thus parties stood in the year 1648, by which time the king's impracticability King Charles I, 205 and his insincerity had heated his enemies and cooled his friends. He had begun his downward career by the attempted arrest of the five members in their own House ; he had ended it by a host of iusincere protestations, which he belied at the very time of their utterance. He professed abhorrence of bringing foreign troops into the kingdom, while he was in actual treaty with the French and the Dutch to levy an invading army on his behalf. He declared a horror of popery and papists,* while his queen was in communication with the papists abroad ; and at home he was endeavouring by specious promises to gain the armed support of the murdering papists of Ireland. In the face of the country he entered into treaties with and made promises to Parliament, and at the same time, in secret correspondence with the queen, he avowed his intention to repudiate the action of Parliament, and to cast ofi" the obligations of his concessions, should success attend his efforts in the field. The fatal discovery, after the battle of Naseby, of this private correspondence of the king, combined with his abandonment, at an earlier period of his reign, of Strafford, than whom no monarch had a more true, a more loyal, or a more devoted, though a more mis- guided servant,^ lowered his character alike in the minds of friends and foes, and, while dispiriting the former, prevented the latter accepting his concessions * In his early Kfe the king, when dining with Bishop Senhouse of Gloucester, said that as a papist could not he a good suhject neither could she certaiuly be a good wife. Shortly afterwaids he endeavoured to get as wife the papistical daughter of the King of Spain, and eventually married the papistical daughter of the King of France. — D'Ewes's « College Life," p. 30. * Laud is reported to have said, on seeing Straflbrd going to his execution, " He dies for a monarch who knows not how to be or to be made great.'' 206 SiDE-LIGKTS ON THE StUARTS. without material guarantees, or relying on tte honourable fulfilment of even his most sacred engagements, if at any tinae hereafter the state of the kingdom should enable him safely to violate them. In the autumn of 1648 "the king was still at Caris- brooke, in the Isle of Wight, and a final attempt was made by the Parliament to come to terms, by which the war might have been effectually concluded and Charles might have resumed the reins of government as a con- stitutional sovereign. The army, with Cromwell and the officers, was in the north. The city and a majority of the Parliament were in favour of ending matters by a treaty, and had it not been for Charles' own misguided folly, the final tragedy might have been averted. The king's friends begged him on their knees to assent fully and without delay ^ to the terms proposed : they warned him that his enemies were prepared on any available pretext to pro- tract the negotiations till the army could arrive, when the result might be different, and they entreated him with tears to grant at once to the Parliamentary Commis- sioners those necessary concessions which he would be compelled to yield in the end. But the king, fatally unable to discern the signs of the times, took a wholly exaggerated and unwarranted view of the differences between the Presbyterians and the Independents, the leaders of the Parliament and of the Army, and believed *■ According to the old style the year began on the 25th March and ended on the 24th March of the following year. This continued to be the legal commencement of the year, till 24 George II., 1751, when it was enacted that for the future the year should commence ou the 1st January. Accordingly the year 1751 ended on the 31st December, and had no January, February, or March, which were counted into the year 17r)2. I have, as matter of general convenience, used the new style. ' Burnet's " History of His Own Times" (edition 1850, in one vol.), p. 27. King Charles I. 207 that tbey and the nation were so evenly divided that one or the other would be compelled in due course to appeal for his support, and thus enable him to dictate his terms. He refused the advice alike of his personal friends and adherents and of those who, having no great liking either for himself or for the monarchy of which he was the type, were anxious to avert the scandal of an execution or the continuance of the war. The negotiations accordingly progressed but slowly ; Charles could not be brought to terms, and in the meantime the army arrived in the south and the treaty was broken oft". How can one, looking back upon that time, afifect any surprise at the result ? The king's treachery and his insincerity had become a common scandal, and after the publication of his private papers seized at the battle of JSTaseby, the Parliament could hardly affect to treat with him on equal terms. These papers contained letters to the queen and to various persons, in which, referring to his negotiations with the Parliament, he proceeded to say, amongst other things, that although he called it a Parliament by name, he did not recognize it as such in fact, nor should he so treat it in the event of his success. There were also references to the negotiations opened between himself and Cromwell at Hampton, which, in his letters to the queen, he dealt with in the same spirit. The country was also at this time strongly prejudiced against Charles, both personally and politically. His party was broken up and dispirited, and the great political question of the day was how and in what manner to dispose of the king. Much and long discussion ensued in Parliament and in the army as to the course to be pursued. Ireton and some others were for a public trial, following the imme- diate proclamation of a republic ; but the majority, among whom was Cromwell, were opposed to this ex- 2o8 Side-lights on the Stuarts. treme course, desiring not the destruction of monarcliy altogettier, but the substitution of a form of government having something of the monarchical element in it, esta- blished under such conditions that its elective or popular and limited character should be clearly recognized.^ Whether, it was asked, should the king be deposed and either banished or kept in confinement, or vrhether was it necessary in the interests of society as then constituted in England to put an end at once and for ever to the claim of absolute monarchy and of divine right, and frustrate at the same time the ambitious attempts of foreign potentates, popes or kings ? The former of these courses presented, one may well believe, insuperable objections. To banish the king would have been to have invited the King of Spain or of France to attempt another invasion of this coiintry, with the destruction of all popular liberty; while to keep him prisoner would have been to foment continuous plots for his release and for his return to power. Manifestly, as they conceived, no bargain could be made with the king, nor could any reliance be placed on his good faith ; and in this state of things, as they argued, the only course open to the Par- liament was by one blow to bring these plots and con- spiracies at once to an end, to terminate for ever the civil war which had decimated the country, and to show, by their vigour and their determination, that they had well considered their course, and intended to abide un- flinchingly by it. And although the diversion of the succession from his sons, Charles and James, to the youngest son, Henry, then six years of age, with a long protectorate, might have entered into the minds of some, as it undoabtedly did into that of the king, there was no reason to suppose that either the king or his pai'ty would " Carlyle's "Letters of Cromwell." King Charles I. 209 at that time have assented to such a project. Accordiug to Clarendon, the question of removing the king by poison or by some other mode of secret violence, of which it is said there were many offers, was openly dis- cussed in Parliament, and received some support; but the party led by Ireton and Harrison denounced all secret murders as odious and detestable, as no one would own or could thereafter be held responsible for the assassination, whereas if he were brought to a public trial, all men would know who were his accusers and who were his judges, and the openness and notoriety of the proceedings would be the best security against the re- currence of those evils with which they had to contend.^ In this the Independents were undoubtedly right, for had the king fallen in battle, or had he died in prison or in banishment, the lesson they desired to teach the world would have failed of its effect. And, above all things, they determined — and in this resolution they carried their whole party with them — that their action and their reasons should be open and above-board, that there should be nothing done in a corner, but that the whole country and the whole world should be at once their spectators and their critics. Many years afterwards, on the 4th of July, 1776, the patriots of our American colonies deter- mined to throw off the yoke of this country, and to proclaim an independent republic. For their mutual encouragement and defence they one and all signed what is known as the Declaration of Independence. It was an act of open and armed insurrection against their sove- reign and against the laws of this country. They recog- nized the nature and the consequences of their act ; they knew the penalty of an unsuccessful rebellion; they were alive to the internecine character of the sanguinary " Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 250. 2IO Side-lights on the Stuarts. struggle in wliicli they were to engage ; but they made their solemn league and covenant, and put their hands to the celebrated declaration with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, and mutually pledged to each other, in furtherance of their scheme, their lives, their foi-tunes, and their sacred honour. And those of our countrymen who, in the seventeenth century, were parties to the trial and condemnation of their king, no less fully and fearlessly realized their position, and, no less than their successors, knew that by declaring thus openly in the face ,of day for this inquisition of blood, they equally engaged their fortunes and their lives for the honesty and success of their policy. And this engagement, which was afterwards enforced against them, they fairly and honestly redeemed, by their subsequent conduct in defeat, by their remarkable fidelity to each other, by their courage and fortitude under the most barbarous of trials and of tortures, by the confiscation of their goods and of their estates, and by their deportation from home, from family, and from friends. Nor was this body of Independents composed of the scurvy rapscallions of the Long Parliament, or of men wanting in political position and social consideration, apart from their participation in public affairs. A biography of the Commissioners of the High Court of Justice^ was compiled with much care, and published in 1798, by the Reverend Mark Noble, Rector of Earning, in Kent. It breathes the spirit of the most ultra-Royalism, and is dedicated with cynical com- pliments to the Regicides of France. As an instance of this gentleman's advocacy of his cause, he suggests, in answer to an observation made on the scaffold by Miles Corbet in May,. 1662, that "the immoralities, lewdness, and corruptions of all sorts which had been introduced ' Noble's "English Eegioidcs," London, 1798. King Charles I. 211 and encouraged since the late revolution, were no incon- siderable justification of their proceedings," that such demoralization of society arose "from the excess of joy- that pervaded all orders of men to have the re-establish- ment of the religion and government of their ancestors."^ Discarding, however, Mr. Noble's opinions, and accepting the facts which he has ascertained and published with regard to each of these Commissioners, we find that, in the first place, they were mostly members of Parliament, a position of greater honour and responsibility than at the present day ; they were nearly all members of one or other of the Universities, or of one of the Inns of Court, the latter being at that time a certiBcate of education and gentility equivalent to a university degree. The members of Parliament were mostly country gentlemen, who represented their own counties, or men of good position in the boroughs for which they sat. Many were members of noble families, and nearly all were men of fortune. Sir John D'Anvers was a direct descendant of Queen Catherine Parr, and for many Parliaments represented the University of Oxford, and Challoner was a well-known man of science. There is nothing, as far as I know, to be said against the personal character of any of these men. They were actuated by a sincere, though some may think a mistaken, love for their country and for free institutions, and by a hatred of monarchy, as implying personal government, the debasement of the people, and foreign supremacy, as opposed to popular government and freedom of thought, ^ Noble's "Eegicides," vol. i. p. 155. The spectacle of Charles suppiug alternately with Moll Davis and Nell Gwynne from excess of joy at the restoration of the Established Church, and receiving a pension from France in honour of our ancient Government, would certainly bo unique. p 2 2 12 Side-lights on the Stuarts. Avord, and action. And many of tlaem were equally fearless and independent in opposing Cromwell's as- sumption of the supreme power, and what at a later date they considered the usurpation of Richard. Matters were also becoming complicated about this time by the uprising of a third section, hardly numerous enough to be called a party, of whom the men of Sussex and Hants formed no inconsiderable portion. They pro- fessed to belong to neither party; but calling them- selves clubmen, and armed mainly with clubs, held a position of their own, bound together to the extent of some 15,000 men, to protect their own homes and property against the exactions alike of king and of Parliament ; thus forming the dangerous nucleus of a general strike against all government and all taxation, threatening further bloodshed and strife. Against this the whole nation was loudly protesting, and there can, I think, be no doubt that one at all events of the main reasons that induced the Independents to vote the king's death, was the great and natural longing for peace and for the cessation for ever of this wicked and detestable civil war. In this state of feeling in Parliament and among the predominant section of the Puritans, orders were given to bring the king to the neighbourhood of London, and Colonels Harrison and Corbet were charged with the duty. An attempt to escape had been made from Hampton Court which had ended in the king being delivered up by his friends, with their usual indiscre- tion, to Colonel Hammond, a Parliamentary ofl&cer and Governor of the Isle of Wight, who thenceforth held the king prisoner at Carisbrooke Castle. Here again, attempts were made to effect the king's release, one of which appears to have failed either through his friends King Charles I. 213 not ascertaining before the attempt, that the bars of the wiado\v were wide enough to let the prisoner through, or by reason of the indiscreet chattering of some of his partisans. He was then removed to Hurst Castle, where, on the 10th of December, he was visited by Colonel Harrison, with orders from the Parliament to bring the king to London. Harrison approached his Majesty with courtesy, and addressed him uncovered; and on the road to Windsor had many and long con- versations with him. The king, who appears to have been impressed with the honesty of Harrison's character, afterwards expressed himself towards him in kindly terms, somewhat inconsistent with the violent and un- restrained enmity afterwards shown to him by the king's party, who acted, however, upon a recognized law of nature which gives to the sucker sharper points than to the rose. The king, afraid of some attempt on his life, consulted Harrison, who assured him, in the tone of one who had knowledge and authority to speak, that whatever was done would be done openly in the face of day. Personally courteous, however, to the king, Hari'ison was thoroughly alive to his duty to the Parliament whose officer he was, and he so guarded the monarch, that from the moment he left the castle no escape was pos- sible. With a view to a rescue, the Eoyalists put them- selves into communication with Lord Newburgh at Bagshot, and arranged for the king's escape by means of fleet horses, to be supplied on his arrival at that place. To carry out this scheme the king requested of Harrison that he might rest for his mid-day meal at the house of his old friend, and to this Harrison readily assented. But the party proceeding by a slow march to the appointed spot, found on their arrival that Harrison had sent forward a party of dragoons, who had searched the 2 14 Side-lights on the Stuarts. mansion and the grounds, and rendered impracticable any escape from Lord Newburgh's house. After leaving Bagshot, the king having, in concert with his adherents, on more than one occasion complained of discomfort from the horses that he rode, asked, while crossing the heath, to be allowed to change his mount for one of those supplied by Lord Newburgh. This also was granted, but it was then found that not only was the party escorted by a troop of Life Guards, who rode at a respectful distance from the king and his friends, allowing them ample oppor- tunities of conversation, but that the country before and behind, to the right and to the left of them, was patrolled by Harrison's cavalry to the number of about two thousand, who kept the party continually surrounded, advancing as they advanced, and resting as they rested, thus rendering impossible any escape by flight. And here, again, bad luck appears to have attended the king, for even had he been able to escape, the horse on which it was intended he should have raced for his life, was found to have beenlamed in the night by the kick of one of his stable companions.'' On the 12th of December the king arrived at Windsor, and was allowed free access to his friends, though no addresses were delivered to him, nor was any private con- versation permitted without the authority of General Fair- fax or the Speaker. He is described as showing no great discontent ; as having ordered three new suits of clothes, one being of black satin lined with plush, and the others of cloth embroidered with rich gold and silver lace,* and that as to the approaching trial, " he has not yet fully delivered his mind whether he intends to plead or not." ^ ' Noble's '^ Eegioidos," vol. i. p. 310. ■' Modcnilv fntrl/i(/cncei; December '28th, 1648. '' J'rrfre/ Weekly Account, January 3rd, 1649. King Charles I. 215 Under these conditions the king remained at Windsor, while the debates proceeded in London. Matters were not, however, held long in suspense, for on the 23rd of December, 1648, a Parliamentary Committee was ap- pointed to consider how to proceed in a way of justice against the king and other capital offenders in the Civil War ; and on the 1st of January, 1649, it was declared and adjudged by the Commons, that by the fundamental laws it is treason in the King of England for the time being, to levy war against the Parliament and kingdom. This resolution was thrown out by the Lords on the 2nd of January, but on the 3rd of January it was re- resolved by the Commons, with a further resolution that the people are (under God) the original of all just powers. That themselves, being chosen by and representing the people, have the supreme power in the nation. That whatever is enacted or declared for law by the Commons in Parliament hath the force of a law and the people concluded thereby, though consent of king and peers be not had thereunto. It being now publicly known that it was the intention of the Parliament to have a public trial, with such judgment as might thereafter be agreed upon, the King of Prance took a step which must have been fatal to the prospects of Charles, and have settled the minds of many of the Roundheads who, though strongly favouring either an abdication or a deposition, were not as yet prepared for the more resolute course of putting the king to death. " The most Christian king," on the 2nd of Janiiary, 1649, published a proclamation to th.e people of England, denouncing the Parliament and their horrible and abominable proceedings, and threatening " full revenge to the utter extirpation of themselves, their wives, and 2i6 Side-lights on the Stuarts. their chilrlren," upon one and all who took part against the king." This was circulated, with their usual mal- adroitness, by the king's party, who were even then utterly unable to appreciate the feeling of the people, or the effect that such a proclamation must necessarily have had on the king's position. The Parliament and the army treated this proclamation for the moment with contempt, reserving their reply to a more favourable time, but the Scottish Commissioners having addressed a somewhat similar communication to the Parliament, they were taken into custody, sent under a military escort to the Scotch frontier, and informed that any overt acts towards the restoration of Charles or towards the reopening of the late civil war would be treated as acts of treason. This tended to expedite matters, and on Saturday, January 6th, 1649, the Parliament gave its answer to the King of Prance by passing an Act con- stituting a High Court of Justice for the trial of the king, and appointing eighty members of Parliament and others as High Commissioners of the court. On Monday, 8th of January, the Commissioners for the first time met in the Painted Chamber. In this I'oom, dating back to a period long before the Norman invasion, and believed to have been the death-place of Edward the Confessor, decorated with frescoes of the earliest recorded battles of the country, and with portraits of distinguished Englishmen since the time of Stephen, the Commissioners regularly sat in deliberation, day by day, before their adjournment to Westminster Hall.^ Their first step was '■ Newspapers and pamphlets for 1649. British Museum, c. 38, g. 10. ' The Painted Chamber was destroyed in the fire whioli early in this century burnt the Houses of Parliament. The frescoes in a somewhat neglected condition were then on the walls, and some sketches of them are given in Knight's " History of London," vol. vi. p. 132. King Charles I. 217 to appoint Mr. Aske, a counsel in large practice and a Bencher of the Inner Temple f Dr. Dorislaus, an eminent civilian ; ^ Mr. Steel, the Attorney-General, ^ and Mr. Cooke, the Solicitor-General, to conduct the proceedings on behalf of the Commonwealth, and to order the Act and the forthcoming trial to be proclaimed throughout the metropolis. Acting on their instructions, Mr. Dendy, the serjeant-at-arms, proceeded on the following day (Tuesday, 9th January) to make the necessary proclama- tions. " About ten a.m., being attended with six trumpets and a guard of two troops of horse, himself with them on horseback bearing his mace, rideth into the middle of Westminster Hall (the Court of Chancery then sitting at a General Seal), when, after the said trumpets sounding (the drums then likewise beating in the Palace Yard) he caused the said proclamation to be made."^ He then proceeded in the same state to make the proclamation at the Old Exchange' and at Oheapside, " during which time all the streets were thronged with spectators, with- out the least violence, injury, or affront publicly done or " He was appointed Justice of the Upper Bench in 1649, and died in 1656. ^ He was appointed English Minister to Holland, and was assassi- nated at the Hague, by some of the king's party. ^ He was excused taking part in the trial by reason of his illness, but he expressed his entire concurrence in the proceedings (State Trials, vol. iv. p. 1064). He took part in some of the state trials after the king's death, and was succeeded as Attorney- General to the Commonwealth, by Edmund Prideaux, Esq., a Bencher, and for eleven successive years Treasurer of the Inner Temple. Mr. Prideaux retained his position as iirst law officer until the Restoration, when he retired to his country seat in Devon, and lived peaceably on his means till 1669. His son, however, Mi'. Ed. Prideaux, for some fancied sympathy with Monmouth, was " given " by James II. to Jeffreys, who settled with him for a payment of 15,000Z., less a discount of 240^. for money down. ^ State Trials, vol. iv. p. 1055. 2i8 Side-lights on the Stuarts. offered." And indeed the people seem to have quietly acquiesced in the proceedings of Parliament, and, without having any very strong desire for the king's death, to have considered he was suffering the fortune of war, and then, as at the time of the execution, to have indicated by their proceedings no very pronounced interest in the matter. On Wednesday, the 10th, the Commissioners met and appointed Serjeant Bradshaw to be Lord President of the Court. Notwithstanding a description of Mr. Bradshaw by the organ of the king's party ^ as " pleading at Chester for a five shilling fee in greasy cut-fingered gloves," he was in reality a gentleman of good family and position in Cheshire, having been born and resident at Marple Hall, one of the few estates that have descended through many generations in a direct line to the present owner. The Lord President was a personal friend and some con- nection of John Milton, who frequently visited him, and wbo has described him as a man of great worth and generosity and of courageous and independent mind, qualities which he showed at a later date when resisting what he conceived to be the unlawful interference of the Protector with the due discharge of his judicial duties."* He was much consulted in chambers, and had practised at Chester and on the northern circuit; was a sound lawyer, and a man of resolution, and he conducted the trial, as will afterwards be seen, with dignity, courage, and decorum. On Friday, 12th, the Commissioners met again to settle the mode of trial, and appointed a committee to make the necessary preparations, " that it may be performed in a solemn manner," and that the necessary accommo- dations be made for the public and the court. They ' Mercurius Eleiidicus, February 13th, 1648-9. ■* See note to State Trials, vol. v. SKKJEAM EEADSHAW. Fiom a portrait by Worlledgc. King Charles I. 219 further ordered that none be permitted to speak at the trial but the President and the counsel ; that any ques- tions which the Commissioners desired to be resolved should be put through the President, and that if any difficulty arose, the Commissioners should not discuss it in open court, but adjourn to the Painted Chamber to consider thereof. On Saturday, 13th, orders were given to search and secure the vaults under the Painted Chamber where Guy Fawkes had made his unsuccessful attempt to blow up the Parliament, and that the trial should take place at the end of Westminster Hall, where the Courts of King's Bench and Chancery sat, the partition between the two courts being taken down for that purpose. As the duration of the trial was uncertain and Hilary Term was approaching, a Bill was introduced on Monday, 15th, and afterwards passed into an Act, adjourning the commence- ment of Hilary Term for a fortnight. On Wednesday, 17th, the Commissioners were engaged in completing their arrangements for the custody and arraignment of the king. They ordered that during the trial he should lodge at Sir Robert Cotton's house in Old Palace Yard, giving particular directions as to his rooms, his guards, and his attendants ; and " that he be brought out of Sir Robert Cotton's house to his trial the lower way into Westminster Hall, and so brought to the bar in face of the court," attended by his guard. Directions were also given for fitting up Westminster Hall with rails, platform, stages &c., and that guards be set upon the leads and other places that have windows looking into the hall, and that all back doors from the house called Hell be stopped up during the king's trial.^ The Lord President was to be lodged at Sir ^ There were then existing in the Old Palace Yard two celebrated 2 20 Side-lights on the Stuarts. Abraham Williams' house, in New Palace Yard, during the trial, and to be attended by twenty ofl&cers or other gentlemen, and all proper necessaries were to be provided for him and for the king, who was also to be attended by thirty officers and gentlemen. On this order the king was brought to London, and was lodged with Sir Robert Cotton,® in whose house in Old Palace Yard he lived till he was removed to St. James's for the few days prior to his execution. For his bedroom he was allotted the chamber next to Sir Robert's study, and for his dining-room, the great chamber adjoining. The house was guarded by troops of the Parliamentary army, a guard-room capable of accommodating 200 soldiers being built for the purpose in Sir Robert's garden near the water side, and thirty officers and other choice men were told off for personal attendance upon the king under the command of Colonel Tomlinson. The king was also allowed his own personal attendants, including several noblemen and gentlemen of his suit.'' On Friday, the eating-houses, called respectively TM Heaven and TIte Hell Taverns, the latter having access to Westminster Hall, but the former being the more fashionable. Some account of these is given in Pepys' Diary, vol. i. p. 16, and Butler, in " Hudibras," speaking of Cromwell's head, which then stood on a pike at the end of the hall, says Sterry — " In false erroneous dream Mistook the new Jerusalem Profanely for the apocryphal False Heaven at the end o' th' Hall." (Part iii., Canto 2.) " " In the passage out of Westminster HaU into Old Palace Yard, a little beyond the stairs going up to St, Stephen's Chapel, now the Par- liament House, on the left hand is the house belonging to the antient noble family of the Cottons, wherein is kept a most inestimable library of MSS. volumes, famed both at home and abroad." Stow's " Survey," vol. ii. p. 633. ' Accounts of the proceedings in Parliament and of the trial and execution are to be found in various cotemporary writers, but I have King Charles I. 221 19tli of January, Mr. Cook (Solicitor-General) in the absence, through illness, of Mr. Steel (Attorney-General) settled the charge to be preferred against the king, and it was read first, second, and third time, and passed. Directions were also given that the " serjeant-at-arms do secure Mr Squibb's^ gallery by such ways and means as he shall conceive meet." On Saturday, 20th, the Commissioners, to the number of sixty-seven, met in the Painted Chamber at noon, and resolved to leave the carriage of the trial to the Lord President, with power to adjourn the court as he thought necessary. " But as to the prisoner's putting off his hat, the court will not insist upon it for this day, and if the king desire time to answer, the Lord President is to give him time." The Solicitor-General having then signed the charge, which had been ingrossed upon parch- ment, the Commissioners adjourned to Westminster Hall, and the famous trial began. "Westminster Hall had been duly arranged for the trial,® the old Courts of Law and Equity having been temporarily removed, and raised benches having been placed at the west end of the hall, for the accommodation of the Lord President and the Commissioners of the High Court. Galleries had been erected for the ladies, who came in great numbers with their masks as at a mainly relied for the following statement upon the details to be found in the State Trials and in the various newspapers, which, taking different sides of the question, agree in the main features of the picture. * Mr. Squibb seems to have been a gentleman and a friend of Samuel Pepys. See " Diary," vol. i. p. 16. A Mr. Bodurdoe seems also to have had a gallery running out of his house into "Westminster Hall. " The arrangements seem to have been somewhat similar to those made for the trial of Warren Hastings in 1788, and the old prints of that trial will give a very good idea of the appearance of the hall at the trial of the king, without, however, the women in masks and the red coats of the soldiers of the Commonwealth. 222 SlDE-LIGIITS ON THE StUARTS. play, and for others attending the trial; and a stout railing, some forty feet from the Commissioners' benches, crossed the hall, and afforded ample space for the public. A crimson velvet chair, with a judge's desk in front, indicated the seat of the Lord President, and two smaller seats, one on each side, were reserved for Mr. Lisle ^ and Mr. Say,^ two of the Commissioners who had been appointed to assist him in his duties. At a table below, covered with Turkey carpet, sat Mr. Andrew Broughton* and Mr. John Phelps, the clerks of the Court, and before them, at the feet of the Lord President, lay the sword and the mace. Rails on either side of the hall separated the people from the soldiers, and a passage was kept open between the hall and the Painted Chamber. Scarlet was the predominating colour of the scene. The ' This gentlemaB, son of Sir William Lisle, of Wootton, in the Isle of Wight, who was afterwards one of Oliver's Lords of Parliament, and for a time President of the High Court, was educated at Magdalen Hall and the Temple. He sat for Winchester in 1640, and was Master of St. Cross till 1649. At the Restoration he took refuge at Lausanne, where, in 1664, he was murdered, by two Irishmen of the king's party, disguised as grooms, who shot him at the door of the parish church, as he was about to enter for Divine Service. Immediately on their act they cried out " Vive le Boy," mounted their horses, and escaped into Prance. His widow, the Lady Alice Lisle, in September, 1685, being then over seventy years of age, after living a quiet and respected life in the country, was the first prisoner brought before Jeffreys at the Bloody Assize, charged with high treason, in harbouring one John Hicks, a fugitive from Sedge- moor. The judge threw in her teeth her husband's crime to the late king^ and, on her conviction, sentenced her to be dragged to the stake and burned forthwith. Her sentence was, however, commuted by the king, in consideration of her noble pedigree, into a sentence of death by beheading. She declared on her trial, and in this she was supported by the Ladies Abergavenny and St. John, that she was no favourer of the death of the old king, that she never left her house the day of his execution, and that she wept for him more than any lady in the land. ' He escaped before the Restoration, and died abroad. ^ He died at Vcvey, having escaped before the Restoration. King Charles I. 223 benches and seats for the Commissioners were covered with scarlet cloth. The soldiers who lined the hall, filled Palace Yard and protected the windows, were in the scarlet uniform of the Gruards. Colonel Axtell, in charge of the interior of the hall, with his brother ofl&cers, were in full dress with scarlet uniforms, and the gold- headed canes of the period. Numerous messengers, mounted and on foot, attended in and out of the hall, and by two o'clock on Sunday, January 20th, all was prepared. There is an old and familiar print, which has been frequently copied from Mason's Report, showing West- minster Hall at the time of the trial. It purports to be the work of an eye and ear witness of the occasion, and to give a general outline of the scene. It is, however, obviously incorrect in very many particulars, and among others in its rendering of the size of "Westminster Hall. So far, however, as an indication of the arrangements, it may be assumed to be correct. Judging from this and other cotemporaneous accounts, it appears that the benches for the Commissioners, to the number of eighty, ran up to nearly the centre of the western window. The king's crimson velvet chair, in which he afterwards sat surrounded by his friends, stood immediately facing the court, and with its back to the people. Bradshaw, Lisle, and Say occupied the lower tier of benches, and under them were the clerks of the court. Cromwell and Henry Martin sat on the back row, immediately under the arms of the Commonwealth, which had replaced those of the Royal Family. The Sohcitor- General (Cooke), Mr. Aske and Dr. Dorislaus, counsel for the Parliament, were allotted a table close to the king. A passage was kept open to the Court of Wards, where the Court adjourned to deliberate, as also another leading to the private apart- ment provided for the king, and a third to the entrance 224 Side-lights on the Stuarts. by which the king came from Sir Robert Cotton's. The ofl&cers walked up and down these passages, and stood between the people and the soldiers. The floor of the hall was covered with matting, and the entrances to the Taverns at the back of the galleries, though not to the private houses, were bricked up.* Punctually to the hour, the Lord President, wearing a high-crowned beaver hat, lined, as was said, with steel,^ pre- ceded by the sword of state borne by Mr. Humphreys, and by the mace borne by the serjeant-at-arms, and followed by his two assistants and the other Commissioners of the High Court, entered Westminster Hall from the Painted Chamber, and took his place in the centre of the tribunal. His twenty gentlemen attendants and his guard ranged themselves below the bar. The Lord President, Mr. Lisle, and Mr. Say, being all gentlemen of the Long Robe, and being charged with the conduct of the trial, wore their robes, the former, except on the last day, wearing the black embroidered and tasselled gown of a serjeant-at-law, and the others the ordinary stuff gown of the practising barrister. Silence was then called, and ■' There are extant a few other prints of the trial published, some ia Prance, some in Holland during the Common-wealth, and others in England, after the Eestoration. In these, the appearance of "Westminster Hall is curiously burlesqued, and the details are entirely inconsistent with the admitted facts. In all, however, the leadmg feature is Lady Fairfax, among a number of other ladies, in an outrageously low dress, and un- masked, shaking her fist at the President. ^ This identical hat is said to be in the Ashmole Museum at Oxford. The wearing of steel or iron hats was, however, by no means uncommon ^luring the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. An iron hat, commonly worn by Charles I. , and almost identical in shape with that worn by him at the trial, is, or was not long since, preserved as a relic at Warwick Castle. A drawing of this is given in Planche's Cyclopaedia of Costume, p. 307. King Charles I. 225 the great door of Westminster Hall was thrown open, in order that all citizens of London and "Westminster, with- out distinction of person or of party, desirous to see and hear the proceedings, might attend the Court. They came flocking in, and day by day till the end of the trial that half of Westminster Hall reserved for the public was crowded with people, who preserved great decorum throughout the proceedings ; but on the king leaving at the close of each day they seem to have given free expres- sion to their views, some shouting for the king, but the most part for justice. The Commissioners were then called over, and sixty-seven answered to their names. The Court being thus constituted, the king was sent for, and arrived in about a quarter of an hour with Colonel Tomlinson and Colonel Hacker, his guards, and his retinue. On his arrival at the hall, he was met by Mr. Dendy, the serjeant-at-arms, with the mace, and escorted by him to a crimson velvet seat at the bar. The king, looking sternly at the court and at the crowded galleries, sat himself down quietly in his chair without removing his hat, but shortly rose again and looked intently through the hall, scanning the features of those near him in search for friends or adherents ; his guard in the meantime ranging themselves along the sides of the building, and his own personal attendants closing around him. The old hall of William Rufus, with its magnifi- cent roof of Spanish chestnut, has witnessed many a weird and wondrons sight. In its early days the home of feasting and revelry, it afterwards held the Parliaments of Henry HI. and of Richard II., then it became the scene of great state functions, and afterwards of many solemn and stately trials. It witnessed the trial of Lambert, when King Henry YIII. himself sat as judge, the trials of Northumberland and the supporters of Lady Q 2 26 Side-lights on the Stuarts. Jane G-rey, of Strafford, of the seven Bishops, and later on of Warren Hastings; but no spectacle within its walls could have been more solemn or more impressive than when the king, in the graceful costume of the period, with the jewel of the great British order sparkling on his breast, sat calm and dignified in its midst, surrounded by the glaring scarlet of the troops, faced by the Com- missioners with their officers and assistants, some in the sad Puritan garb of the civilian, some in the scarlet and some in the buff coating of the army ; others in the handsome dress of the country gentleman ; the two galleries filled with privileged and eager spectators, the one with gentlemen of distinction, the other with ladies sitting as at a Carnival in their dominoes and masks, the public surging and crowding to the audience, and all with breathless interest awaiting the proceedings of the court. The famous trial was opened by the Lord President, in the name of the court, addressing the king and acquaint- ing him " That the Commons of England assembled in Parliament, being deeply sensible of the evils and calamities that had been brought on this nation, and of the innocent blood that had been spilt in it, which was fixed upon him as the principal author of it, had resolved to make inquisition for this blood, and according to the debt they did owe to Cod, to justice, the kingdom, and themselves; and according to that fundamental power that rested and trust reposed in them by the people, other means failing through his default, had resolved to bring him to trial and judgment; and had therefore constituted that Court of Justice, before which he was then brought, where he was to hear his charge, and upon which the court would proceed according to justice.'"' '■ State Tiiuls, vol. iv. p. 11 GO, King Charles I. 227 The Solicitor-General, seated witMn tlie bar witt the other counsel for the Commonwealth, was then about to state the charge against the king, when the latter, laying his stiaff gently two or three times on the shoulder of the Solicitor-Greneral, desired him to hold. The President, however, ordered the Solicitor to proceed, and he accordingly presented the charge already agreed on by Parliament. At this point an incident happened which was considered of evil omen at the time, and for which Charles himself, in his latest moments, declared to Bishop Juxon that " to that very hour he knew not how it possibly came about." The silver head of the staff with which he touched the Solicitor-General suddenly came off and fell upon the floor, the king himself picking it up with signs of manifest discomfiture.'' As the charge was being read, the king on hearing the words traitor and murderer in reference to his making war on the Parliament, laughed in the face of the court, which was also somewhat embarrassed by the exclamations of some one in the ladies' gallery, supposed to be Lady Fairfax, wife of the general, who, on his name being called, said, " He has too much wit to be here," and on the charge being read in the name of the people of England, cried out, " Not a tenth of them." The soldiers being ordered to quiet the women in the gallery, made a show of pointing their muskets to the ladies' seats, and the serjeant-at-arms called upon them to unmask, but some discreet person having got Lady Fairfax, who still wore her mask, out from among the spectators, and put her in one of the rooms of an adjoining house belonging to ' Sir Philip Warwick, in his Memoirs, dwelling upon this incident as having made a great impression on the king, hints that " perhaps Hugh Peters had something to do with it," but whether by way of witchcraft, or how otherwise, he does not suggest. Q, 2 2^8 Side-lights on the Stuarts. Mr. Bodurdo, and the serjeant-at-arms not being able to arrest tlie offender, no further interruptions occurred. The king, who before coming to the court had been very undecided what course to pursue, in reply to the President, and on the advice of his friends, declined to answer the charge, upon the ground that Parliament, being composed of King, Lords, and Commons, could not be duly constituted without his assent ; and that there was no warrant or precedent for a people to try their King. The Lord President, however, as in duty bound, sustained the jurisdiction of the court, constituted as it was by the de facto Parliament of the country, and ad- journed the court till Monday at nine, in order that the king might in the meantime consider of the matter. As the king turned to leave the court, he looked at the table on which lay the sword and mace and the parchment charge, and said, " I do not fear that," though it is doubtful to which of the three he referred ; and noticing Sir Henry Mildmay, who had formerly held the post of Keeper of the Jewel-House to his Majesty, seated among the- Commissioners, he looked him in the face and said, " Oh you are a precious jewel." ® There is little doubt that at this time neither the king nor his party realized the state of feeling in Parliament and in London, but that the king still regarded himself as essential to one or other of the parties in the state, and as the necessary arbiter be- tween them. This open investigation of his conduct was so entirely without precedent as applied to any sovereign, so inconsistent with any theoi-y of divine right, from which standpoint he was apt to regard all his surroundings, that he could not conceive it possible that •* " The Pretended High Court of Justice unhowelled," &c. London, printed for Thomas Hairman, 1660. King Charles I. 229 the trial could have any other object than to extort from him further concessions than those he was then willing to grant. "With him, as with his adherents, the doctrine of his divine right and royal supremacy was not an opinion, it was a creed, and the idea of a reciprocity of duty between a king and his people was no more admis- sible than that of a mutuality of obligation between a man and his Maker. It may be also, that the unpunished exclamations of Lady Fairfax, the apparently divided opinion of the public in the court, the repeated adjourn- ments, the varying attendance of the Commissioners, and the bearing of the President, led him to under-estimate the powerful and resolute character of his opponents. However this may have been, the events of the next few days must have rudely shaken this confidence of his friends and of himself; for on Sunday, the 21st, the Parliament took a step which was, with them, always cotemporaneous with the execution of some well con- sidered and courageous design. They called a solemn fast and a religious service, which was attended by all the Commissioners for the trial; and throughout London and Westminster public services were simultaneously held, and prayers offered up for the good guidance of Parliament in this matter. On Monday, the 22nd, the Commissioners sat again, seventy being present, and the king was again called upon to answer the charge, and on his again refusing, the Solicitor- General prayed that his default be taken as a confession of the charge. The President, acting under the direction of the Commission, ordered the default to be recorded, and then adjourned the Court to the follow- ing day. On Tuesday, the 23rd, seventy-one Commissioners beiug present, the king was again required to make his 230 Side-lights on the Stuarts. answer to the charges against him, and again refusing, the court was adjourned for the examination of witnesses, the king saying to the President, as he left the hall, " Pish ! I care not a straw for you." Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, the 24th, 25th and 26th, were occupied in the examination of witnesses in the Painted Chamber, to which also the public appear to have had access, to prove the indisputable fact that the king was in arms against the Parliament. During these three days, also, public feeling was arousedy and the mind of Parliament was exercised by the intelligence that Prince Rupert, who, driven from the land, had taken to the sea, was cruising round the coast with a fleet of fourteen men-of-war, and, while the Parliamentary fleet was unprovisioned and undermanned, not four hundred sailors being forthcoming, was driving the whole channel before him, and had just captured a merchantman laden with cloth of the value of 50,000L» On Saturday, 27th January, the Court sat for the last time, to deliver its sentence, sixty-seven Commissioners being present. Bradshaw, on this occasion, wore a scarlet robe, " an indication of the bloody business on which he was engaged," says a royalist author, but in fact the scarlet robe which a serjeant-at-law commonly wore at that period, and which is always worn by him now when sitting as commissioner at a criminal assize. Before coming into court, the Commissioners, as usual, met in the Painted Chamber, and passed a resolution that if the king, even then, desired to be heard in answer to the charge, he should be so heard, and that a copy of the charge should be delivered to him. This being suggested to the king, he again desired to be heard, not in answer to the charge, but against the jurisdiction of the court; " Diurnal, February 5tli, 1C49. King Charles I. 231 and this being refused, lie requested a private interview with the Lords and Commons in the Painted Chamber before sentence was delivered, as he had that to say which concerned both. The President and a great majority of the Commissioners were for peremptorily rejecting the request, but some of their body being strongly in favour of acceding to the king's proposal, the President adjourned to the Court of Wards adjoining Westminster Hall, in order to the private discussion of this matter, and in the meantime the king was removed from the bar. After the lapse of half an hour, the Commissioners returned into court, and the king was informed that they considered the request was a pretext for further delay, and would proceed to pronounce sentence. The king admitted it was a request for delay, but said it was a delay which he conceived would be for the peace of the kingdom, and that as he could not be heard as he desired, he had nothing more to say. The President then delivered the judgment, and the clerk of the court read the sentence, that he "be put to death by the severing of his head from his body." Whereupon, each Commissioner present, according to previous agree- ment, taking severally upon himself, and jointly with his colleagues, the burthen of the decree, rose from his seat and remained standing, while the President declared : " The sentence now read and published is the Act, " Sentence, Judgment, and Resolution of the whole " Court." The king seemed not altogether prepared for the sentence, and made several attempts, while the court was being adjourned, to address the Commissioners, but the President declared there could be no argument after sentence, and the king was removed. What communication the king desired to make to Par- liament has for ever remained a mystery. By some it 232 SlDE-LIGIITS ON THE StUARTS. was thought that he intended to propose an abdication in favour of his son, by others that he wished to suggest some further concessions ; but no record of his intention remains, and it appears difficult to regard the request as other than a pretext for delay. To hold such opinion is not to the prejudice of the king or his friends. It was a perfectly lawful expedient to prolong so far as possible the pending trial, and to endeavour by all lawful means to postpone the result, but courts are too familiar with such expedients, and, notwithstanding the discussion they had on the subject, and the departure from the court of those Commissioners who favoured the delay, the court was fully justified in proceeding to the sentence. The king was then removed to the Palace at St. James's, being carried thither in a sedan, a mode of con- veyance which had been introduced into England by the Duke of Buckingham and himself on their return from their unsuccessful expedition to Spain in 1623. The use of this chair was, however, exceedingly unpopular with the masses, who were violently prejudiced against the employment of men to do the work hitherto always borne by beasts of burthen. And it was afterwards charged, amongst many other things, as an intentional indignity passed upon the king that he should have been carried upon men's shoulders into one of his own palaces. The king himself, however, never made any such complaint, and indeed the sedan had become by that time in com- mon and daily use among the nobihty and gentry during their residence in London. The king being thus lodged at St. James's, prepared to meet his fate. And here those qualities which had contributed towards making him so bad a prince com- bined to show him to the world as an amiable and courageous gentleman. Ilis devotion to his queen and KiN(; Charles I. 233 to his family afforded him a solace in his hours of solitude and grief : his confidence in his own sacred character nerved him to the belief that he was destined like the Arab on the field of battle to pass from an earthly to a heavenly crown, and the courage which led him to attempt the personal arrest of the five members in the face of an outraged Parliament bore him with calmness and with dignity through the closing scene. He applied through one of his officers that his children should be permitted to see him ; and that Dr. Juxon, formerly Bishop of London, should attend privately upon him and administer the sacrament. These re- quests were granted. Others of his family and of his friends, among whom were the Elector, the Duke of Richmond, and the Marquess of Hertford, desired also to be with him, but by the king's desire they were not admitted, and he confined his interviews to his two children then in England. The queen was in France, and to her he sent his spaniels, who had hitherto been his constant companions. His son Charles was in Holland, James was also abroad, his eldest daughter, Mary Princess Royal, and his youngest daughter, Henrietta, were with their mother in France, and thus his daughter Elizabeth, then about thirteen years of age, and his youngest son, Henry Duke of Grloster, then about seven, were those only whom he saw. During Saturday night Bishop Juxon sat up with the king, and on Sunday, the 28th, he attended Divine Service at St. James's, where the Bishop preached and administered the sacrament. The rest of that day he spent in his private apartments, dining and supping in his bedchamber.^ On Monday, 29th, there was a call of the House, upon ' Moderate IntelUgejicer, February, 1648-9. 234 SiDE-LIGIITS ON THE StUARTS. which rare event all members attend under penalty of arrest by Speaker's warrant addressed to the serjeant- at-arms. Orders were then given for the execution to take place on the morrow, in the open street, before Whitehall, and that the scaffold be covered with black. And with a view to take upon Parliament, and Parlia- ment alone, the burthen of this inquisition, it was ordered that the bright execution axe be brought from the Tower and delivered into the hands of Edward Dendy, Esquire, serjeant-at-arms, or his deputy. The death-warrant was then issued, signed and sealed by the President and fifty-eight of the Commissioners, and delivered to Colonel Hacker, who was charged with the execution of the sentence. On this Monday afternoon the king had his last inter- view with his two children, the Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Gloster. " She wept much," says the Moderate Intelligencer of that week, and well she might, poor unhappy little lady, friendless and alone in such a terrible position. He first gave his blessing to the Lady Elizabeth, to whom also he gave two of his seals set with diamonds. He then gave her a message to James, Duke of York, that he was henceforth not only to regard his brother, Charles, as an elder brother, but to be obedient to him as a Sovereign, and bade her tell her mother, the queen, that his thoughts had never strayed fi-om her, but that his love would be the same to the last. He took the little Duke of Gloster on his knees and said, " Sweetheart, they will cut oif thy father's head and perhaps make thee a king, but thou must not be a king so long as thy brothers, Charles and James, do live : for they will cut off thy brothers' heads, if they can catch them, and cut off thy head too at last ; so do not bo made a king by them." " I will bo torn in pieces first," King Charles I. 235 said the boy, a reply which gave great comfort to the king. He then bade them both be obedient to their mother, sent his blessing by the Lady Elizabeth to her other brothers and sisters, and commendations to bis various friends, and thus parted with his children for ever. This unfortunate Princess Elizabeth, who appears from her portrait to have been a sickly and strumous child, was first committed to the care of the Countess of Leicester, then to that of Sir Henry Mildmay at Oaris- brooke, where she died in September, 1650, at the age of fifteen. Her cofl&n was found in 1793, and her Majesty has recently erected to her memory in Newport Church a marble monument designed by the late Baron Marochetti. The Duke of Grloster was also committed to the same custody as his sister, but Cromwell, when firmly seated in power, communicated with the queen mother (Henrietta Maria) his willingness that she should (if she so desired), have the custody of the young duke. This offer she accepted, and he was accordingly sent to her in February, 1653, in company with his tutor, who received 500/. for the expenses of the journey. On his arrival in Paris the young duke was taken by his mother into her household, but her after-conduct to him was one of the worst features of her career. She treated hira with coldness and neglect, and ultimately, at the age of fifteen, because he persis- tently refused to embrace the Catholic religion, drove him from her house into the streets of Paris, where he was found by one of the English residents. He returned to England with his brothers at the Restoration, never having been truly reconciled to his mother, and died of small-pox on the 13th of September, 1660. Burnet speaks highly of the Duke of Gloster, who, when driven forth by his mother, found a refuge with his brother Charles. This king was devotedly attached to 236 Side-lights on the Stuarts. his youngest brother, he loved him far more than any- other member of his family, and was never in his whole life seen so much troubled as he was on the occasion of the duke's death. The Princess Eoyal, widow of the Prince of Orange and mother of King William III., returned to England with her mother, in 1660, and died also of small-pox in December of that year. The Princess Henrietta was married, after the Restoration, to the Duke of Orleans, younger brother of Louis XIV., and died suddenly and mysteriously in 1670.^ After the final interview with his children, the king engaged in long conversation with Colonel Tomlinson, who, having him in chaxge, insisted upon proper respect being shown him, and guarded him as far as he could from any annoyance or incivility. The chief of these annoyances appears to have been that the soldiers smoked near his apartments, the king, like his father, having an intense horror of tobacco, to which the Commonwealth men were greatly addicted ; another was that the soldiers refused to salute him, a mark of respect, however, which the colonel insisted upon being rendered to the king. He gave to Colonel Tomlinson a small gold tooth-picker, and asked him to remain with him to the last, telling him at the same time what he purposed to say to the people. He spoke of his burial, desiring that the Duke of Richmond should have the care of it, and as he thought it probable that one of his sons might come over to bury him, he desired that his funeral might not take place too soon. This request Colonel Tomlinson pro- mised to communicate to the Council of State, and he also somewhat, I suppose, overstretching his authority, permitted Henry Seymour to deliver to the king a letter " lli;r portrait, by Vau Dyclc, is at Asliburnliam I'lacc. King Charles I. 237 from his son Charles, which the king read and destroyed, sending in reply a verbal message by Mr. Seymour. Later on in the same evening Colonel Hacker, with two other officers, had an interview with the king, at which they produced to him the warrant for his execution, and informed him that it was fixed for the following day. The custody of the king was then delivered over by Colonel Tomlinsonto Colonel Hacker and Colonel Astell, who had him thenceforth in their sole charsre, Colonel Tomlinson, however, remaining with him to the last, at his special request. On the nights of Sunday and Monday, the king was attended by Mr. Herbert, his personal friend and adherent. Mr. Herbert lay in the same room beside the king on a pallet bed, sleeping very little him- self, although he describes the king as on each night having slept well, although the peaceful quietude of the night was disturbed every fifteen minutes by the visit of a soldier to be assured of the safety of his prisoner. Notwithstanding this, however, the king, with the assist- ance of Dr. Juxon, succeeded in burning all his papers, together with the key to his private cypher.^ Mr. Herbert dressed the king each morning, and on the Tuesday the king was unusually careful in his attire, desiring Mr. Herbert to be particularly attentive to the combing and brushing of his hair.* He also wore his earrings, consisting of one large pearl surmounted by a small crown of gold.^ During the night of Monday, 29th January, all pre- ' Moderate Intelligencer, January 30th, 1649. Dr. Juxon was at the Eestoration appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, and died in 1663, aged eighty-one. * Sir Philip Warwick's Memoirs. ^ These were removed from his ears after death, and came into the possession of the Duchess of Portland, who showed tliom to Thomas Pennant, the historian of London. History, p. 1-12. 238 SiDE-LIGIITS ON THE StUARTS. parations had been completed. The scaffold had been erected on the open street opposite the Banqueting House* at Whitehall. It was hung with black cloth, and it stood on the same spot, and was modelled in the same fashion, as the scaffold erected by King James on the occasion when the Fencers of London encountered each other for the amusement of the King of Denmark. It was approached also by the same window, enlarged for the purpose,'' through which on that memorable occasion in 1614 the two kings, with Prince Henry, Prince Charles, and the courtiers, had passed to witness the famous assault-at-arms in the presence of a great array of the people of London. It was said after the Kestoration that the scaffold was studded with iron rings firmly secured to the floor, and that there were ropes in readi- ness, so that had the king offered any resistance, he would at once have been roped and pulled on to the block like a struggling ox to his slaughter. Having determined on the execution, the Commissioners would have been right and indeed bound to take every necessary precaution even to the extent here suggested, but there-is no trace of any such suggestion through the trials of the regicides, and it seems clear that the king's demeanour and the quietude of the populace, at and after the sentence, absolutely precluded the idea of either a resistance or a rescue, and I regard this also as one of those stories put afloat to excite a sympathy for the king, and to blacken as far as possible the party that opposed him. The morning of the 30th January was clear, bright, and frosty. The king, leaving St. James's about ten a.m. under an escort of guards, and accompanied by Dr. Juxon and Colonel Tomlinson, passed across the Mall, pausing, " Now used as a Chapel Royal. ' Mddt'fah' Inivlliiicnrcr, February 1st, 1C19. King Charles I. 239 however, for a moment to point out to his friends a tree that had been planted by his brother Henry, when Prince of Wales. Skirting the lake and the piece of water known as Rosamond's Pond® the party left the park through a small gate opposite the Abbey, and near the entrance to King Street. Old King Street, through which the king then passed, began much where King Street begins now, and was the only highway from Charing Cross and the central and eastern parts of London to the Parliament House and Westminster Abbey, the space between the houses on the south side of the street and the Thames being then occupied by the private gardens of Whitehall and various outbuildings of the palace. The street was entered from the Westminster end by a gate of somewhat ugly structui'e called the king's gate, rather resembling Temple Bar, with cupolas on each side, built by Henry VIII. as an entrance to the park.^ King Street itself was an ill- hghted thoroughfare, paved with cobbles, passing between old timber houses with projecting floors so close together in the upper stories that the neighbours on different sides of the street might shake hands out of their respective windows.-' At the other end of King Street was a mag- nificent gate-house designed by Hans Holbein and erected also by Henry VIII. as the entrance to Whitehall. It stood on the spot now occupied by the Treasury, was nearly as high as the Banqueting House, had many ** This pond was filled up after the plague. St. James's Park was at thi.s time surrounded by a high brick wall, and was pastured with deer. " The king's gate was demolished in 1723. A picture of it is given in Stow's "Survey." ^ One of these houses was supposed to have been occupied by Oliver Cromwell before the Commonwealth. Some of them stood until long after the beginning of the eighteenth century. The inhabitants suffered great!}' from the plagm.', and no wonder. 240 SiDE-LIGIITS ON THE StUARTS. cliambers and galleries, and its recesses were filled with the sculptured busts of monarchs and statesmen.^ Passing into King Street through the first gateway the king was escorted by a private pathway behind the gate of Whitehall to the great gallery of the palace. This gallery, filled with gems of art collected by the king and his predecessors from all parts of Europe, including masterpieces of Van Dyck, Tintoretto, and the great painters of the age, together with enamels, ivories, and tapestries, a perfect mine of artistic treasure over which Charles had himself spent years of care and many thousands of pounds, led to the cabinet chambers of the palace, where the king usually slept when at Whitehall. He was thus escorted into the palace without being brought into view of the scaffold or of the crowds who even at that early hour were surely assembling in antici- pation of the great event of the day. The king was care- fully dressed in black satin, '' but not in mourning," with a short velvet cloak, and he wore the George and the Garter. His step was firm and his manner self-possessed, but the air was chilly, and he had long been deprived of his natural and accustomed exercise, and anticipating that if he were seen to shiver it might be ascribed to fear, he had put on extra clothing, and desired the soldiers, who with drums beating and banners flying were march- ing slowly, to quicken their pace. "I go," said he, " for a Heavenly Crown with less solicitude than I have often encouraged you to fight for an earthly diadem." After his arrival at Whitehall he spent some time in private prayer and meditation with Dr. Juxon, and Avas - "Whitehall Gate was carefully taken to pieces in 1750, the stones and coloured bricks being numbered with a view to rc-eroctiou in AVindsor Park, but the scheme «'as not carried out, and the whole structure Jias now disappeared. King Charles I. 241 persuaded much against his will to take some wine and biscuit lest the sudden exposure to the cold after some hours in the warm chamber might produce an involuntary shudder which his enemies might attribute to faintness of heart. There had been during this and the preceding reigns many public executions of persons of great social position and political distinction who had almost invariably, for whatever cause they suffered, borne themselves with courage and dignity and given great satisfaction to the crowd by their carriage on the scaffold. These melan- choly spectacles were always attended by great numbers of people who usually sympathized with the victims and applauded their courage, and who professed to form some estimate of their guilt or innocence from the manner in which they took their leave of the world and submitted to their fate. The public attention thus drawn to these exhibitions induced in the victims, more or less consciously, a certain histrionic display. Their attire, which was always carefully considered, their parting gifts to friends and gaolers, their eff'usive and often ex- travagant forgiveness of injuries, their extraordinary professions of loyalty under circumstances of more or less suspicion, were a constant subject of discussion and panegyric, and the last speech of the victim was as much looked forward to and as important a part of the function as the action of the headsman himself. And accordingly the king and his friends, fully appre- ciating this sentiment of the masses, strove with all care and jealousy to place him before the nation in at least as favourable a position as any of the unhappy victims who had gone before him. On this point indeed they were not without good grounds for apprehension, and so enthusiastic did they afterwards become on hearing of E 242 SiDE-LIGIITS ON THE StUARTS. his demeanour that, feeling how inconsistent it was with his natural disposition, which, though by no means want- ing in personal courage, had never yet led him to do the right thing at the right moment, they did not hesitate to ascribe his calmness and his fortitude to th.e direct interposition of the Divine Spirit. At two o'clock Colonel Hacker summoned the king to the scaffold, of which the sole occupants then were two men in vizards^ appointed to carry out the fatal sentence. One of these was an old man with a grey beard, and the other a younger man with flaxen hair, both wearing periwigs and dressed alike in the black woollen stuff usually worn by the working classes. At the time of the execution there were altogether upon the scaffold, according to the Moderate Intelligencer, about fifteen persons. An enormous concourse of people was assembled, but so little fear was there of any disturb- ance, of any outburst of popular feeling, or of any attempt at a rescue, that the whole number of troops in and about London did not exceed eight thousand men of all arms.* The scene is thus described by the Diurnal of Passages in Parliament (a bi-weekly paper) for 6th February, 1648-9 ■^~ " Taesday, January 30th. This day the king was be- headed over against the Banqueting House by "Whitehall. The manner of execution and what passed before his death take thus: — He was brought from St. James's about ten in the morning, walking on foot through the park, with a regiment of foot for his guard, with colours flying, drums beating, his private guard of partizans with some of his gentlemen before and some behind bare- ' State Trials, vol. v. p. 1190. ■• Burnet, ]i. 28, '' All account, aulistantially the same, was givoii iii tho Muderate Iiitelliiji'nrar of Thursday, February 1st, 1018-9. King Charles I. 243 headed. Doctor Juxon, late Bistop of London, next behinde Mm, and Colonel Tomlinson (who had the charge of him), to the Gallery in Whitehall, and so into the Cabinet Chamber, where he used to lye, where he continued at his devotion, refusing to dine (having before taken the Sacrament), onely about 12 at noone he dranke a glasse of claret wine and eat a piece of bread. Prom thence he was accompanyed by Dr. Juxon, Colonel Tom- linson, Colonel Hacker, and the guards before mentioned through the Banqueting House, adjoining to which the scaffold was erected, between Whitehall Gate and the gate leading into the Gallery from Saint James's. The scaffold was hung round with black and the floor covered with black, and the Ax and Block laid in the midst of the scaffold. There were divers companies of Foot and Horse on every side of the scaffold, and the multitude of people that came to be spectators very great. The king making a pause upon the scaffold, looked very earnestly on the block, and asked Colonel Hacker if there were no higher, and then spoke, directing his speech to the gentlemen upon the scaffold." His speech concluded, the king said a few words to the executioner, asking not to be put to pain and whether the block was fast. Being assured of this, he gave the George to Bishop Juxon, with the word " Remember ! " and the Ribbon and Garter to Colonel Tomlinson. He also disposed of his watches, of which he appeared to have a number about him, giving his silver watch to the Duke of Richmond, his gold Avatch to the duke, to be given to the duchess, and his "striking watch" to Mr. Herbert.^ He also gave a very beautifully-enamelled watch to John Ash- burnham, and his gold-headed cane to the bishop. " Modemte IntelUgenrer, February 1st, 1048. E 2 244 Side-lights on the Stuarts. Having disposed of these personal effects, lie instructed the executioner that the stretching forth of his hands, after a short prayer, was to be the signal for the blow. The grey-bearded executioner, addressing the king, said, "I will an 't please your Majesty;" put up the king's dark brown hair carefully under the white satin cap which he wore for the occasion, and waited for the agreed signal. On the king stretching forth both his hands, the grey-bearded executioner struck off the king's head "sodainely with one blow." The flaxen-haired vizard then held it up before the people, with the accus- tomed form of words, "Behold the head of a traitor!" A troop of Guards immediately marched quickly from Charing Cross to King Street, Whitehall, and another from Whitehall to Charing Cross, to disperse the people and keep order in the streets ; but there was no tumult and no disorder, and no attempt was made from first to last either to impede the trial or to hinder the execution. / An innumerable concourse of people witnessed the execution of the king. Every window was filled with spectators, who also swarmed on the house-tops and crowded the roofs of the great gate of Whitehall, of the houses on both sides of the streets, of the Tilt Yard, and of the castellated entrance to the Horse Guards Parade. Numerous drawings, mostly of French or of Dutch origin, were published immediately after the event, and amongst them a huge Dutch broadsheet with a laro-e etching, which was copied and reprinted freely in Eng- land, gave a lively and graphic account of the scene. These cotemporary prints all show a crowd of vast pro- portions, filHng every available space from King Street to Charing Cross, and, while indicating here and there a fainting woman or a weeping Royalist, give the im- King Charles I. 245 pression generally of a curious and not too sympathetic crowd, witli a mere handful of soldiers in comparison with the enormous number of spectators. There was ample and abundant notice of the intention of Parlia- ment. The Diurnals and the Mercuries, of which no less than twenty-two have been enumerated as being then published weekly or bi-weekly in London, were then in full circulation. The post left London every morning with mails for the country, and the newspapers, not relying solely on the carrier or the post, sent their num- bers through the country by mounted messengers, the newsman arriving on his horse and blowing his horn being one of the features of the day. Every step towards the trial and execution was day by day adver- tised in the papers and circulated through the country. The public proclamation in London and Westminster of the intended trial and inquisition of blood was echoed throughout the kingdom. There was no tampering with the circulation of news, and the only interference with the Press undertaken by Parliament was that, on the morning of the 31st of January, 1649, the departure of the daily post was stopped, in order that the Government might have precedence with their Order of Council declaring that any proclamation of Charles II. would be regarded and dealt with as an act of treason. And yet the undisputed fact remains that not a man, from Land's End to John o' Groat's, marched a day's journey to the relief of the king, nor, as far as history gives us any information, did any human being at home or abroad raise a finger to help him in his extremest hour of need. But, indeed, the attitude of the nation at this time was a surprise, if not to the king's party at home, certainly to those abroad. They had openly and confidently expressed the opinion that the Parliament would never 246 Side-lights on the Stuarts. have the courage to produce the king openly before the people, for they professed to believe that the mere fact of his public appearance in the capital of the empire would at once raise the whole nation in his favour. But here was the king publicly and openly marching day by day from St. James's to Westminster, his every move- ment advertised, the public freely admitted to the audience, his sentence publicly given, and his execution carried out after ample notice under the eyes of thou- sands of the citizens of London. And yet, though people of all classes and conditions crowded the streets, filled every available window, and swarmed on every house-top, not a hand or even a voice was raised in his defence. And what was the attitude of the European Powers on the news of his death? "Alas!" says Clarendon, " there was scarce a murmur amongst any of them at it; but, as if they had been all called upon by the language of the Prophet Isaiah, they made haste and sent over that they might get shares in the spoils of a murthured monarch.'"' The States of Holland, among whom Prince Charles was then living, sent him a sym- pathetic address of condolence, but refrained from de- nouncing the authors of his father's death. And for the other sovereigns of Europe, their anticipated horror at the king's execution did not prevent their taking immediate steps to participate in the administration of his estate. The King of France, after his manifesto, was bound for the moment to remain silent ; but his Prime Minister (Cardinal Mazarin) lost no time in acquiring for himself the rich goods and jewels of the crown, and furnished his own apartment in Paris with the carpets and hang- ings of the late king's bed. The King of Spain, who received the prince with some courtesy, retained his ' " History of the Eebellion," vol. iii. part i. p. 263. King Charles I. 247 ambassador in London, and purchased from the Com- monwealth enough of the late king's private property to load eighteen mules from Corunna to Madrid. Queen Christina of Sweden, afterwards a fast friend and ally of Cromwell, bought the king's gold and silver plate ; and the Archduke Leopold of Flanders bought his best pictures. "And what is stranger than all this," con- tinues Clarendon, " not one of all these princes ever restored any of their unlawful purchases to the king after his blessed restoration."^ In truth they all regarded the trial and execution with a certain amount of equa- nimity, feeling that the king had in great measure, if not entirely, brought the catastrophe upon himself. On the falling of the axe there was, says Mason in his account, " a dismal universal groan among the people," but other cotemporary records agree in saying that the people gave no signs either of sorrow or of exultation, and the great mass of the people did in fact accept the execution of the king with the same spirit of curious in- difference with which they had received the proclamation of the institution of the High Court for the purpose of his trial and condemnation. Some, however, of the more devoted, or, as we may think, the more superstitious of the people flocked to the scaffold, and dipping their hand- kerchiefs in the blood of the king, kept them, not so much for memorials of the event, as for charms against the evil eye, and for the purpose of touching people afflicted with scrofula or other diseases, whom the blood of a sacred monarch was believed capable to cure, a super- stition which was still strong in the public mind at the end of the century, when the ci"Owd who witnessed the execution of Monmouth on Tower Hill broke in upon the scaffold to dip their rags and handkerchiefs in the blood " Clarendon's " History of the Eeliellion," vol. iii. part i. p. 204. 248 Side-lights on the Stuarts. of the victim, whom they believed to be of royal descent. The king's body having been embalmed and the head replaced, was put in a coffin bearing a silver plate, with the solitary inscription. King Charles, 1648,® and in accordance with his wishes, as expressed to Colonel Tom- linson, that he might not be too suddenly buried, was kept for a week in the king's sleeping chamber at White- hall, where it was viewed by many persons, and among others, by Sir Purbeck Temple,^ who says he saw the body of the king lying at Whitehall in a coffin, " which smiled as perfectly as if it had been alive.^ " It is also said to have been visited by Cromwell, which is likely enough. But the story that he took the king's head from the coffin, to see if it was really cut off, and, holding it in his hands, addressed it after the manner of Hamlet and the skull of Yorick, is one of those tales that may, I think, be fairly put into the same category as the tale of Bradshaw's wife. His personal effects were dis- tributed according to his desire, and his keys and seals on a broad ribbon together with his watch, a timepiece, most exquisitely enamelled and enclosed in a gold case, together with the linen shirt with embroidered ruffles and broad collar, his garters, the silken drawers which he wore at his execution, and the linen sheet in which the body was wrapped when removed from the scaffold, became the property of his faithful friend and companion, John Ash- burnham, of Ashburnham, in Sussex,^ the direct lineal ' Clarendon, vol. iii. part i. ' ^'ourth son of Sir Peter Temple. He and his brothers had commands in the Parliamentary army, which Purbeck afterwards deserted for the Pioyalists. He was knighted at the Eest oration, and became a witness for the Crown. ^ Trinl of Axtcll. State Trials, vol. v. p. 1151. ]ii the king's letters he speaks of him as " Jack Ashburnham." He King Charles I. 249 ancestor of the present Earl of Asliburnham, wLo still holds these sacred relics of history together with an untold wealth of portraits, manuscripts, and volumes, in remarkable preservation, relating to the persons and events of that period.* It had been proposed in the House that the Diamond, the Garter, and the George be sent to the Prince of Wales, but after debate it passed in the negative, and they accordingly remained in the custody of his friends.^ Application was made by the Royalists that the body should be buried in Westminster Abbey, but the parliamentary committee who had charge of this matter, apprehending the possibility of dis- turbance, through the enormous number of people who would probably be present, declined the request. Not, however, desiring any personal disrespect to the king, they arranged that the funeral should take place at St. George's, Windsor, where many kings and queens had been buried, voted a sum of 500Z. towards the expenses, and put the conduct of the funeral, according to the late king's express desire, into the hands of the Duke of Rich- mond and the Marquess of Hertford. and his brother Thomas were officers in the king's household, and after- wards held offices in the household under Charles II. The direct lineal ancestor of this "Jack " was High Sheriff of Sussex at the invasion of William the Conqueror, and raised the county in support of Harold. For this act of patriotism and loyalty he and two of his sons were beheaded, by order of the Conqueror. * These clothes of the king were for many years exhibited in Ashburn- ham Church, to which pilgrimages were often made, in order that diseased persons might touch the blood which still remained on the various articles. They thus became so filthy that the second countess herself carefully washed them, and the gold case of the king's watch having been subse- quently stolen from the church, these memorials of King Charles were all removed, and are now kept at the mansion. The stains of blood are still distinctly visible on the shirt and the sheet. " " Commons Journal," Wednesday, January 31st, 1648-9. 250 Side-lights on the Stuarts. On Wednesday, February 17tli, the body was conveyed to Windsor on a hearse covered by black velvet, drawn by six horses, escorted by troops, and attended by Dr. Juxon and by a dozen of the king's gentlemen as pall- bearers. It lay in state that night in the king's bed- chamber, and on the following morning, Thursday, the 18th, it was removed to the Dean's Hall, which was hung with black, and darkened for the occasion, where it remained with lights burning round the hearse, until it was conveyed to St. George's Chapel, and committed to the grave. The Parliament had, out of considera- tion for the king's wishes, strained the existing law by sanctioning at his funeral the use of the Burial Service as contained in the Book of Common Prayer, and had made an order to that effect, but on arrival at St. George's Chapel the Dean of Windsor and the governor, more intolerant than the Parliament, and affecting to disbelieve that Parliament had made an order in contravention of its own enactment, refused the use of that service, and the king was consequently buried according to the Presbyterian form.® The newspapers published during the week of the execution having given only the substance or a short precis of the king's speech on the scaffold, the Inde- pendents, desiring everything to be public and above- " See Diurnal, February 19th, 1648-9. "The manner of carriage to the grave was thus : the King's servants that waited all the time of tlic King's Imprisonment went before the body, the Governor and Dr. Juxon wont next before the body, the 4 Lords, Eichmond, Hertford, Soutli- anipton, and Lindsay, carried the 4 corners of the velvet over the corpse, ^^duch was carried by soldiers. It was desired by the Duke of Eich- mond that the Bishop might use the Ceremonies used at the Buriall of tiie dead : but it was the opinion of tlie Ciovernor and those gentlemen employed by Parliament that he ought not to use the Booko of Common rriiycr, although the I'arliamcnt did permit to use such decency as the Duko should think lit : and hcj was buried in the Presbyleriiui way." King Charles I. 251 board, took a step wliich gave a remarkable earnest of their good faitb. Although various passages of tlie king's speech might be considered damaging to them- selves, and likely at a time when the spectacle of the dead monarch would of itself necessarily create a temporary reaction in his favour, and give additional pregnancy to his dying words, the Commissioners, with a courage worthy of all admiration, required that the entire speech as spoken by the king should be published, to the world. Accordingly the Diurnal of Parliament and other papers on the 5th February, 1648-9, the king's body still lying at Whitehall, published the following as the , full text of the king's speech; a speech occupying about twenty minutes in delivery, smacking strongly of kingcraft, of the "right divine of kings to govern wrong," and of denial to the people of any share in the government of their country, but dignified and courteous, and delivered apparently with very little of the hesitation and lisp characteristic of the speaker, and about the only peculiarity he had in common with his father. The king, finding that the cordon of troops would prevent his voice easily reaching the people in the street, spoke as follows to those on the scaffold, and his words were taken down by the shorthand clerks : — " I shall be very little heard of anybody else ; I shall therefore speak a word to you here. Indeed I could hold my peace very well, if I did not think that holding my peace would make some men think that I did submit to the guilt, as well as the punishment : but I think it is my duty to God and my country to clear myself, both as an honest man, a good king, and a good Christian. " I shall begin first with my innocency ; in truth I think it not very needful to insist long upon this ; for all the world knows that I never did begin a war with the two 252 SiDE-LIGlITS ON THE StUARTS. Houses of Parliament and I call God to witness, to whom I must shortly make an account, that I never did intend to encroach upon their privileges, they began upon me. It is the militia they began upon; they confessed the militia was mine, but they thought fit to have it from me; and, to be short, if anybody will look to the dates of commissions of their commis- sions and mine, and likewise to the declarations, he will see clearly that they began these troubles, not I. " So that as for the guilt of these enormous crimes that are laid against me, I hope in God that God will clear me of. I will not (I am in charity, and God forbid I should) lay it upon the two Houses of Parliament ; there is no necessity of either ; I hope they are free of this guilt, for I believe, that ill instruments between them and me have been the cause of all this bloodshed, so that as I find myself clear of this, I hope and pray God that they may too, yet for all this, God forbid I should be so ill a Christian as not to say God's Judgments are just upon me, many times he doth pay justice by an unjust sentence, that is ordinary. I will only say this, that an unjust sentence that I suffered to take effect, is punished now by an unjust sentence upon me •? so far I have said to show you that I am an innocent man. Now to show you that I am a good Christian, I hope there is a good man (pointing to Bishop Juxon) that will bear me wit- ness, that I have forgiven all the world, and even those in particular that have been the chief causes of my death, who they are, God knows, I do not desire to know : I pray God forgive them. But this is not all, my charity must go further ; I wish that they may repent. For, indeed, tbey have committed a great sin in that particular. I ■" Alluding to the death of Strafford, whom the king allowed to be executed without iin attempt to save him. King Charles I. 253 pray God, witli St. Stephen, that it be not laid to their charge : nay, not only so, but that they may take the right way to the peace of the kingdom, for my charity commands me not only to forgive particular men, but to endeavour, to the last gasp, the peace of the kingdom. " Now, sirs, I must show you both how you are out of the way, and will put you in the way. First, you are out of the way, for certainly all the ways you ever had yet, as I could find by anything is in the way of conquest ; certainly this, is an ill way ; for conquest, sirs, in my opinion, is never just, except there be a good and just cause, either for matter of wrong, or a just title : and then if you go beyond the first quarrel, that makes that unjust at the end that was just at first : if there be only matter of conquest, then it is a great robbery, as a pirate said to Alexander, that he was a great robber, he was but a petty robber. And so, sirs, I think the way you are in is much out of the way. Now, sirs, to put you in the way, believe it, you shall never go right, nor God will never prosper you, until you give God his due, the king his due (that is, my successor) and the people their due. I am as much for them as any of you. You must give God his due, by regulating rightly his Church according to the scripture, which is now out of order ; to set you in a way particularly now, I cannot : but only this, a national Synod freely called, freely debated among themselves, must settle this when every opinion is freely heard. For the king" (then turning to a gentleman that touched the axe, he said, " Hurt not the axe, that may hurt me." — " Indeed I will not ") — " the laws of the land will clearly instruct you for that. Therefore-because it concerns my own particular, I shall only give you a touch of it. For the people, truly I desire their liberty and freedom as much as anybody whatsoever ; but I 2 54 Side-lights on the Stuarts. must tell you, that their liberty and freedom consist in having government, those laws by which their lives and their goods may be most their own. It is not their having a share in the government— that is nothing appertaining to them.^ A subject and a sovereign are clean different things : and therefore until you do that, I mean that you put the people in that liberty, as I say, certainly they will never enjoy themselves. " Sirs, it was for this that now I am come here. If I would have given way to an arbitrary way, to have all laws changed according to the power of the sword, I needed not to have come here: and therefore I tell you (and I pray God it be not laid to your charge) that I am the Martyr of the people. In troth, sirs, I shall not hold you much longer. I will only say this to you, that I could have desired a little time longer, because I would have a little better digested this I have said, and there- fore I hope you will excuse me : I have delivered my conscience. I pray God you take those courses that are the best for the good of the kingdom and your own salvation." Bishop : " Though your Majesty's affections may be very well known as to religion, yet it may be expected that you should say something thereof for the world's satisfaction." King : " I thank you heartily, my lord, for that I had almost forgotten it.^ In troth, sirs, my conscience in ^ Strange words to listen to nowadays ; but showing, in one short sentence the incapacity of tliis king to read the signs of the times, or to recognize the growing power of the people and their increasing deteriui- nation to have a voice in the management of affairs pertaining to the empire. '' Although Burnet (p. 28) speaks somcwliat slightingly of Dr. Juxonas a man of dry coldness wlio could not raise tlie king's thoughts on the most sulciJiu occasion, he liad mure nerve and courage than one of his brother King Charles I. 255 religion, I tliink, is very well known to all tlie world ; and therefore I declare, before you all, tliat I die a Christian, according to the profession of the Church of England, as I found it left me by ray father ; and this honest man, I think, will witness it." Then, turning to the officers, he said : " Sirs, excuse me for this same. I have a good cause, and I have a gracious God. I will say no more." The king, in the course of this simple but remarkable speech, made, from an oratorical and from a political point of view, one most undoubted success. " / am" said he, " the Martyr of the People." ^ In sight of his whole career, in view of his attempts upon the liberties of his subjects, of his illegal exactions, of his attempts to arrest Members of Parliament for their speech in the House, and of his repudiation of the right of the people to any share in the government, there is probably no description which he could have given of himself further removed from the actual truth. That he died a martyr to the principle of Divine right and Royal Prerogative of Kings through the world, might perhaps be said. It might even be said with some show of reason, that he died in the cause of the Church of England, though even then he appeared willing, by means of a General Synod, that the Articles of the Church should be reformed, so as to bring it into conformity with the general feeling of the nation ; but that he died a martyr of the people, as representing their rights, their liberties, and their aspirations against a tyrannical Parliament who would have robbed them of Bishops^ -vvlio, having engaged a window to see the execution, fainted immediately on the king's appearing, and was not recovered- till all was over. ^ Monmouth, in 1685, made the same remark on Tower Hill, and de- clared that he died a martyr for the people, and in hopes that God would speedily send a deliverance to his people. Which indeed He did, but not exactly in the form desired by ilonmouth. 256 Side-lights on the Stuarts. all, seems to me to be almost grotesque in its inappli- cability. But it is impossible to over-estimate the value of a well-turned sentence spoken in season. The crowd are always attracted by a catching phrase, without too closely considering its truth. The words of the king, spoken at such a time and place, passed from mouth to mouth. They became the watchword of his party. "The Martyr of the People" was continually kept before the nation, repeated in pamphlets, in speeches, and in sermons, made the text of the advocates of the Restoration, heard on the stage and on the seat of judgment, pressed into the services of the Church, and repeated automatically year by year, till thousands of people even now believe that the king fought for the liberties of the people, and the Parliament fought to destroy them. Much has been said about the word " Remember,'^ used by the king when giving the George to Bishop Juxon. The latter, in answer to questions from the Council of State, said that, immediately before coming out to the place of execution, the king had charged him to carry his George to Prince Charles, and to command him that he should forgive his murderers, and if ever he came to the crown, that he should so govern his subjects as not to force them upon extremities. No other ex- planation of the word was ever forthcoming, and we may well believe that the bishop's was the only and simple truth, the more so as it was in accordance with the injunctions which the king had, at an earlier date, laid upon his son. It is a common belief, and it has been accepted blindly by partisans and admirers of the Stuarts, that during the progress of the trial, the soldiers, under the orders of the officers, buffeted the king, spat in his face, and King Charles I. 257 offered other indignities, whicli were borne by bim witb Cbristian fortitude and resignation. Cotemporary records are silent on these details of the trial, and Mr. Noble, though he repeats the general charge, brings forward no details and no evidence in its support, and I am con- strained to believe that these and other similar stories, sucb as the popular superstition that Bradsbaw's wife sent to her husband during tbe trial to " go no further in the business," are too much like the account of the trial at Jerusalem and the story of Pilate's wife to be altogether credible, and that they were, in fact, the later inventions of those who, either blinded by party feeling or believing in the Divine attributes of kings, desired to make this trial and condemnation as nearly as possible similar to that of the Saviour. It was remarked, in addition, that he was one of thirteen who walked to the scaffold, and, wbereas the third hour was the time of the Crucifixion, at that bour also the Anointed of Heaven lay bis head upon the block.^ An attempt was made on the trial of Augustus Gar- land to prove that he spat in the king's face after the sentence, but the evidence, which was that of a renegade, was by no means satisfactory, and was sprung upon the prisoner at the last moment. Grarland, who was a gentleman of fortune in Essex and for many years a Member of Parliament for that county, denied that be was near the king at the time, and most strenuously repudiated the charge of brutality, and while admitting his guilt in other respects, said that if he were guilty of such inhumanity he would deserve no favour from Almighty God.^ The President told him that the truth of this allegation was immaterial to the charge of ^ Cromwell also died at three o'clock in the afternoon. 3 State Trials, vol. v. p. 1215. 258 Side-lights on the Stuarts. treason, though it might be remembered against him hereafter. And as he was subsequently pardoned, we may fairly assume the charge to have been unfounded, which indeed, Mr. Noble with some candour admits.* But indeed, this alleged conduct of the officers, whatever may have been the rudeness of some of the individual troopers for whom the officers may fairly be held not responsible, was contrary to the spirit in which the trial was under- taken and carried out, contrary to the directions of Parliament that it should be solemnly conducted as a judicial proceeding, and contrary to the temper in which the Parliament, during and after the trial, and at and after the execution, provided for due respect to the person and the dignity of the king. One other matter almost too absurd to require refuta- tion, but afterwards alleged against Cromwell as having been correctly reported, at the time, was that in order to keep Fairfax away from the last day of the trial, when his presence might have been inconvenient, CromAvell enter- tained him with conversation and jesting, and that the two amused themselves with blacking each other's faces with candle grease. That such a story, inconsistent alike with the known characters and dispositions of both men, should have been for a moment entertained, seems almost incredible. But anything was good enough for an attack on Cromwell and his party, and the amusement was in fact one to which the Court party seem to have been somewhat addicted, for we read in Pepys' Diary ° for 14th August, 166G, that after going to service at the Chapel Eoyal, and a visit to the Bear Gardens and supper, the party, consisting of gentlemen and ladies of ■' Noble's " Eegioides," vol. i, p. 253. ° Pepys, vol. iii. p. 257. King Charles I. 259 title, " were mighty merry, smuttering one another with candle-grease and soot till most of us were like devils." After which the ladies dressed themselves as boys and the gentlemen as women, and so danced jigs till four in the morning. Those who can believe Fairfax and Cromwell occupied in this sort of diversion may well believe anything. Fairfax himself also ever repudiated any distinction between himself and the judges of the king, declaring at the Restoration that if any should be excepted from the Act of Indemnity, he ought certainly to be amongst them, as he held the army at those troublous times. And both Cromwell and Ireton, Harrison, Axtell and Hacker, acted under Fairfax's direct orders in regard to the custody of the king, and the disposition of the troops in and about "Whitehall during the trial and at the execution. One other matter of interest in connection with the execution was this, — that whereas every one present at the trial and the execution was known, and the part which each person took was day by day published to the world, yet the two men in masks on the scaffold, one of whom struck the fatal blow, and the other of whom held up the head, were never identified. That they should have remained concealed, though known to so many persons, is strange and inexplicable, except through the courage and good faith of their employers. That they were known to the committee who arranged the execution would be undoubted ; neither can it be doubted that they were known to Colonel Hacker, to Colonel Axtell, to Mr. Broughton, and to many others, some of whom were executed for the part they took in the king's death, and who but for their loyalty to each other might have endeavoured to obtain a pardon or a respite for giving the information, but they never named the s 2 26o Side-lights on the Stuarts. instruments of their work, and so far as history is con- cerned the vizards of these two men have never been removed. And yet the king's party were on the look-out for the executioners from the very moment of the death, for as early as 1st May, 1650, it is stated in the Pro- ceedings in Parliament newspaper, that Colonel Fox of the guard of the king's trial, who had been travelling under the name of Captain Groodfellow, very nearly escaped stabbing, it being the vulgar talk that it was he who beheaded the king. At the Restoration, the executioners were sought for, and numerous arrests were made, but without avail. The evidence, I think, goes to show that Gregory Brandon, the common hangman,® was the actual person who struck ofE the king's head. It is on record, that when Lord Capel was executed for treason in 1649, he asked Gregory Brandon, was he the man who killed his late master, the king. "Aye, sir," said the man. "And with this axe ? " said Lord Capel, " Even so," said the man. "Whereupon Lord Capel kissed the axe and gave the executioner some money ; and on further conversation with the man was told that he was sent for the day before, not knowing exactly the duty he was to perform, and received 30/. for his service.'' A statement vouched " Gregory Brandon held this as a freehold office of descent, and had a coat-of-arms granted to him by the Heralds in right of such office. In his business he was assisted by his son Richard, who accordingly may have been the second vizard on the scaffold. Sir Henry Ellis took much pains to elucidate this mystery. According to his researches the executioner of the king was Richard, son of Gregory Bi'andon, of Rosemary Lane, Whitechapel, who held the post of common hangman by right of descent. This Eichard died 21st June, 1649, and was buried at Whitechapel, where the entry of his burial is followed by the words, " This R. Bran- don is supposed to have cut off the head of King Charles the First." — Ellis's " Original Letters," series 3, vol. iii. p. 340. ' State Trials, vol. V. p. 1192. King Charles I. 261 on the trial of Lord Oapel, and also corroborated to some extent by the journal of the day, which, without giving details, states that Lord Capel had considerable conver- sation with the executioner and gave him some money.® At the trial of Colonel Axtell, it was sworn that he had sent for the common hangman, but that Hewlet and Walker, both Serjeants in the army, were the executioners, and got SOI. for it, that Walker struck the blow and Hewlet held up the head. Hewlet, upon this, and on some evidence of what it was reported some one had heard him say in Ireland, when he was there with his regiment, as a Serjeant, was tried and convicted, but the evidence being unsatisfactory, and there being reason to believe that he was not the man, he was afterwards pardoned and released. Three persons, named respec- tively, Mathew, Daybone, and BickerstafEe, were also arrested, but afterwards discharged. In the meantime, Mr. Lilley, the astrologer, had got himself into trouble by stating in print that he knew the executioner," and on the 2nd June, 1660, he was ordered into custody by the House of Commons till he should reveal the person. On the 4th June, he was brought before the House, but not examined, and on the 6th, he declared that one Cornet Joyce, who arrested the king at Holdenby House, and was thus an object of intense aversion to the royalists, was the person whom they sought ; ^ at the * Diurnal, 12tli March, 1648-9. "He became himself with great boldness and resolution much to be admired, and had some talk with the executioner, and gave him some money.'' ' Diurnal of Parliament, June 6th, 1660. ^ The stars on this occasion played Mr. Lilley the same trick that they had done some ten years before, when Henry Cromwell and Thurloe, having disguised themselves as cavaliers, consulted him as to the date of the Protector's death, which he then predicted to take place by hanging some four years before he actually died. — Burnet p. 17 note. 262 Side-lights on the Stuarts. same time, it being rumoured that Hugh Peters, a non- conformist divine, and probably the most unpopular man in the kingdom, was the real culprit, Joyce and Peters were both taken into custody. There was no reason, how- ever, to believe that either was concerned in the matter, and both were released from any charge in that respect. Further inquiry was of no avail, and once only did there appear to be a prospect of finding out the persons who had stood upon the scaffold. A young woman came by night to Archbishop Teunison,^ when Vicar of St. Martin's, imploring him to visit her father, who lay dying under the horror of having cut off the king's head ; but when the Archbishop arrived at the house the man was dead, and had left no confession in writing, nor could the daughter afterwards be found to give any further in- formation. All that could be ascertained of the man's history was, that it was believed that he was formerly a butcher at St. Ives in Huntingdon, who had been brought to London by Cromwell, towards! the end of 1648, and had ever since lived obscurely under a feigned name upon a small pension which died with him. In order to fix the guilt, as far as possible, personally upon Cromwell, one Payne, a messenger of the Protector's, was secured on 23rd June, 1660, and charged as the executioner of the king,^ but no evidence was forthcoming, and he was discharged. One Tench, however, a carpenter, who built the scaffold, and was said to have driven in the staples, to be used in case of need, was discovered in December, 1660, and sent to the Tower;'' but he either would not or could not divulge the name of the executioner which thus remains wrapt in its original obscurity. = State Trials, vol. v. p. 1112. ' Mercurius Puhlicus, Juno 28tli, 1660. ' Parliamentary Intelligencer, December Srd, 1600. King Charles I. 263 One or two other matters deserve to be remarked upon before leaving the subject of this trial and con- demnation. It was, as I have said, conducted with order and dignity, and strictly in accordance with the rules then in force regulating trials for liigh Treason. Thus no counsel was assigned to the king, although it is believed that Mr. Hale, afterwards Lord Chief Baron and Lord Chief Justice, was the king's adviser, but this was also according to the recognized procedure of the day, for it was not until the reign of William III., that counsel were permitted to any person accused of treason. No plea to the jurisdiction of the court, specially constituted by Parliament for the purpose of the trial, could have been properly entertained, such objection lay, if anywhere, to Parliament itself, which having constituted the court, could also of its own will have dissolved it. And that the king should not have been permitted to speak after sentence, is conformable to our practice at the present day. Neither was any compulsion put upon the Commissioners, who attended voluntarily. Eighty were originally named; of these, there were never more than seventy-one present at the same time. Some mem- bers appointed Commissioners, refused to act, and those who so refused, suffered no punishment and no exclusion. One of them, Roger Hill, a bencher of the Inner Temple, was afterwards appointed by Cromwell ' a Baron of the Exchequer, and by Richard Cromwell a Justice of the Upper Bench; another, Richard Lawley, M.P. for the county of Worcester and a major in the Parliamentary army, was sent by Cromwell as ambassador to Con- stantinople. Colonel Harvey, who also refused, was made a collector of customs at the Port of London, a most lucrative post, and others received employment of various descriptions. Some accepted the Commission 264 Side-lights on the Stuarts. but nevei' attended, some only attended on occasions, and three left on the last day of the trial before sentence was pronounced. The same course was applied to those who, accepting the Commissiou, failed to attend, and to those who, attending throughout, left the Court rather than assent to the sentence of death. They were all free to go and come as they pleased, and yet of the eighty members thus named in the Commission, no less than sixty-seven stood up as assenting to the condemnation of the king. That such, condemnation was a part of the scheme of the trial and a necessary corollary thereto, may be ad- mitted, and indeed, when it was decided to try the king for High Treason in levying war against Parliament and the nation, a conviction was inevitable, and the judgment a foregone conclusion. But indeed, to say of any trial, that its result is certain and ascertained, is only to repeat what is truly said on the trial of every notorious offender. The midnight assassin caught red-handed, the thief in immediate possession of his stolen goods, are tried in order that the world may know, and that other offenders may be warned what is the offence and what is the punishment, and wherefore it is inflicted ; but none the less is their conviction certain, and their punishment ascertained ere ever they are called upon to plead. And so with this trial and this condemnation^ the object was, to let the world know what was the offence com- mitted by the king against the people, what was the penalty which a free and a liberty-loving people would inflict for that crime, and in order that the punishment so inflicted might act as a warning to other kings and princes who might hereafter embark on the hateful and perilous exploit of assailing the liberties of a free people. In the king's case the facts were patent. The country King Charles I. 265 had passed througli the -unequalled tribulation of civil war, family was divided against family, and there was hardly a household where sons were not to be found drawing the sword against each other. " The Angel of Death," said Mr. Bright, speaking at the time of the Crimean "War, " has been abroad throughout the land : you may almost hear the beating of his wings. There is no one (as when the first-born were slain of old) to sprinkle with blood the lintel and the two side-posts of our doors, that he may spare and pass on : he takes his victims from the castle of the noble, the mansion of the wealthy, and the cottage of the poor and lowly." ^ This beautiful image referred to a war in a foreign country, but the civil war of the Stuarts was a war among our own people and in our own land. And if the king was, as many and, indeed, most people did and do now believe, responsible for this calamity, what crime could be more horrible, what punishment could be more than adequate ? Burnet, writing in the time of Queen Anne, undoubtedly, as I conceive, held this view in his heart, though it did not escape from his lips. Carlyle, one of the greatest writers of the generation, speaks of it as " the most daring action any body of men to be met with in history with clear consciousness ever set them- selves to do The action of the English regicides did in effect strike a damp-like death through the heart of Flunkeyism universally in this world the like of which action will not be needed for a thousand years again." ^ Judging of the condemnation by the most crucial test, that of its success, its justification must be held complete, not indeed for the moment, but in its far- ' "Hansard, "February 23rd, 1858. ° " Letters of Oliver Cromwell," vol. ii. p. 103. 266 Side-lights on the Stuarts. reaching effects. The fear that the nation might again inflict a similar punishment relieved us for ever from an absolute monarchy, for although Charles II. had the will to be an absolute monarch, yet he had the sense to act on his father's advice, not to drive the people to ex- tremities, and James fled the country rather than again face the people whom he had wronged. It freed us from a standing army. No more standing armies, said the Puritans, to drive down Popery and illegal taxes ; no more standing armies, said the Eoyalists, to over-ride us by a powerful and brutal soldiery ; and thus our Army Annual Act, limiting the number and pay of the soldiers for the current year, has become the antidote to a monarchical or a popular despotism. It cleared us from foreign supremacy either civil or ecclesiastical, for although Charles II. was in heart a Papist for many years, and had before the end of his reign sold himself and his people, so far as he could, secretly and hesi- tatingly, to the French king, yet nothing came of the bargain, and during the time of Cromwell as well as in the following century, the power of this country at home and abroad was of a mighty and masterly character, quite out of proportion to its size or its resources. The attenuation of the Crown consolidated the power of Par- liament, which has gradually risen to be omnipotent in the country. It eventually delivered us from the race of the Stuarts by the flight of the second James, and thus in effect laid the foundation of the constitutional monarchy under which we now happily live. Hardly was the king laid to his final rest at Windsor, scarcely had the country recovered from the shock it must necessarily have suffered on hearing of the death of the Sovereign, than the Royalist party took a step which, had they taken a month earlier, might have saved King Charles I. 267 the king's life. The Bikon Basilike, now, I think, clearly shown to have been the work of Bishop Gauden, but then ascribed to the king himself, was given to the world about a fortnight after the king's death. Its vigorous defence of the monarch had so great an effect upon the public mind, even when so tardily produced, that it had the largest sale of any work of that generation. And of so dangerous a tendency was it considered by the Common- wealth that it drew forth a reply by the great Milton him- self, who answered it in the Ico?2,ocZasi5es, a production which fairly rivalled the other, and as to whose respective merits men's minds were divided according to whether they re- garded the works from a Royalist or a Republican point of view. But the blow had been struck, and the king had fallen, and the defence which if delivered in time and place might have proved effectaal for his relief soon lost its effect as a work of action, and took its place as a work of art, being not, however, altogether without its value in preparing men's minds for the possibility of a restoration at some future time. Of the two sous of King Charles I may speak hereafter, but I will say a few parting words as to his queen, who, after this date, passed quietly away from the political history of the times. The queen was never popular amongst the English people. When young she w:as a Avoman of considerable beauty, but her manners were haughty, she was of foreign extraction and of an alien religion, and she was credited with having induced the king, by her strength of will, to assume a course at once violent and arbitrary, and to refuse concessions to the Parliament which he would otherwise have been disposed to grant. The king also with the ill-luck that seems to have surrounded his every action, brought her unpopu- larity to a climax by speaking of her and to her always 268 Side-lights on the Stuarts. as Marie, a term on his part, no doubt, of endearment, but associating her in the minds of the democracy with the Queen of Scots, the descendant of the " Bloody Gruise," the perpetrator of the most wicked and whole- sale massacre that ever stained the purple of a monarch. Burnet says of her that she was " a woman of great vivacity in conversation, and loved all her life long to be in intrigues of all sorts, but was not so secret in them as such times and such affairs required. She was a woman of no manner of judgment : she was bad at con- trivance, but much worse in execution : but by the liveliness of her discourse she made always a great impression on the king; and to her little practices as well as to the king's own temper the sequel of all his misfortunes was owing." ' After the king's death she remained, in France, where Louis XIV., having thundered in vain against the Commonwealth, and having a whole- some dread of Cromwell and his Ironsides, treated her with neglect, and the English Minister subsequently found her living in wretchedness and in want. This having been reported to Cromwell, that remarkable man, feeling it was not to the credit of his country that the widow of its one-time overeign should be miserable and in want, caused a suitable provision to be made for her main- tenance, and she remained for many years a pensioner of the English Parliament. During this time, and apparently not very long after the death of Charles, she received the attentions of Henry Jermyn, to whom she was afterwards secretly married, and with whom she lived in England after the restoration of Charles II. In the summer of 1660 she and her daughters were escorted to England by the British Fleet, and on setting foot once again on English soil, after an absence of some fifteen years, she ' Burnet, p. 18. King Charles I. 269 is reported to have said that had she formerly known the temper of the people of England as well as she knew it then, it would never have been necessary for her to leave the country; an observation which if not founded on fact, and it has the authority of Burnet, is at least one which bears upon it the highest stamp of probability. A residence was allotted to her at Somerset House, the palace of the old Protector, and she had the use of the rooms in which Oliver lay in state. A suitable provision was also ' made for her maintenance and for that of her Court which was somewhat fully attended and was con- ducted with a dignity'- and decorum amounting in those days to dulness. Among the first to attend her public dinner was Samuel Pepys, whose wife stood behind the royal chair. Of the appearance of the queen and her daughter, he says, " The queen a very little plain old woman, and nothing more in her presence in any respect or garbe than any ordinary woman. The Princesse of Orange I had often seen before. The Princesse Henrietta is very pretty, but much below my expectations, and her dressing of herself with her haire frized short up to her eares did make her seem so much the less to me." ^ A portrait of the Queen by Faithorne, taken in Paris in her widow's weeds, certainly carries out Mr. Pepys' criticism, and the portrait of the Princess Henrietta at Ashburnham shows the "haire frized short up to her eares," which so offended this candid connoisseur of female beauty. When James, the Duke of York, wished to repudiate his marriage with Anne Hyde, daughter of Lord Claren- don, and Charles, refusing to be a party to so disgraceful a transaction, said of his brother that " he must drink as he had brewed," the queen-mother supported her son ^ Pepys, voL i. p. 157. 270 Side-lights on the Stuarts. James, but the King of France, with whom she was in regular correspondence, and from whom probably she received some pecuniary aid, desired her to use her good offices to reconcile her two sons rather than to encourage any semblance of a disunion between them. This she accordingly did, and it seems to have been the only influ- ence that she ever did exercise over them, for although on some subsequent occasions she attempted to take part in political life, her counsels were unheeded, and she neither had nor pretended any control over the lives or the policy of her children. Her husband was created Earl of St. Albans, but she lived much abroad through fear, of the plague, and died at Colombe, near Paris, in August, 1G69. She was buried with considerable pomp in the Abbey of St. Denis, among the kings and queens of France, and Bossuet preached her funeral sermon, elo- quently detailing her misfortunes, and ascribing to her every virtue and every quality that could enrich the. noblest and best of women.* ° In an old and beatitifully illustrated edition of Pennant's " Old London," now in the British Museum, is inserted an engraving of the seventeenth century, described as " Henrietta Maria doing penance at Tyburn." The scene is at night. The queen is on her knees under the " Triple Tree," a triangular gallows, beside which is a wooden erection with rows of seats, evidently for spectators. She is tellintT her beads and has a flagellum hung to the waist. A royal coach with six horses is waiting for her, and two footmen are holding lighted torches at the carriage door. To what incident or legend in connection with the queen this drawing relates, I know not. Pennant's account is that in 1626 her confessor sent her by way of penance to Tyburn, and that King diaries, in consequence, was so disgusted that he sent both the French confessor and the French servants out of the kingdom. If it refers to any incident after the Eestoration, it may have had some connection with the sug- gested exchange of the bodies of Cromwell ami the king, and she may be represented as thus doing penance at the possible grave of her late husband. King Charles I. 271 LookiDg back upon this story of King diaries, of Lis troubles and Ms fate, it seems to be lost in the dim twilight of the remote past, and to be open, perhaps, to many of the historic doubts that have followed Homer, Shakespeare, and Tell. But there have not been so many generations of men since these stirring scenes took place that we can feel to have entirely lost touch with their individuality. Thackeray, in his history of the Four Georges, says that he knew familiarly a lady who had been asked in marriage by Horace Walpole, and had been patted on the head by George I. I myself was as a boy acquainted with a gentleman,^ a friend of Byron and others of the literary constellation that shone at the first half of this centuiy, who stated often in public and in private that he held a receipt for a sum of money paid by his grandfather to Milton's executor. And Lord Brougham, in his autobiography,^ makes this statement, which his friends had frequently heard him repeat : " I, now writing in the latter half of the nineteenth century, have heard my grandmother, being, at the time I refer to, about ninety years of age, relate all the circumstances of the execution of Charles I. as they had been told to her by an eye-witness who stood opposite to Whitehall and saw the king come upon the scaffold. I think the story was told to her about the year 1720, and she talked of her informant as having been quite old enough at the time of the execution to have carried away a clear and accurate recollection of all the details." ' The Kev. Wni. TIames3. ■ Vol. i. p. 5. Lord Brougham was born in 1778. 272 Side-lights on the Stuarts. V. THE EEGICIDBS. Among some old books in my possession is an early edition of Clarendon's " History of the Rebellion," from the library of the Lenthall family, descendants of the Speaker of the Long Parliament. Written across the title-page, in the broad characters of the Stuart period, are the words "Audi alteram partem," jSTever was there a time when the intemperance of religionists and of politicians rendered an impartial judgment more difficult or more desirable. And amongst those in whose favour this principle should be invoked is the old Speaker him- self ; for one of the saddest, if unexplained spectacles of the Restoration was that of Mr. Speaker Lenthall, well stricken in years and in the service of Parliament, with his name on the back of the Treasury indictments, herd- ing with the witnesses for the Crown, and giving evidence against his former friends and colleagues. Turning now from the grave of the king, who, with all his faults as a ruler or a man, must have had much innate nobility of clia- acter, to the contemplation of his judges, the men who were responsible for his fate, let us consider with such impartiality as we may, whether in their lives, in their tribulations, and in their fate, there was not also some- thing approaching to nobility and heroism, and whether the conduct of the Royalists in their day of vengeance was better or worse than that of the Independents in their hour of success. The Regicides. 273 Cromwell had been for nine years firmly established as the governor of this country. Foreign nations re- ceived his anabassadors and followed his behests. The Dutch had been driven from the seas, the Pope's perse- cution of the Protestants in the Low Countries had been stopped by the threats of an armed intervention on their behalf, and the Jupiter of the Louvre having launched a harmless bolt against the Commonwealth, reserved his thunder for the future, and became meek and sub- servient. The administration of justice was even-handed and pure, capital sentences were rare, and a general tone of clemency inspired the tribunals. For this we have the authority of Lord Clarendon and other co-temporary authors, and Cromwell himself gave an earnest of his impartiality in this respect by appointing to a seat on the Bench Sir Matthew Hale, the adviser of Xing Charles, a known Royalist and defender of Cavaliers, but withal a most distinguished and learned lawyer. As time went on, however, the doubts of Cromwell and others as to the Government being insecure without some- thing of a monarchical element about it, had proved well founded, and during the latter period of Cromwell's career schemes for the restoration of a monarchy under constitutional restrictions had been freely discussed among all parties. An attempt had been made to put Cromwell himself upon the throne, a scheme to which, but for the resistance of his son-in-law, Fleetwood, and his brother- in-law, Desborough, he would probably have given his assent. But the most remarkable of these attempts — the statement of which one would receive with suspicion were it not vouched from totally divergent sources — was the suggestion in the year 1667 to restore the monarchy in the person of Charles II., who would in that event marry Cromwell's daughter, the Lady Frances, while T 2 74 Side-lights on the Stuarts. Cromwell would remain the head of the armj and first minister of the Crown, The negotiations were carried on through Lord Broghill, a person trusted by both parties, and enjoying the personal confidence of Charles. The prince himself was favourable to the idea, as also were, naturally enough, the Lady Protectress (as Crom- well's wife was called) and his daughters. To the Pro- tector, however, this proposal was inadmissible; he refused even to entertain it, alleging, on the one hand, that the prince's well-known profligacy of character would make him a bad husband, and be the ruin of the party and the State ; and, on the other hand, doubting very much whether the prince would ever bring himself to forgive or to forget the death of his father.^ But still the monarchical sentiment grew apace, and when Cromwell died in 1658 it was a matter of no little anxiety what would be the outcome of the political situation. For the moment, however, things went well, and the Lord Richard was proclaimed from the Council Chamber at Whitehall, and afterwards by heralds fol- lowed by a stately cortege, at Westminster, at Chancery Lane, and at Cheapside, the Lord Mayor of London heading the procession, and meeting at the Eoyal Ex- change an enormous concourse of the citizens, showing the largest demonstrations of love and loyalty by reiterated shouts and acclamations, remembering that the welfare of the city was ever much in the eye and in the heart of the late Protector.^ Oliver had succumbed ' Burnet, pp. 45, 47. Pepys says lie heard the story from the Eev. Mr. White, Cromwell's chaplain. In Ellis's Original Letters is a letter from London, showing the views and wishes of the country in favour of this project. Lady Frances Cromwell shortly afterwards married the son and heir of Lord Rich. " The following was the leading article in the Mercurius Politicus of September 9th, 1058, on the death of the Protector : — LIVARIVS , PPvIMVS A4i^Jl^lLr.-urJ'>:c .■ /'^Sb --..M OLIVER CRO>[HELL. From a very rare engraving by William Faithorne, now in tlie British Museum. The Regicides. 275 to an attack of ague (a most fatal disorder of those times) of about a fortnight's duration. He had passed away at about three o'clock of the afternoon on one of his aus- picious days — Friday, the 3rd of September, on which day he won the two battles of Worcester and of Dunbar. He lived, as he had wished, to see their anniversary accom- plished, and then died calmly and peaceably in his bed. There was undoubtedly in the country at this period a "Friday, September 3rd. His Most Serene Highness, Oliver, Lord Protector, being after a sickness of about 14 days (which appeared an ague in the beginning) reduced to a very low condition of body, began early this morning to draw near the gate of Death : and it pleased God about three o'clock in the afternoon to pat a period to his life. His first undertakings for the Publick Interest, his working things all along, as it were, out of the Eock, his founding a military discipline in these nations such as is not to be found in any example of preceding times : and whereby the noble soldiery of these nations may (without flattery) be commended for piety, moderation and obedience, as a pattern to be imitated but hardly to be equalled by succeeding generations : his wis- dom and piety in things Divine, his prudence in management of the civil affairs and conduct of the military, and admirable success in all, made him a Prince indeed among the people of God by whose prayers being lifted up to the Supreme Dignity, he became more highly seated in their hearts because in all their actings it was evident that the main design Avas to make his own interest one and the same with theirs, that it might be subserving to the great interest of Jesus Christ. " And in the promoting of this his spirit knew no bounds, his affec- tion could not be confined at home but brake forth into foreign parts, where lie was by good men universally admired as an extraordinary person raised up of God and by them owned as the great Protector and Patron of the Evangelical Profession. This being said and the world itself being witness of it, I can only add that God gave him blessings proportionable to aU these vertues and made him a blessing to us, by his wisdom and valor to secure our Peace and Liberty and to revive the ancient renown and reputation of our native Country. " Now after all this it is remarkable how it pleased the Lord to take him on his day of triumph, this 3rd September : a day celebrated for the victories of Dunbar andWorcester, a day which he lived once again to see, and then to die, with great assurance and serenity of mind, peaceably in his bed." T 2 276 Side-lights on the Stuarts. strong personal attachment towards Oliver, and tlie king's party, having tried first to procure his death by violence, and then to destroy his position by an undue elevation, hopeless of any success during his life, now turned their attention towards securing the succession. In the mean- time it was decided that the Lord Protector should be paid the last honours o£ the country, and like other great sovereigns receive a grand and public funeral. His body was embalmed at Whitehall and " filled with sweet odours." On Friday, the 10th, a day of fasting and humi- liation was observed throughout the country for the death of the Lord Protector, and on the 20th the body was removed privately at night, attended by the ofl&cers, gentlemen, and servants of his household, by the gentle- men of the life-guards, a regiment of halberdiers, and many other persons, on a hearse with six horses, to the Palace at Somerset House, where it was to lie in state. From the 18th October to the 23rd November the body of the Lord Protector, surmounted by an efiigy wearing the imperial robes, lay in state and was visited by thousands of his countrymen. The following extract from the Political Mercury of Thursday, 21st October, 1658, gives "an exact relation hoiv Somerset House is prepared for the effigies or representation of his late High- ness by particular order of the Lords of the Council." The room in which he lay was approached through a long corridor and three large rooms hung with black cloth and with escutcheons. " The fourth room, where the body and the effigies do lie, completely hung with black velvet ; the roof of this room cieled also with velvet and a large canopie or cloth of estate fringed over the effigies; the effigies itself apparrelled in a rich suit of uncut velvet, being robed first in a kirtle robe of purple velvet, laced with a rich gold lace and furred with ermins. Upon the The Regicides. 277 kirtle is fhe Royal Large Robe of the like purple velvet, laced and furred with ermins, with rich string and tassels of gold ; his kirtle is girt with a rich embroidered belt, in which is a fair sword richly gilt and hatchet with gold hanging by the side of the efl&gies ; in the right hand is the golden sceptre representing Government ; in his left hand is held the globe, representing Principality. Upon his head is the cap of Regality, of purple velvet, furred with ermins. Behind the head is a rich chair of estate of cloth of gold, tissued ; upon the cushion of the chair stands the Imperial CrowQ, set with stones. " The whole effigies lies upon a bed covered with a large pall of black velvet, under which is a line Holland sheet on six stools of cloth of gold, richly tissued ; by the sides of the bed of state a rich suit of compleat armour repre- senting his command as a general ; at the feet of the effigies stands his crest, as is usual in all ancient monu- ments." Various military decorations, trophies, and banners were mounted in the room, and within the rails were eight great standards on candlesticks of silver five feet high, with tapers of virgin wax three feet in length. The rooms were kept by the old soldiers of the Com- monwealth, and the sight must have been one of greater magnificence than had been seen during the century. "WTiile this function was operating at Somerset House great preparations were being made for the funeral in West- minster Abbey. The interior of the church was fitted with raised seats and scaffolding as on other great occasions, to permit the greatest number of persons to view the ceremony; rails were erected down the Strand from Somer- set House to the Abbey for the greater convenience of the peopleand to give them free anduninterrupted circulation. By the 20th November all tickets for the Abbey had been issued, and the holders were required to be in their 278 Side-lights on the Stuarts. places not later than, eight a.m. on the day of the funeral. And for the whole of that day all carriage traffic was stopped along or across the streets between the Abbey and Somerset House. On Tuesday, the 23rd November, the body and the effigies were placed on a hearse and carried in procession to the Abbey. " The whole ceremony," says one of the papers, " was managed with very great state, many thousands of people being spectators." The entire route was lined with troops, the people passing to and fro behind them. A most numerous company, including all the foreign ambassadors and many persons of distinction whose names are given in the reports, followed the hearse, and the procession took several hours to pass from Somerset House to Westminster. After the ceremony at the Abbey the body was consigned to the tomb, but the e&gy was carried from the west door, where it had remained during the ceremony, to a noble structure at the Bast End, where it remained for some time open to public view. ^ " This," says the Political Mercury of the 9fch September, 1658, referring to the proposed demonstration, " is the last ceremony of honour, and less could not be performed to the memory of him, to whom posterity will pay (when Envy is laid asleep by Time) more honour than we are able to express." A sentiment which did equal credit to the heart and to the good judgment of the writer. Richard Cromwell was entirely unsuited for govern- ment. In after life he loudly reproached those who, as he said, had deluded him with false promises, but the faults, I conceive, lay within himself. He was a courteous and kindly gentleman, and his short term of ' The wax-work effigies of several kings and queens remained for many- years on view at Westminster Abbey. They are now, I believe, stored away in some recess, where, however, they may be seen by the curious. The Regicides. 279 government was marked by several acts of clemency; but lie satisfied no party, and he allowed bis court to depart from tbe ways of bis fatber, and to degenerate into a licence wbicb shocked tbe solid and steadfast Puritans, while it prepared tbe minds of men for tbe revulsion that was to follow. Richard's fall was sudden and unavoidable. He retired to tbe continent with dignity and with a good estate ; but though be was pitied by some and not hated by any, be soon ceased to be a factor in national life, and was rather regarded as the " Tumble-down Dick," wbicb gave the sign to many a country alehouse,* than as a person of any political importance. In May, 1660, King Charles II. landed at Dover, and assumed the reins of government. Whatever may have been tbe new king's wishes for retribution on his father's judges, and there is no reason to suppose, that if it bad been possible to pardon all, tbe king would not have been willing to do so, a middle course became absolutely necessary. On tbe one hand, an Act of Indemnity of the widest dimensions was a condition precedent to tbe Presbyterian and Puritan party's ac- ceptance of Charles, and on tbe other, the attitude of tbe Cavaliers rendered a certain number of exemplary punishments necessary to retain their allegiance, and to compensate them for the defeats and indignities through which they had passed. Charles bad, after bis father's death, in June, 1649, issued a proclamation declaring for a free Parliament, by whose advice he was resolved to govern himself, and for an act of oblivion for all except those found actually and expressly guilty, on lawful trial, of the murder of their late sovereign ; and before ■* Some of these signs still remain. One, I am told, is in the county of Cumberland. 28o Side-lights on the Stuarts. landing in England, he issued a proclamation at Breda, on 14tli April, 1660, in which he declared that he would grant a free pardon to all who, within forty days, should claim the benefit thereof, except only those who should be thereafter excepted by Parliament. Save for those persons so excepted by ParHament, he declared that no crime committed by them should ever be brought up in judgment against them, their lives, their liberties, or their estates. On the 18th May, 1660, an order was issued by the House of Lords that all those who had sat in judgment on the late king when sentence of death was pronounced, and the estates of all those that had fled, be forthwith seized and secured. On the 2nd June, a royal proclamation called upon all those that sat on the king's trial to come in or to be excepted from out of the Act of Oblivion ; and on the 6th June, the Commons passed a resolution excepting seven persons only from the Act of Oblivion, viz. : Thomas Harrison, William Say, John Jones, Thomas Scott, Cornelius Holland, John Lisle, and John Backstead. Eelying on the king's proclama- tion, and on this resolution of Parliament, many of the king's judges claimed the benefit of the Act of Oblivion, to find only that they were rushing to their doom. Four only of the seven persons excepted, in the first instance by Parliament, viz. Harrison, Jones, Scott, and Backstead, were ultimately executed ; ^ but others, uot then excepted, were added to the list, which swelled day by day, as the requirements of the king's party in- sisted on other names being inserted. Under these orders, nearly all the surviving judges of the king, who had not fled the country, were arrested and put on their trial, ^ William Say escaped and died abroad, John Lisle was murdered by the king's party in Holland, Cornelius Holland escaped to Lausanne, where he resided till his death. The Regicides. 281 and notwithstanding the resolution of the House, that only seven persons be excepted from the Act of Oblivion, true bills were forthwith found against thirty-two persons, who were afterwards brought to trial and con- victed under the Statute of Edward III., for high treason in levying war against the king and compassing his death. The grand jury met at Hickes's Hall '^ on the 9th October, 1660, where they were charged by Sir Orlando Bridgman, Lord Chief Baron, and the bills then found were sent for trial at the October Sessions of the Old Bailey on the following day. During the consultations as to the mode of trying the regicides, a knotty point arose, as to whether the killing of the king on the 30th January, 1649, should be alleged as having taken place on the last day of King Charles I., or on the first day of King Charles II., it being argued, that as the law does not recognize any fraction of a day, the whole day must be in the one reign or the other ; and the judges, being un- able to come to a conclusion, some thinking that the same day might be entirely within both reigns, and others doubting, the difficulty was solved by charging the prisoners, not with killing the king on the 30th January, but with compassing his death on the 29th January, which was undoubtedly in the reign of King Charles I. The assenting to the judgment of the High Court, the signing of the warrant for the execution, and the assisting at the execution itself, being all admitted in evidence, in support of those overt acts which are neces- sarily to be proved, in order to establish a case of high treason. '* Hickes's Hall was built in 1613 in St. John's Street, Clerkenwell by Sir Baptist Hickes, a wealthj' merchant, and by him presented to the City of London. It was used as a Court of Petty Session and for the meeting of the Grand Jury, who there found the bills that were after- wards transmitted for trial to the Old Bailey. 2S2 Side-lights on the Stuarts. The Old Bailey stood where it stands now, the very incarnation of the felon's home, with its stone walls grimed by the sooty atmosphere of the busy city. But, like many an old Assize Court of the present century, one side of the court was then open to the cold blasts of the winter wind, and the prisoners, though sheltered from rain or snow, were otherwise without protection and without warmth, and one after the other they petitioned the court to be remitted to the Tower while awaiting their trial, and not to be thus exposed to the fury of the weather after their long imprisonment and their many privations. They were brought in detach- ments from the Tower to Newgate, where they were lodged before trial, and at nine on the morning following their removal they were called upon to plead. They one and all desired permission to consult with counsel as to how they should plead, having only received notice at six o'clock the previous evening that they were to be tried at six the next morning. This was refused, and their pleas were then formally taken, after some argument and delay. On the first day. Sir Hardress Waller and Fleetwood pleaded guilty, the rest put themselves on the country and stood their trial. The Commission appointed to try the prisoners was constituted of Sir Orlando Bridgman, Lord Chief Baron, who presided, Sir William Wild, Recorder of London, afterwards made a Baronet and a Justice of the Kind's Bench, Justices Foster, Mallet, Hide, Twisden, and Tyrrel, Barons Atkins and Turner, Serjeants Brown and Hale, and twenty other persons. However much may be advanced against the trial of the king by a High Court composed of Members of Parliament and others practically committed to a foregone conclusion, the composition of this Court, though containing a The Regicides. 283 strong legal element, was by no means free from excep- tion. In ttose days of political strife it would probably have been impossible to have obtained a court altogether free from bias, but tlie tide of popular feeling was at the time running strongly in favour of the new king and against the regicides, and upon tte non- controvertible facts of the case any jury might have been relied upon to find a verdict of guilty. And public opinion and the administration of justice would liave been less scandalized had certain names been omitted from the list of Com- missioners associated with the judges who conducted the trial. Sir Orlando Bridgman himself had made his submission to Cromwell, had with his assent practised in the courts, and was more than suspected of having played a double game during that period. Among the Commissioners, Monk, then Lord Albemarle, had been the instrument of handing over to the tender mercies of the law many of his old friends and comrades, and now sat as one of their judges. Denzil HoUis and Lord Man- chester, also on the Commission, were two of the five members whom Charles had attempted personally to seize, and who had been mainly instrumental in organizing the party which had opposed the king in Parliament, and had carried on the war against him in the field, and these gentlemen, with Mr. Arthur Anesley, a member of the same group, not only sat as Commissioners, but took part in the proceedings, and in the case of Harrison addressed the jury against the prisoner. Added to them was Lord Finch, who had been some years before charged by the Parliament with high treason, and had fled the country to save his life, and Serjeant Hale, who had been the friend and legal adviser of King Charles. Many of these men, after the fashion of perverts, to show their loyalty to -the rising sun, set themselves with the iitmost 284 Side-lights on t?ie Stuarts. diligence to destroy all those who had with themselves been worshippers of the sun that had set. On the 11th of October Major-Greneral Harrison, whose case was thought to be the strongest, was placed at the bar. He was a great enthusiast, and as he had openly and courageously opposed the king and advocated his death, so also he had opposed Ci'omwell when he believed the latter's desiscns were subversive of the Commonwealth in which he gloried ; and it was thought that in bringing him first to the bar, a good example might be set, some of the others might be induced to plead guilty, and to express contrition, and a favourable effect be thus produced in the country. The anticipated result, however, was not attained, for Harrison was as brave as he was resolute, a man of thoroughly solid convictions, one of those men who make history, and to whom great causes, whether of good or evil, most commonly owe their origin and their success. He had formerly been a barrister and practised in Westminster Hall. He belonged to a respectable family in the north, country, from all of whom he had become estranged through their divergence of views on the subject of the civil war. He made no denial of the share he had taken in the late troubles, but only sought to show that he had acted under the influence of solemn conviction. " I am not here," said he, " to deny any- thing that in my own judgment and conscience I have done, but rather to bring it forth to light." ' After the speech of the Junior Counsel, summing-up shortly the evidence for the Crown, showing that Harrison had sat as one of the king's judges, that he had stood up as assenting to the sentence, and that he had signed the warrant for the execution, the spectators hummed — a proceeding rebuked by the Chief Baron, who with force ' State Trials, vol. v. p. 1022. From an original portrait. The Regicides. 285 and dignity pointed out that such, exclamations were fitter for a stage-play than a court of justice, and begging for free scope for the counsel and for the prisoners. Harrison then addressed the jury, justifying his action on various grounds, and referring to the various phases of the Civil War, declared that he would never have assented to the death of the king had he not believed him to have set up his standard against the people. That he acted by the authority of Parliament, which could not be questioned by any lesser authority than Parliament itself, and that what he did he believed was by the revealed will of God, by the power and authority of Parliament, and in the fear of the Lord. " Away with him," said the Lord Chief Baron, forgetting his lecture to the crowd, " know you where you are, sir ? you are in an assembly of Christians. Will you make God the author of your treasons and murders ? Christians must not hear this." After this he was constantly interrupted not only by the Chief Baron and by the other judges, but by the noblemen and gentlemen who crowded the bench. One of the King's Counsel suggested he should be sent to Bedlam to prepare him for the gallows : one of the lords asked that they should go some other way to work with him ; another that he should be treated as a leper, and no one stand near him. Ultimately, on the Chief Baron ruling that the order of the House of Commons was of no avail against a charge of treason, Harrison was silent, the Chief Baron shortly charged the jury, who imme- diately found a verdict of guilty, and the barbarous sentence in cases of high treason was then pronounced. " Whom men have judged God doth not condemn. Blessed be the name of the Lord," said the prisoner, " Good is the Lord for all this. I have no reason to bo ashamed of the cause that I have been engaged in." Wishing to 2 86 Side-lights on the Stuarts. press their advantage to the utmost, the counsel for the Crown prayed for an immediate execution, which was granted, and the Court was adjourned till seven of the next morning, to proceed with the cases of the other prisoners. In the meantime Harrison was removed back to Newgate, telling his friends on the way that they must be prepared to receive hard things as well as easy things from their heavenly Father. His irons, which had been struck off during his trial, in conformity with the principle of our law which forbids any man to be tried in chains, were again riveted on to his limbs, and he was ordered for execution on Saturday, the 13th of October. In the meantime various ministers of religion were sent to con- vince him, if possible, of the error of his ways, and to obtain from him some sort of recantation. With these persons he held long and friendly concourse, justifying his actions and explaining his motives. He declared that he had no personal animosity towards the king, and stated that on parting from the latter, whom he had escorted from the Isle of Wight, and to whom he had shown all courtesy consistent with his safe custody, the king had said that he had found he was not the sort of man that he had been represented, and had he seen him before he should not have harboured such evil thoughts of him. It had doubtless been reported to the king, as it was the common talk of the day, that Harrison had offered to take the king's life in secret if the Parlia- ment had so decided, the real fact, however, being as stated by Clarendon and others, that so far from this being Harrison's mood, he was among the very first to denounce any such scheme, to declare it barbarous, odious and inhuman, and to insist that nothing should be done except before the whole world publicly in the face of day. He was, however, a most vmcompromising The Regicides. 287 republican, and, together with Ireton, one of the chief movers in the trial and condemnation of the king. His conduct in prison, before and after his conviction, appears to have created a most favourable impression on all who saw him, and even the female warder who swept out his cell spoke of him as " a man such as had never been seen there before ; that it would have done any one good to have been with him ; and that his discourse and frame of mind would have melted the hardest of hearts." He parted cheerfully with his family and his friends, told his wife he had nothing to leave her but his Bible, and desired those who loved him to show their affection in being loving and tender to his wife. With a joyful enthusiasm he awaited his fate. He was beforehand with the sheriff who came to announce the moment of starting, and had to await the marshalling of the pro- cession in the common ward, among felons, murderers, thieves, and misdemeanants. To these he addressed some words of good advice, and amongst them he distributed some money. He was then bound on to a sledge, and drawn through the streets to Charing Cross. There being some delay on the road, a man came up to him, and said deridingly, " Where is now the good old cause ? " " Here," said Harrison, striking his breast ; " and I am going to seal it with my blood ! " He was executed at a spot, railed in for the purpose, where Charing Cross had formerly stood, and where an Eleanor Cross has recently been erected; and he was made to stand looking towards the Banqueting House, White- hall. Before the executioner commenced his dismal task, Harrison made a short speech to the people, declaring that, according to the light that God had given him, he had served Him and his country with integrity and uprightness of heart, not wittingly or willingly 2 88 Side-lights on the Stuarts. wronging any man. He then prayed aloud, and declaring himself ready, the sledge was drawn away, and his body was left hanging. Before he was nearly dead, he was taken down, and, being cut open by the executioner while still living, his bowels were burnt before his face. In the extremity of this agony he reached out with one of his hands and struck the exe- cutioner. His head was then severed from the body, his heart torn out and shown to the crowd, and his limbs disjointed and carried back to Newgate on the hurdles which had brought them, preparatory to their being prepared for exhibition over London Bridge and the various gates of the metropolis.^ I have dealt fully and in detail with the trial and execution of Harrison, who was regarded by the Eoyalists as the most vindictive, the most ferocious, and the most unmannerly of the enemies of the king. But there was, in his case, no attempt to escape, no paltering with his conscience as to the work he had done or the motives that had led him on, no faltering in his resignation to his fate, in his reliance on the support of the Most High, or in his courage and fortitude under the torture of his prison and the inhuman barbarity of his death. He had not, like the king, the solace of knowing that multitudes of his fellow-countrymen mourned with him and for him, and would, at a convenient moment, rise again to restore his family and his name. He had not the companionship, in his last days, of his own minister of religion, and the society of dear and loyal friends. Harrison's party were then beaten and dis- credited ; many of his friends were in gaol, others were awaiting the last sentence of the law, and he had himself " ParUamenJary Intelligencer, October IStli, 1660. State Trials, vol. V. p. 1230. The Regicides. 289 spent months in prison. He was not led as a soldier to his death with the pomp of arms and the clanging of accoutrements, but, his body emaciated by fasting, and his limbs bruised and wounded by his manacles of iron, he was drawn to the scaffold with ignominy and shame. And yet, taking these two as Christian against Christian, and as man against man, can it be said that, in the supreme hour of their fate, courage, dignity, and fortitude were more fully exemplified in the instance of the King than in that of the Independent ? It is commonly said of Harrison, with a view to his disparagement, that he was a man of mean origin, being the son of a butcher at Carlisle ; but indeed at those times Carlisle was in the matter of communication almost as far from the metropolis as New England, and the inhabi- tants of the two spots knew perhaps as little of each other. He was in reality, as I think has been satisfactorily established, the son of a good family in Durham, having an estate in that county, which had descended to him in a direct line from his great-grand- father. Of his descendants, one son was in Vienna at the Restoration, and thus possibly escaped his father's fate. Another son emigrated to Virginia, where he became a man of note, in the old colonial days, and was a direct ancestor of Benjamin Harrison, of Surrey, in Virginia, the friend of Washington, and one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. From him was descended William Henry Harrison, eighth President of the United States, who died in 1841, after a short tenure of office. From him, again, is descended, as alleged, G-eneral Harrison, who is now (Oct., 1888) the selected candidate of the Republican party to contest the presi- dency with President Cleveland. Harrison's daughters remained in England, and made good marriages, among u 290 Side- Lights on the Stuarts. their descendants being found members of the aristocratic famihes of Stirling and Ashburton. The general's portrait is said to be in the possession of the "Willing family of Philadelphia, who also claim a direct descent from him through one of his daughters, and it is described as that of a man of about forty, with a fine head and pointed beard. Oarew, a member of an ancient Cornish family, suffered next with equal courage and fortitude. In the cases of Cook, the Solicitor-General, and Hugh Peters (described as Cromwell's mad chaplain) greater brutalities were had recourse .to. During their trials the hangman, with the rope over his arm, was placed near the dock, and as Cook made a strong fight for his life on the ground that he was acting under orders of the then Government, and should therefore be treated as a soldier under command, and as he was of a some- what feeble frame and retiring manner, it was thought that profit might accrue to the king's cause through some weakness being exhibited at his death. He, how- ever, like Harrison, spoke temperately to the people, and prayed at length, desiring amongst other things that the same clemency might be shown to him as the Common- wealth had shown to those convicted by them, and that his poor wife and children might not be entirely deprived of their estates, " Mr. Cook," says the Parliamentary Intelligencer, " carried himself far better than could have been expected." ® Although in order to terrify him and to shake his nerves, the bloody head of his one time colleague, Harrison, was put on the same sledge and faced him during his dismal progress from Newgate to Charing Cross. Mr. Cook was a man of considerable attainments and much learning. He had travelled and " Octohor 20tb, IGGO. The Regicides. 291 studied much abroad, principally in Rome, after whicli lie returned to England, and, being a member of tbe Bar,^ secured a considerable position. After holding the post of Solicitor- General to the Commonwealth, he was appointed Chief Justice of Ireland, which office he held to the Restoration, when he was arrested and delivered up by Monk, his former friend and colleague. Hugh Peters had been exceedingly active and enthusiastic on behalf of the Commonwealth, not only as a preacher and writer in England, but also as a military commander in Ireland, where he led a brigade against the rebels at the siege of Drogheda in 1649. His intemperance of language, his cruelty in command, and his unwavering hatred of monarchy, made him obnoxious to the whole of the king's party, and deprived him of much sympathy from the Puritans. He lay for some time in concealment in London among the Quaker fraternity under the name of Tomson, and was at last discovered under the bed of a Quakeress who had been recently confined, and whose family had permitted him to occupy that spot as the safest place of concealment.^ He was executed on the same day as Cook, and bore himself, both in prison and on the scaffold, with dignity and fortitude. On his way to Charing Cross he espied a friend in the crowd, and bending a piece of gold, he desired his friend to take it to his daughter, and say " that before she received that token of his love he should be with his God i-H g^o^y." On some of the crowd assailing him with opprobrious epithets during the time that the sheriff was engaged with Cook, he begged them not to trample on a dying man, and when the executioner, by orders of Colonel Turner, who appears to have been in command, went with bloody hands to show Peters the ' He was a member of Gray's Inn. ' Mi'rcvritis PiiUficns, September 6th, 1660. 292 Side- Lights on the Stuarts. mangled remains of Cook, and asked, " Come, Mr. Peters, how do you like this work ? " He replied with courage, " I am not, thank God, terrified at it; you may do your worst." ' He died with calmness and resignation, but popular feeling had been aroused strongly against him, the bloodthirsty crowd had become brutalized by the barbarous sights of that and the two previous days, and although they listened patiently and with pity to the speech and prayer of Cook, the whole people shouted their delight when Peters went up the ladder.* Harrison and Cook, having been lawyers and having pleaded in the Courts at Westminster, their heads were put on pikes and mounted one on each of the turrets of Westminster Hall, Harrison on the south-eastern, and Cook on the north- eastern, looking towards London, and their quarters were distributed about the city. On the 17th, Thomas Scott, a country gentleman and graduate of Cambridge, a long time member of Parlia- ment ° and Secretary to the Council of State under the Commonwealth, was executed at the same place, praying at great length, and refusing to recant, though he was told that such recantation might be the saving of his life. He parted resignedly from his wife and daughters, saying that though flesh and blood recoiled at the sen- tence he was to undergo, the Lord had given him strength to bear it. Gregory Clements, who had pleaded guilty, was also executed on the same day — after which, also on the same day. Colonel Jones and Colonel Scroop," " two comely antient gentlemen," were brought to Charing Cross on the same sledge. The latter, after a short speech to the people and a prayer, was subjected to the ' State Trials, vol. v. p. 1282. ' Parliamentani Inl<'lli(ii'ncn', Octnbev 20tli, 1660. ' State Trials, vol. v. p. 1274. ' " Ibid. vol. v. p. 1299. The Regicides. 293 like barbarities as Harrison. Colonel Scroop was a gentleman of an ancient family and of a considerable estate, who commanded a regiment of horse at the battle of Edgehill. He was afterwards appointed a Commissioner for Scotland in conjunction with Monk and Lord Broghill, and was altogether a person of much consideration, though not a Member of Parliament. He was a man respected by all parties, and when the Act of Oblivion was passed, both he and Colonel Hutchinson were voted not to suffer, and were not named among the excepted persons. Colonel Scroop, however, being afterwards reported to the House of Commons " to have seemed to justify the King's murther," in a conversation with General Brown, he was wholly excepted from par- don, while Colonel Hutchinson was left to die in prison.'' With regard to Colonel Jones, who was a brother-in-law of Cromwell, having married his sister, the reporter says,^ " The time of his departure being come, this aged gentleman was drawn in one sledge with his companion. Colonel Scroop, whose grave and graceful countenance, accompanied with courage and cheerfulness, caused great admiration and compassion in the spectators as they passed along the streets to Charing Cross, the place of their execution. And after the executioner had done his part upon three others that day, he was so drunk with blood that like one surfeited he grew sick at stomach ; and, not being able himself, he set his boy to finish the tragedy upon Colonel Jones, who coming up the ladder with the like cheerfulness as his brethren did before him," spoke to the people, explaining that though he confessed he was guilty of the facts laid to his charge, yet that he was not guilty of murder or of any malice in what he ' " Trial of 29 Eegicides," p. 19. ' State Trials, vol. v. p. 1284. 294 SiDE-LlGIITS ON THE StUARTS. did ; that he believed he was accomplishing the work of the Lord; that he acquitted the king of the bloody busi- ness of that day, as he was advised by the Judges that it was the law ; and that he was in perfect charity with all men. He then committed his soul to God, and so died. Thus far the executions were at Charing Cross, near the court, and attended by crowds of persons, but the conduct of the prisoners, their piety, their open justifica- tion of their conduct, their apparent joyfulness to meet their end, and the impossibility of obtaining from any one of them any retractation of their views, had a profound impression on the court, and more so on the ministers, who advised the king to stay his hand, or at least to have no further scenes at Charing Cross." And accordingly the executions of Colonel Axtell and Colonel Hacker, which had been appointed for the following day at Charing Cross, were respited for the day,^ and on the 19th, the two colonels were ordered for execution at Tyburn. By this time, however, the mob, struck by the beha- viour of those executed at Charing Cross, had begun to turn in favour of the Regicides, and though Colonel Axtell and Colonel Hacker had actual charge of the scaffold, and were the superintendents, and, except for the hangmen, the executioners of the king, the crowd would, in their cases, permit of no reproaches or incivility towards them. Their words were received with tears and lamentations, and the man whose cart had carried them from Newgate to Tyburn, refused to lead his horse away from the gallows, or to be guilty of any further participation in the death of such worthy men.^ Colonel '' Burnet, p. 106. ' Pepys, vol. i. p. 143. ' State Trials, vol. v. p. 1298 : "TheTryalof 29 Eegicides, published in 1660-1, and republished in 1713, refers to the scene at the execution of Axtell as most remarkable, and gives substantially the same account ,-iH is found in the State Trials. The Regicides. 295 Axtell was, to some extent, regarded by tte people as a Protestant tero, for he had been Governor of Kilkenny, and had been very active in punishing those of the Irish rebels who had been concerned in the massacre of the Protestants. For this reason it was said that the court had induced the Parliament to except him from the Act of Oblivion, of which he otherwise would have had the benefit, his life having been expressly spared by a reso- lution of the House of Commons, unanimously passed on the 4th of June.^ Colonel Hacker was a gentleman of ancient family and of large estate in the counties of Leicester and Notts, who had commanded a regiment of horse of his own raising at the battle of Worcester. He was a strong Commonwealth man, and refused allegiance to Eichard Cromwell, whom he regarded as a usurper. He was enticed to London by Monk, who, after receiving him with open arms, handed him over to the court. His family were devoted loyalists, his brother having commanded a regiment in the king's service, but their influence could not save their estate, which was confiscated to the Crown, and afterwards settled upon the Duke of York. Poor Mrs. Hacker, the Colonel's wife, had, after her husband's arrest, handed over to the Coun- sel for the Crown the original warrant for the king's execution, delivered to Colonel Hacker, and signed by the fifty-nine Commissioners. She did this, however, without making any bargain, in the vain hope of obtain- ing some mercy for her husband ; but no mercy was shown him, and the warrant, with the various signatures attached, proved the most damning evidence against the several prisoners.* ^ Polifical Intelligencer, June 25th, 1660. ■* Lucy Hutchinson's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 266. The original warrant is now preserved in the House of Lords. Whether out of consideration 296 SiDE-LlGirTS ON THE StUARTS. These scenes produced their natural effect upon the king and his advisers, and for the present at least they held their hands as against the lives of their prisoners. However, Lord Monson, Sir Henry Mildmay, and Robert Wallop, neither of whom voted or signed the sentence of death, were dragged on a hurdle, with ropes round their necks, to the gallows at Tyburn, and then returned to the Tower, where they dragged out a miserable existence, their sentence involving the penalty of being thus publicly dragged to Tyburn and back every 30th of January till their death. Thus, for a time, was the shedding of blood stayed, not from the promptings of justice or of mercy, but from fear lest the further sacrifice of life should induce the nation to reconsider its position, and to turn its ear again to the tenets of that now discredited party of whom these slaughtered Independents were some of the most conspicuous examples. For this vindictive cruelty the king was, perhaps, only partly responsible. His nature was neither cruel nor vindictive, and he was generally credited at the time, alike by Royalist and by Roundhead, with an earnest desire to extend rather than to limit his promises of pardon. But he had behind him a party who had suffered for him in mind, body, and estate, who gave grudgingly to the Presby- terians and nowhere to the Independents ajiy credit for honesty or patriotism, and whose spirit could only be appeased by the wholesale slaughter of their enemies, and by a general confiscation of their estates. And to the clamour of this party, supported alike by the religion of the Church and by the valour of the country to Mrs. Hacker, or in consequence of the demeanour of the crowd, the details of barbarity carried out in the case of Colonel Axtell were not performed on Colonel Hackor, whose body was removed immediately on his death. — MercHiim Puhllms, OctobiT 25th, 1660. The Regicides. 297 gentry, king and ministers were bound for a time to yield. These trials of the Regicides and others were con- ducted by my Lord Bridgman according to the existing law, and save for some occasional outburst, as in the case of Major-General Harrison, with decency and decorum, and, judged by the same standard as that of the king, the convictions were amply justified by the evidence, though it is impossible to say that in their case the example was beneficial to the public interest or calcu- lated to serve the cause of kings as the execution of the king had served the cause of peoples. The plea of the authority of Parliament could hardly in any case avail, as the House of Commons was hardly complete, various members having been expelled, and the Lords had re- fused to concur in the resolution. The defence of the Solicitor-General would not avail, for, as was said at his trial, the man who wielded the axe was hardly less guilty of the king's death than the counsel who drew the indict- ment and conducted the trial. The case of the oflB.cers who acted under the orders of their superiors seems, how- ever, to me of more doubtful character, and the capital sentences might very well have been remitted in the instances of Colonel Axtell and Colonel Hacker. And, undoubtedly, had the Crown been contented according to the usual practice under the Commonwealth, to execute sentences of death and to remit the barbarities suitable only to the brutality of the middle ages, popular sentiment would probably have gone with the law, and not have given rise to a revulsion of feeling of which the tide set in soon after the Restoration. . So much, indeed, was this the case that within two years of the Restoration, and within twenty months of the executions at Charing Cross, when, in 1662, Colonel Okey, Colonel Barkstead and Miles 298 SiDE-LlGHTS ON THE StUARTS. Corbet, three other Regicides, having been secured by a gross act of treachery on the part of the king's agent in Holland/ were convicted and executed, public feeling ran strongly in their favour. They were tried, not for high treason or for killing the king, but under the practice which then made it a capital felony to flee from outlawry. This fact was proved against them ; there was no possibility of defence, and no opportunity of making in the court one of those speeches that had so disconcerted the Govern- ment in the case of the prisoners of 1660. Sentenced to be executed with all the barbarities of the time, they were intercepted on their way from Newgate to Tyburn by numerous friends and others, who asked their bless- ing, and encouraged them to go on cheerfully in so glorious a cause. Many people got into the cart which carried them to the gallows, and remained seated with them until the fatal moment ; and there was, during the whole of the dismal scene, a universal feeling of sad- ness throughout the assembled multitude, in which the officers of the sheriff appear themselves to have joined. Mrs. Okey's friends having obtained an order that the body of the colonel should be delivered to her to be buried as she desired, the fact became speedily known, and a numerous concourse of sober, substantial people assembled in Christ Church, Stepney, where was the colonel's family vault, to attend the funeral. Some thousands more were also coming thither for that purpose, so that there were in view about twenty thousand people attending the ceremony, who behaved themselves in a solemn and peaceable manner, as the occasion * Sir G-eorge Downing, who having got everything he could out of Cromwell, like a perfidious rogue, turned against his former comrades, and was justly helil in opprobrium by honest men of all parties cvci after. — Pepys, vol. i. p. 333. The Regicides. 299 demanded. The Council being informed of this pro- posed demonstration, revoked tlie order for the burial of Colonel Okey's body by his wife, and the sheriff, with some violence of language and demeanour, dispersed the people. His body was then sent to the Tower and buried in an unknown grave, attended by many thousand sighs, he having, as was said, written his own epitaph in the hearts of the people. Of these three last-mentioned gentlemen. Colonel Okey was a citizen of London and member for Bedford, who had served with the Parliamentary army from the first, and had commanded a regiment of dragoons. He was a man of courage and of fidelity to the cause of the Com- monwealth, for which reason he lost his regiment under Cromwell, but was afterwards reinstated by Richard Cromwell's Parliament. Colonel Barkstead, also a citi- zen, banker, and goldsmith in London, had joined the Parliamentary army from the earliest date, and had been successively Governor of Reading and Lieutenant of the Tower. Miles Corbet was a gentleman of old family in the county of Norfolk. He was a member of the Bar and of Lincoln's Inn, and had served in Parliament for nearly forty consecutive years. During the Common- wealth he was one of the Civil Commissioners for the Government of Ireland, and appears to have acted with integrity and devotion. After this no more executions were possible; but Dover, Brewster, and Brooks, who printed the speeches and prayers of the deceased Regicides, were prosecuted and sentenced — Dover to a fine of 100 marks, the others to a fine of 40 marks, and each and all of them to stand in the pillory from eleven to one at the Royal Exchange and afterwards at Smithfield, and to be kept in prison till they gave bail, themselves in 400Z, and two 300 SiDE-LlGHTS ON THE StUARTS. sureties in 200Z. eacli not to repeat the offence. The offensive portion of the publication appears to have con- sisted in the statement of the editor that " these men had the gracious presence of the Lord with them at the time of their execution," and that "the cause of their suffer- ings from man was such as they had no cause to be ashamed of." Others of the king's judges were pardoned of their lives, but those who had fled beyond seas to the American and British plantations were mercilessly hunted down, and lived short lives of misery and privation. Others were banished to " remote and dismal islands," others were kept and died in prison after being plundered and starved by their gaolers, and others were stripped of their goods and their estates, and their wives and children left penniless, whilst the Royalist party had grants of their lands, so much so that those who had suffered the pains of death were, perhaps, in many cases, the happier of the two.'' Amongst others who so suffered were Colonel Hutchinson, of Orthorpe Park, JSTotts, M.P. for that county, who died in Sandown Castle, near Deal; Henry Martin,^ who died in Chepstow Castle in 1681, in his seventy- eighth year; Simon Mayne, M.P. for Aylesbury, who died in the Tower in 1661, in his fiftieth year, and was buried in the Temple Church ; and others who died after great privation in North America and elsewhere. Four of the Regicides, however — Edmund Ludlow, Andrew Broughton, Nicholas Love, and William Cawley— found a home in Switzerland, " Lucy Hutchinson's " Memoirs," vol. ii. p. 268. ' See Burnet's account of this gentleman, p. 107. Ho was eldest son of Sir Henry Martin, ICing's Advocate and Judge of the Court of Admi- ralty, was M.P. for llnrks, and a member of the Inner Temple, to which ho waK admitted in 1610. The Regicides. 301 where they were hospitably entertained, and remained in security till their death. Ludlow, a member of the Inner Temple, was the son and heir of Sir Henry Ludlow, of Maiden Bradley, Wilts, and M.P. for Hindon during the Long Parliament. He was desired by a strong party to take part in the troubles of the reign of Charles II., but answered that he had done his part, and that the country must now be served by younger men. He remained at Yevey, where he wrote an account of these troubled times, and dying in 1693, in his seventy- fourth year, was buried at Yevey, where his monument still remains in St. Martin's Church. Broughton, Clerk of the Court, and Love also escaped to and died in Switzerland ; and Cawley, who was much regarded in his native county, remained there in banishment till his death in 1666. "William Cawley was a native of Chichester, where his family had been long established, and were possessed of considerable wealth. He was M.P. for Chichester from 1627 to 1640, when he was elected for Midhurst, and continued to represent that constituency till 1659, when he was again elected for Chichester. In 1627 he founded the hospital of St. Bartholomew at Chichester, to which he added a chapel in 1629, and these buildings, since converted into alms- houses and workhouses for the poor, are 'still known as Cawley's Almshouse. A portrait is still extant on panel at the hospital, inscribed " William Cawley, Anno 1620, yEt. suae 18." In 1630 he compounded for knighthood at 14Z. In 1645 he was admitted a student at the Inner Temple, according, apparently, to his father's wishes; in 1652 he was called to the Bar, and in 1660 was appointed Recorder of Chichester, which he then represented in Parliament. He was a personal friend of Cromwell, and was, with six other Sussex gentlemen, among the fifty- 302 Side- Lights on the Stuarts. nine who signed the warrant for the king's execution. He died at Vevey on the 6th of January, 1666, in the sixty-fourth year of his age, and was buried in the Church of St. Martin. His remains were afterwards brought to England, and they now rest among those of his family in the vault of the chapel which he founded. His son was presented by Richard Cromwell to the living of Rotherfield, in Sussex, and afterwards became Arch- deacon of Lincoln. His granddaughter married Sir Godfrey Kneller.^ Other prominent members of the court had also been disposed of. Mr. Steel, the Attorney-General, and Mr. Aske had died before the Restoration. Dr. Dorislaus had been assassinated at the Hague; Mr. Broughton, the clerk of the court, was in concealment at Yevey ; Mr. Say was in hiding abroad ; Mr. Lisle had been murdered at Lausanne; Colonel Hutchinson had died in his prison at Deal, and others had been driven into exile. The bloody vengeance on the Regicides had not, however, the desired effect, for the nation has never been favour- able to excessive severity, and these barbarous and atro- cious punishments set men reflecting, and strengthened the hands of the somewhat inconsiderable party who still adhered to the principles of the Commonwealth, and even Samuel Pepys, a sound loyalist and placeman, who, having been witness as a boy of the king's death, went to see the death of the first of his judges and the exhibi- tion of their limbs, speaks of it as a sad sight, there having been ten persons hanged and quartered within a week.^ But there yet remained something more to be done. " A full account of William Cawlcy and his family is to be found in the Sussex Archa3ological Collection, vol xxxiv. ]>. 21. " I'l'pys, vol. i. p. 144. The Regicides. 303 The king's party, having to the utmost of their power and to the limit of poHtical safety, wreaked their ven- geance on the living, were now to carry their resentment beyond the grave and to visit it on the dead. In the month of June, 1660, the waxen eflSgy of the Protector, which, with those of other rulers of the kingdom, had been deposited in the Abbey, had been exhibited to public gaze at one of the windows of the King's Jewel House at Whitehall, with a rope round its neck attached to a bar of the window.^ It was now decided to go further, and accordingly an order was passed by both Houses of Parliament on the 7th and 8th of December, 1660, that the bodies of Cromwell, Bradshav/, Ireton, and Pride be taken out of their graves and be drawn on a hurdle to Tyburn, there to be hanged up in their coffins, and then to be buried under the gallows. Having made which order, the House of Commons, having still before its eyes the spectre of a Puritan reaction, proceeded on the same day to pass Bills against profane cursing and swearing, for the better observance of the Lord's Day, and against the sin of drunkenness.^ This order, except as to Colonel Pride, was duly carried out on the 30th January, 1661, the anniversary of the king's death, divine service having been first performed, and the forgiveness of enemies eloquently expressed. The bodies of Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw having been dug up from the Abbey, were drawn through the streets on hurdles, hanged up at Tyburn, and then buried under the gallows. The heads were previously severed from the trunks, and were afterwards exhibited on pikes at the extreme end of Westminster Hall, Bradshaw in the centre and Cromwell and Ireton on either side. This ' Political Mercury, June 14tli, 1660. Parliamentary Intelligencer, December lOtli, 1G60. 304 SiDE-LlGIITS ON THE StUARTS. spectacle was witnessed, as may well be imagined, by an immense crowd, including a great number of ladies of the Court,' who attended at Tyburn probably as much out of curiosity as from a desire to show their devotion to the new king. The following official account of the per- formance was published by authority in the Mercurius Puhlicus of 31st January, 1661 : — "This day, January 30th (we need say no more but name the day of the month), was doubly observed, not only by a solemn fast, sermons and prayers at every parish church, for the precious blood of our late pious sovereign. King Charles the First, of ever glorious memory, but also by publicly dragging those odious carcases of Oliver Cromwell, Henry Ireton, and John Bradshaw to Tyburne. On Monday night Cromwell and Ireton, in two several carts, were drawn to Holborn from Westminster, where they were digged up on Saturday last, and the next morning Bradshaw. To-day they were drawn upon sledges to Tyburne. All the way (as before from Westminster) the universal outcry and curses of the people went along with. them. When these three carcases were at Tyburn they were pulled out of their coffins, and hanged at the several angles of that triple tree, where they hung till the sun was set, after which they were taken down and their heads cut off, their loathsome trunks thrown into a deep hole under the gallows. And now we cannot forget how at Cambridge, where Cromwell first set up for a rebel, he riding under the gallows, his horse, corvetting, threw his cursed Highness out of the saddle, just under the gallows (as if he had been turned off the ladder) ; the spec- tators, then observing the place and rather presaging the present work of this day, than the monstrous villanies ' Tepys, vol. i. p. 185. The Regicides. 305 of this day twelve years. But lie is now again thrown under the gallows (never more to be digged up), and there we leave him." A portrait of Colonel Hewson, who had escaped to Holland, was also hanged on a gallows at Cheapside,* and at a later date, to the general dissatisfaction. Sir Harry Vane was beheaded on Tower Hill, so that within a year of the Restoration there was not a gate or an open space in London not disgraced with the sickening exhibition of the trunks and limbs of the tortured Independents. Of Cromwell's death and funeral I have already spoken. Bradshaw, who, for some years after the king's trial, held the position of Lord President, Chief Justice of Chester, and President of the Coancil, showed consider- able independence in his office, and died in October, 1669. of an ague, from which he had suffered for about a year. Ireton, who had married Cromwell's daughter, Bridget, died in Ireland, where he was Lord Deputy, on 26th November, 1651, and was buried in the Abbey with some pomp. This desecration "of the bones of Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw, was followed by other similar scenes. The bodies of many distinguished men of the Puritan party were taken from their last resting-place and thrown into a common grave in St. Margaret's Church- yard. Among the remains of very many persons thus desecrated, the first were those of Cromwell's mother (a daughter of Sir Eichard Stewart), who died in 1654, and of Elizabeth Claypole, his favourite daughter, who died in August, 1658, and with regard to whom it was commonly said by the royalist party, that it was only her great affection for her father that led her to endure * Pepys, vol. i. p. 15. o 06 Side-lights on the Stuarts. his presence after the sentence upon the king.^ The next was Admiral Blake, one of the greatest of English admirals, who was neither one of the king's judges nor a Commissioner for his trial, and whose name and fame could be little affected by such an insult. At the same time that they thus dishonoured Admiral Blake, they also dug up Colonel Deane. For this gentleman, they had the excuse, not existing in the case J of Admiral Blake, that he had sat and voted as one of the king's judges. But he, like Blake, had since then performed great services for his country, not only on land but also at sea. When Admiral Van Tromp, in September, 1652, brought the Dutch fleet into the Channel, to challenge the supremacy of the seas with the English Commonwealth, Deane, who with Monk, was not only a military com- mander, but also an Admiral and General at sea, commanded one of the divisions of the British fleet in conjunction with Admiral Blake; these two commanders, perceiving Van Tromp with his squadron, boldly gave him battle, and after a long day's engagement, finally and effectually routed the Dutch, destroyed their fleet, and secured the supremacy of the seas for the English nation. During the engagement, however, Deane, while directing the manoeuvres of his ships, with his face to the enemy, was killed by a cannon-ball which cut him in two. For this victory, which at once secured the safety of British commerce and British maritime supremacy, and consequently a peaceful period so long as Cromwell and his commanders held in their hands the destinies of England; a public thanksgiving was celebrated at St. Paul's and at the Abbey. A national funeral was also ' Notwitlistanding this indignity upon the dead daughter, CronnvoU's surviving daughters were, after the Eestoration, treated with much con- sideration, and were to he found in the hest society of London. The Regicides. 307 given to the deceased Admiral and General at sea, at- tended by the Protector in person, and by innumerable persons of quality and distinction, and an annuity of 600L was settled by Parliament upon General Deane's widow and children, in recognition of his public services. But the fury of the king's party was still un- appeased, and these two brave and loyal servants of the country were accordingly disinterred and their bones thrown into the common pit. But their ashes were avenged, when, in 1667, their old enemy the Dutch sailed unmolested up the Thames, burnt the Royal James and the British Fleet ofE their own dockyard at Chatham, captured the Boyal Charles, and, emptying it of its guns and ammunition, towed it down the Channel under the ill-served guns of Upnor Castle, and to the amazement and shame of a thousand spectators. Then did people sigh for one day of the Protector and cry out for Fairfax the Presbyterian, and Ingoldsby the regicide, and other Puritan survivors of Cromwell's commanders, to wipe away the disgrace that the Stuart had brought upon the country. And then diJ the court and the court cater- pillars quake with fear lest it should get to the ears of the people and of the Parliament that the money voted for the defences of the nation had been squandered in vice and luxury at Whitehall, and that our Royal admirals in their abject terror and bewilderment had sunk one of their own ships loaded with stores and ammunition for the fleet, and another of the French king's laden with 80,000L worth of cargo, in mistake for the enemy.** And many an old Ironside, and many ° For an excellent account of public feeling at this time of our national disgrace, see Pepys, yol. iv. p. 78. Pepys was at this time Secretary of the Navy, and had to account for the sailors being unpaid and the ships without powder. X 2 3o8 Side-lights on the Stuarts. an old salt, must have turned from the sight of the British fleet in flames, without their officers having fired a gun or drawn a sword, and have sworn how different would things have been were Blake at Chatham or Deane at Sheerness. Next in order was John Pym, the colleague of Hampden, whose name is and was a household word in every British home, and who had been followed to what was believed to be his last resting-place by both Houses in Parliament assembled, who had adjourned their debates to be present at the funeral of the patriot ; and then Thomas May, clerk and historian of the Long Parliament, who died in 1650, and whose manly and courageous work is on the bookshelf of every student of history. These, with many others, were all thrown together into a common grave. But our forefathers were not so very much unlike ourselves, and the meanness of this kicking of the dead lion, the spite and the indecency of the proceedings, so shocked the people even of that day, not distinguished for over-refinement, that a peremp- tory stop was put to this savagery to the dead, as it had been put to the tortures of the living. And here, again, let me quote old Samuel Pepys, as representing the cultured man of the day, who says, when he heard of the order for Cromwell's disinterment: "It do trouble me much that a man of so great courage as he was should have that dishonour." ^ So very general was this feeling, creditable as it was to the people, that in the result the fury of the court party overreached itself in a somewhat remarkable manner. It was proposed, naturally enough, that this present dishonour having been done to Cromwell, and bearing in mind the superb funeral rites that had attended his ■" Pepys, vol. i. p. 161. A list of several persons whoso bodies were thus disinterred is given in the State Trials, vol. v. p. 1337. The Regicides. 309 sepulture, a corresponding honour should be bestowed on the body of King Charles, and that he also should have a splendid public funeral at the national expense. This project, though mooted in public and in Parliament and meeting with general acceptance among the king's party, was never gone on with. No special reason was assigned for the abandonment, but it was commonly given out that the king's body could not be found. Cromwell, it was said, had played puss-in-the-corner with the bodies of several departed sovereigns, moving them from place to place, and it was not known among such changes where the king's body actually lay. This excuse seems to have been thought sufficient, and nothing further was vouch- safed, but thereupon a story was put about that Cromwell had shortly before his death sent for Colonel Barkstead, one of the king's judges (who was executed, as before stated, in 1662), and had desired that hjs body should be laid where he had accomplished the greatest triumph of his life, viz. in the battle-field at Naseby, and that accordingly Colonel Barkstead and others of that party had secretly removed the body of the Protector and laid it in the centre of the field of battle, having afterwards sewn the field with corn and hidden all traces of a recent burial. Afterwards, as it was said, the party, anticipating some indignity to the Protector's memory, had moved the body of King Charles from St. George's Chapel at "Windsor, and placed it in Cromwell's coffin, which still remained in Westminster Abbey. This story had the greater colour from the hurried way in which, contrary to the statement in the authorized report, the proceedings at Tyburn were conducted, and the small opportunity the people had of recognizing the head or the countenance of the Protector. And upon that ground the Puritan party afterwards alleged, and many people believed, that the 3IO Side-lightS on the Stuarts. Royalists wliile they conceived they were dishonouring the bones of Crom-well, were really desecrating the bones of their own king, whose corpse was thus by their own hands buried under the gallows. The king, it was said, ordered a search to be made for the body of his father, but without success, and so gradually the project of a national funeral was dropped, to the discredit of the Ministers and to the no small disparagement of the king himself. Although at this period the Duke of Richmond was dead, yet the Marquess of Hertford was alive, as were also others of the king's gentlemen who had acted as Pall Bearers, and who must have been able to point out the precise spot of the interment, the more so as the grave was filled in under their very eyes. In addition to which the inhabitants of Windsor who, according to Clarendon,' pointed out the graves of Henry YIII. and Jane Seymour in,1649, could have equally well indicated the spot in 1660. Nor was any question put to Colonel Barkstead, who was for many months in prison before his execution. But, indeed, the reason put forward could have been little more than an excuse, though some colour- able pretence for it is suggested by Clarendon. Doubt- less those who sought wished, for some good reason, not to find, or those were set to seek who had either no information as to the spot or no inclination to discover it, for so soon afterwards as 1666 the late king's burial place was one of the sights of Windsor.*' The true reason, I doubt not, was that the circumstances attending the deaths of the Regicides and the divided state of public feeling rendered a public demonstration in favour of the * Vol, iii. part i. " Samuel Pepys, in February, 1665-6, " was -shown where the late king is buried " by Dr. Child, Organist of St. George's Cliapel. — Vol. iii. p. 164. The Regicides. 311 late king neither safe nor desirable. A state of things ■whicli would have afforded sufficient justification to the king and his ministers, but one which it would have been obviously impossible for them to avow. Any doubt, however, upon the locality of the king's body was set at rest in the year 1813, when George IV., then Prince of Wales, caused the king's grave in St. George's Chapel to be reopened. The body, which had remained undisturbed since its interment, was then found embalmed and in excellent preservation, enclosed in a leaden coffin with a silver plate affixed to it as described by Clarendon, and bearing the solitary inscription King Charles, 1648. Those present recognized the long oval face, the pointed beard, the head loose from the body, and the hair, which was of a dark brown colour, cut short at the back of the neck probably for the purpose of the execution or for the distribution of the locks among his family and friends.-^ There is a legend that Cromwell's body reposes at the mansion of one of his family, and that his head was removed from Westminster Hall to the same place. There is also a well-received tradition that the head of the great Protector lies buried in the centre of Red Lion Square. How this may be I have not been able to ascertain. But amongst all these trials and executions, these ex- patriations and confiscations, one name is conspicuously absent, that of John Milton. He had been a strong and energetic Independent, he had held the post of Latin Secretary to the late Protector, he had published nume- rous sectarian and political works, he had claimed the right of unlicensed printing in the Areopagitica, he had ' Oddly enougli a portrait of King Charles, by Van Dyck, taken shortly before bis imprisonment, and now in the small dining-room at Ashburn- ham Place, bears a striking resemblance to Oliver Cromwell. 312 Side-lights on the Stuarts. answered tlie Defensio Regis of King Charles II. by his Defensio PopuH, in which he upheld and justified the death "of the late king, and he had replied to the cele- brated Eikon Basilike by the no less celebrated Icono- clastes, and yet he might daily have been seen at his country-house in Artillery Eow, near Bunhill Fields, a man of about fifty -three years of age, of middle height, of fair complexion, with a little red in his cheeks, with light brown lank hair,^ spare of habit, clad in a coat ,of coarse grey cloth, sitting before his door to enjoy the sun. His eyes deprived of sight, and his limbs afflicted with gout, he would still, in the intervals of his pain, discourse freely with his friends, or with strangers whom his reputation had attracted to his house. At the Resto- ration Milton was, notwithstanding his bodily ailments, in full possession of his mental faculties, but he was not excepted from the Act of Oblivion, and was quit of his offences for a moderate fine. To the honour of Milton, be it said that, although he was thus freed from persecu- tion, and took no longer any active part in political life, he never recanted or concealed his Puritan views, which he consistently held to the last. His house was fre- quented by leading men of all parties, who would find him after his affliction either smoking his pipe at his garden door, seated in his wooden chair listening to his daughter's voice, or endeavouring to beguile his hours by the strains of his organ. There appears to be some- thing in the strains of an organ which peculiarly com- mends itself to the blind. The blind organists of parish 2 In 1721 Milton's youngest daughter, then over seventy years of age, had an interview with Addison, the poet, and gave this description of her father : — She added that he had taught her to ! ead several languages. An interesting account of this interview is given in an original letter, dated August 12th, 1721, to be found among the Harleian MSS. in the British Museum. The Regicides. 313 churclies at home and abroad are numerous and efficient, and we have a late instance in the touching case of the aged monarch, King George III., who, in his last lucid interval during a long period of insanity, endeavoured by playing some chords on the organ, to recall his scat- tered senses and to invoke the blessing of Heaven on his family and his people. Milton's immunity has been ascribed by some to the mediation of Sir William Dave- nant, the dramatist, for whom Milton had employed his good offices during the Commonwealth. Others have suggested that he owed something to his younger brother Christopher,^ a Bencher of the Inner Temple, a devoted royalist and friend of the Duke of York, by whom he was appointed a Justice of the Common Pleas in 1687. Burnet says that Milton had appeared so boldly on the argument of putting the king to death, and had discoursed so much violence against the late king and all the royal family, and against monarchy, that it was thought a strange omission if he were forgotten, and an odd strain of clemency if he were forgiven, and adds that the sparing of Milton and others was much cen- sured,* but whatever may have been the immediate cause, this clemency did equal honour to the king's head and to his heart. True at the Restoration the greatest of Milton's works, or indeed of any work. Paradise Lost, was not yet published, nor indeed was its scheme finally settled in the poet's mind, but he had become universally kuown at home and abroad as an erudite man of letters, ^ Sir Christopher Milton was born in 1615, took his degree at Christ's College, Cambridge; was called to the Bar by the Inner Temple in 1640, elected a .Bencher together with James, Duke of York, in 1660 ; made a Baron of the Exchequer in 1686, a Justice of the Common Pleas in 1687, retired on a pension in 1688, and died at Ipswich in 1693, aged seventy-eight. John Milton was born in 1608. * Burnet, p. 107. 3^4 Side-lights on the Stuarts. and as a powerful and learned controversialist. He had for years carried on the foreign correspondence of the nation, and if his indomitable Puritanism and his hatred equally of princes and of prelates were unabated, so also were his austere piety and his undoubted probity. And we may well accept the action of the king with regard to Milton as a tribute to those qualities which should enrich a nation rather than help a party, a clemency which had its reward in enabling the divine Puritan to devote the evening of his life to the production of those unrivalled poems which have for ever ennobled his country and his age. He lived till November, 1674, having completed his sixty-seventh year, and his remains were followed to the grave in the Church of St. Griles, Oripplegate, by a great concourse of splendid and distinguished people. 5^0 YI. MBRRIE ENGLAND. ' ' The sun rose upon the earth as Lot entered into Zoar." Such was the feeling if not the actual language with which the king's party hailed the restoration of Charles the Second. He was called to the throne by almost universal acclamation as affording the only possible alternative to the political chaos that had followed the death of Cromwell. Charles's popular manners contrasted favourably with the austerity of his predecessor, his pro- fessions of regard for freedom of speech and for the opinion of Parliament made him grateful to the Puritans, while his personal courage, his romantic career, and his many misfortunes gained him the sympathy of all classes of the community. And yet within a few short years, if the angel that conducted Lot to his sanctuary had visited England, he might have found every city and every highway obstructed by pillars of salt, the memorials of patriots who from contemplation of the new monarchy had looked back with longing eyes to the old Protectorate. " Strange it is," says Pepys,^ writing in July, 1667, "how everybody do nowadays reflect upon Oliver and commend him, what brave things he did, and made all the neighbouring princes fear him, while here a prince come in with all the love and prayer and good liking of the people, who have given him greater signs of loyalty and willingness to serve him with their ' Pepys, vol. iv. p. 116. 3i6 Side-lights on the Stuarts. estates that was ever done by, hatli lost all so soon that it is a miracle what way a man would devise to lose so much in so little time." But in the meantime manifestly the first thing to be done was to disband the soldiers, a work requiring courage and tact. Most of these men were Cromwell's heroes, and while no Stuart could have felt secure on his throne so long as the soldiers of the Commonwealth were banded together in an army, so no government could afford to incur their ill-will or their resentment. Burnet says of this army that the king was persuaded that it was necessary to carry himself with great caution till the old army should be disbanded, and that this was accomplished with great judgment and tact, so as to give them rather the appearance of dismissing them till their services should be again required than of breaking them up altogether. " They were certainly," he says, " the bravest, the best disciplined and the soberest army that had been known in these later ages ; every soldier was able to do the functions of an ofl&cer." First of all, there- fore, the colonels of the various regiments were changed, men who had made their mark as valiant soldiers of the king being substituted for the colonels of the Common- wealth, and to these commanders, after making them- selves on good terms with their men, was intrusted the duty of superintending the disbandment. On the 17th September, 1660, the regiments having then been all put under royalist colonels, the order for disbanding the army was made public.^ Lots were drawn as to the order in which the regiments were to be disbanded, and the order was to apply equally to all except some four regiments, then quartered on the Scotch borders. The men of each regiment were drawn up in line, they were ° Parliamentary Intelligencer, September 17th, 1660. Merrie England, 317 addressed by their officers, their pay was handed them with scrupulous exactitude, and they were empowered by the orders in Council to enter upon any trade- or handi- craft as if they had duly served their apprenticeship thereto. The men then delivered up their firearms to the officers, but the Government, with commendable tact and consideration, permitted them to retain their swords. Thus one after the other the old soldiers of the Common- wealth were dispersed, some regiments breaking up in silence and sadness, and others on the invitation of their officers shouting for the Monarchy and King Charles. The month during which this disbanding was carried out, and the officers to lose no time over it worked at it day and night, was probably the most anxious period during the whole of the king's reign; But all the details were arranged with great judgment and discretion, at a time when the monarchical fever was at its height, and to the intense joy of the Crown and relief of the ministers, it was accomplished without resistance, " Let the ting think what he will," says Pepys, writing at the end of 1663, and comparing the temper of the two armies, "it is them that must help him in the day of warr. For so generally they are the most substantial sort of people and the soberest. ... Of all the old army now you cannot see a man begging about the streets ; but what ? You shall have this captain turned a shoemaker, the lieutenant a baker, this a brewer, that a haberdasher, the common soldier a porter, and every man in his apron and frock as if they had never done anything else, whereas the other go with their belts and swords swearing and curs- ingandstealing,runningintopeople'shouses,by force often times, to carry away something, and this is the difference between the temper of the one and the other, and the spirits of the old Parliament soldiers are so quiet and con- 3i8 Side-lights on the Stuarts. tented with God's providences that the king is safer from any evil meant him by them one thousand times more than from his own discontented cavahers." ^ The soldiers went back into private life, and it was the com- mon saying, that in every village and in every hamlet, when you found a good blacksmith or an honest work- man, you might be pretty sure you had one of Cromwell's heroes.* And here again we may turn to our cousins in America. In the course of their civil war nearly every able-bodied man bore arms for his party and his political creed, and when at the close of the war, the huge army of the north was massed together with a view to its dis- persal, men wondered how the country could survive with so huge an element of disbanded soldiers. And yet within a few months of General Lee's surrender the whole of that great army had melted away, and become assimilated with the general population. And though we may smile at finding a colonel bartering dry goods or a major arguing a demurrer, these men, like their ancestors in 1660, are none the less businesslike or trustworthy for having in the hour of peril taken up arms on behalf of their national principles. The standing army being thus dissolved, its place was taken by the militia and the yeomanry. The former was only trained for twenty-eight days each year, and was under the control of the Lords Lieutenant and Deputy Lieutenants of the various counties, and the latter, composed of small freeholders who cultivated their own estate and were nearly all Puritans, was seldom trained at all. The king for his own protection and honour had an allowance of 40,000/. a year, out of which he was supposed to support the Life Guards and the Blues, who together with a regiment called the King's " Pepys, vol. ii. p. 237. * Macaulay, vol. i. p. 154. Merkie England. 319 Dragoon G-uards, composed for the time being the limit of the standing army of Great Britain. And so the army being disbanded, the Regicides disposed of, and the royal brothers safely back in the home of their fathers, the king had a magnificent coronation, of which the illustrated account shows an interminable number of courtiers, pages, footmen, lawyers and divines, all, except the latter, clad in the same type of costume, with the same feathered hats, and the country settled down to be the Merrie England of ancient tradition. But, after all, was it a Merrie England ? Henry the Eighth thought so after a midnight excursion into the city with young Wolsey. Froissart, on the other hand, thought that all our amusements were tempered with sadness ; and James the First, to regulate the national joviality, composed a " Book of Sports, What are lawful and what not." But the poor people were very poor, and the rich could never have felt too secure in the possession of their wealth. Taxes were exorbitant, and every man's hearth, throughout the country, was rated to the Crown. Eeligious discord raged in every parish, political animosity broke out when for a moment the iron heel of authority was uplifted, justice was uncertain, and punishments were cruel. If, now-a-days, we want to know what is happening in the world, near or remote, we turn by natural instinct to the daily press ; and so accus- tomed are we to find in all quarters of the globe the daily paper at our morning meal, that we realize with considerable difliculty that there ever was a time in the history of this country when news- papers did not exist, or even when their circulation was exclusively limited to the opulent and the noble. During the Tudor dynasty, a newspaper was, I believe, 320 Side-lights on the Stuarts. altogether unkno-wn in England, and there is a general impression, not, however, altogether accurate, as -will be seen, that the civil war, whatever evil it had in other respects wrought upon the country, had introduced the printing and publishing of newspapers, and thus im- planted in the people the desire for information of public and social events, which has steadily grown to its present dimensions. During the sixteenth century, the news of public affairs was transmitted by the laborious corre- spondence of private persons, or by the not less stilted newsletters, which were passed round the village and the county, and gave a sparse information of important events to the dwellers in towns and hamlets. Some years ago, an English Mercurie of 1588, giving an account of the Armada, was produced, and, for some time, was supposed to be the earliest copy of a newspaper extant. Further examination, however, led to great doubts of its authen- ticity, and a careful examination of the texture of the paper, with a critical perusal of its contents, satisfied competent authorities that it was a palpable forgery, printed towards the end of the eighteenth century. As early, however, as 1605, a weekly newspaper was printed at Antwerp, called the Nieuve Tydinghen, various num- bers of which, dating as early as 1619, are still preserved. It had a considerable circulation in London, probably among the Dutch colony, and was, perhaps, the first newspaper, properly so called, that was ever sold in this country. It was, however, written in Flemish or Low Dutch, and had, consequently, a very limited number of readers, and was very little known or heeded. James the First, to his credit, was always a patron, not to say a practitioner, of literature, and in the early years of his reign there appeared what I conceive to have been the first number of an English newspaper. It Merrie England, 321 was, however, confined exclusively to news from abroad, and though published weekly, had no reference to home affairs. In size, this, and all other papers till the time of the Oxford and London Gazettes in 1665, was a small quarto, well printed and fairly well written. Towards the end of his reign there appeared The WeekeJy Newes, a weekly paper giving news from abroad. The number for the 23rd May, 1622, is preserved in the British Museum, and is, as far as I am aware, the earliest speci- men of a newspaper published in this country. Its title-page is as follows : — "The 23 of May. Weekely Newes From Italy, Germany, Hungaria, Bohemia, the Palatinate, France, and the Low Countries. Translated from out of the Low Dutch Copy. London, 1622. Printed by J. D. for Nicholas Bourne & Thos. Archer, and are to be sold at their shops at the Exchange and in Pope's Head Pallace." By the end of the year 1622 a regular weekly news- paper was established without having recourse to the Low Dutch Copy. The following is a specimen of the contents : "May 12. No. 31. The Newes of this present Weeke : relating The late Encounter of the Duke of Brunsvnck with Don Gonsales : The great forces granted by the Turke to aid Bethlem Gabor : The Emperor's entry into Prage : The Marquess of Brandenburg's preparation for Warre : The troubles in the Kingdom of Poland : M. Tillies falling into the Land of Hessen : T 2,2 2 Side-lights on the Stuarts. The King of Denmarke his Forces : The State of the Count of Mansfield's, the Marquesse Spinolaes' and the Prince of Orange's Armies. The last Newes of the Grisons. Together with The Reports of the deaths of the Pope and the Grand Turke. With divers other memorable occurrences from severale parts of the World. London : Printed for Nathaniel Butler, Nicholas Bourne, and William SheflFard, 1623." A tolerably comprehensive table of contents for one week, which, however, appears to have been regularly continued after this date. Down to this time, however, the papers dealt exclusively with foreign affairs, home news still being circulated by means of the newsletter and the private correspondent ; statements of the pro- ceedings in Parliament and the speeches of leading members being printed in small pamphlets and circulated at the author's expense. In the beginning of the reign of Charles I. the Court took advantage of the Press to circulate, from time to time, accounts of foreign and very occasionally of home affairs. Thus in 1627 therehad appeared, from time to time, " A continuous Journal of the proceedings of the Duke of Buckingham, his Grace, in the Isle of Ree since last July, with the names of those noblemen as were drowned and taken in going to releeve the Port." One of the numbers (30th of August, 1627) is illustrated with a rough drawing of two ships of war followed by fish as large as whales, and a drawing of a two-edged knife with poisoned blade, described as " the portraiture of the knife with which his Excellency should have been murdered : which very knife Avas brought over by Merrie England. 323 Captain Buckstone and delivered unto the Duchess of Buckingham, her Grace, on Monday night last." This, as far as I am aware, is the first instance of an illustrated paper. After this there are very occa- sional woodcuts from time to time. When, however, the differences between the king and the Parliament became accentuated and the kingdom was gradually becoming enlisted into two hostile camps, each party took advantage of the Press. The Diurnal of Pas- sages in Parliament from an early date in this reign, published weekly the debates and orders of Parliament, together with a limited amount of other intelligence, and continued its circulation till the establishment of the London Gazette in the reign of Charles II. The Mercuries then came to the front. The Mercurius Aulicus, a " Diurnal communicating the intelligence and affaires of the Court to the rest of the Kingdom," was published at Oxford in January, 1642, and continued till November, 1644.' " The Kingdomes Weeldy Post with his packet of letters," was published in January, 1643, the title- page being ornamented with a mounted postman blowing his horn. The Scottish Mercury was published in London in 1641, the Welsh Mercury rather later, the Mercurius Medicus in 1647, the Mercurius Politicus, the Mer- curius Britannicus, and later on the Kingdomes Intelli- gencer. The " Mercurius Givicus or London Intelligencer. Truth impartially related to prevent misinformation. Printed for Wright and Bates at the Old Bailey," started in 1643, and had a long and apparently successful career. Each number was illustrated with a portrait taken "with apparent fairness from each side ; thus one number has a rough woodcut of King Charles, and also the drawing of a weapon, "which the Papists call a roundhead, being a weapon with an oval or round top stuck full of spikes, T 2 324 Side-lights on the Stuarts. 1000 of wliicli, together with gunpowder and arms, were lately taken out of a Danish ship by the Earl of Warwick near Newcastle." This is followed in other numbers by portraits of Fairfax, Prince Rupert, the Lord Mayor and the god Mercux-y, &c. The most important, however, and the best written of these papers was " The Moderate Intelligencer, Impartially communicating Martiale affairs to the Kingdom of England." It was in the interests of the Commonwealth, was well and temperately written and published weekly, and contrasted favourably with the violent and abusive passages of the Mercurius Prag- viaticus, the Mercurius Elencticus, and other weekly papers pubhshed in the interest of the king's party. In addition to these papers were the Mercurius Pacificus, the Moderate Mercury, and some others. The Moderate Intelligencer, the Diurnal of Passages in Parliament, the Mercurius Pragmaticus, and the Mercurius Elencticus published full accounts of all the proceedings incident to the trial and execution of the king, and after his death continued their issue, the two last-mentioned papers headed " For King Charles II." It is hardly probable that the Commonwealth permitted their publi- cation in this form, but the regularity of their issue and the number of these papers now extant show sufficiently clearly that their circulation was large and tolerably free, and, indeed, the Government that could permit the free circulation of the Defensio Regis and the Eihon Basilike and meet them with argument in- stead of confiscation, might well permit the issue of these weekly papers without the obnoxious heading, which appears to have been afterwards removed. In 1653 the Commonwealth soldiers took their presses to Edinburgh, and the Mercurius Politicus was the first weekly newspaper printed and published in the Kingdom of Scotland. These papers, therefore, continued, not inn) her, g&veliefliisbleSiog, aadttsofsalestbajhclslwliwdflwefewsBJaateai^SL feet^epe ^itttrly. TheP,llea®!r/D.®fEiehm«g4 tad ®t6«tf, made Mew f«^ From SmlmdthtfWue>th»tibiMmBu$ of- th^ lift, PsttdsagsisfisheAr-* my SB Engkffd, mi r.bt presefedisgg agtigft tkds Kssg , They fay f ley gr« ioaad % tkds CmsBim. m fzs&mM@mmtf, md tmt in tbt Ks»ofth6fst{mt SIsg, Tfeeir f«riiaraeat have palftd fefgnll Votm^ Thmth&ktbit MmhtmmtMhiz Eagageraeat agsiaft Esgfesi, feai! set less aiiyog«, si tog mtksf li% «xee^ fkeh ©f them as »s!K sadsr age, aad feali aiiBifeft tlisi* 8rfcpeffl£&ii«« Smiin fsse 10 C®mmis:tse% tad took thm Ottku.&tll &m hum Ofiiee fe eeg f «», SacS u Rsvet evid«B«d t&dr diflike ©fshciK s?ay ly PiridsBisg, &$fi mt htsxe Otte^ f®s S ve yr.eri« • S^sk s§ we pepls^e fweutss, Mmhm pct&0§ i mi (mb as do aoiworlhip God is stefs pnwie bdafes, art isoi t® te sdmisttd wmjpiami Trafto AnASt wpft fos«k!sgaiIOiifers©f Aitete8af#er,iftheygppe«r-9or, sheystetafeeditesrggdefchslrttsift. IseI LflKtfcf&/« expre&tts a readsaefleto give ©Wisffeso all dttum @f Fariisawars hmt tmt wunoi ^bought kt], aad sfjtrefew fee wts ©rdsred t© tpipesr by Wsit, nhish wu s€€@td.mgly, a C®mmkttt it m €®mft4tt of him..Tht Ettl ©f ©««*« bai'iBg fey Pakie® t® Farliiaeat wsde &i$ wijj liii f etisie® beiag mj^etiQu^ um th&i el owsieg tktm m.% fulkmsm^ ¥tBm Bsfftmsath J<8«. 2^. tbM , ' Wc lui rbs oihgr d«y i fight <&(Ft'm^ V^fpwi .with ab®®£ 1 4 Rei^lced Ships ily^isg fey ©ar Coaft, gad bssdisg to«rard$ Jrihndi Ttej, drive ehc wfjok Chsuneli bef®ts rhsm^aad fezejspfen rnesy fevsttli Vcffdt, bat oae of grew vtlue, ladea ^Itfj Cloicfe, ^mih 5e©®© J. We apprchead egreac asglc6l i» DOS htvifeg aay Navy sbrosd. Obs of th. s i;ei wis drivM is here the a ^, »^bere fhe bow remsiscs. The Matter reports, tbic tbe Fkcc si very poeriy viaa- slleSd, aad wordtstacad, biyiog s?or 4©«MtrriBer$»m02}|({ theei. Not any Poft ftem i'(»rw this weck.nof the laft ; sor any letters thh weel: from *tmfday,lanuttry ^Q, THis day the Kiisg was k:hesdco, over agaipft rk Bunqaettiag feoufcby Whitt-^ HaiJ, The mmmx of Exec at ion, aed wh* t paged before hij degtlugke tfms . Hewas&rougfeffromSainrJrfiwerabaitttta ia the msrning, waikjng oa footthroagbtfacPasfc, witfaaKeginseatofFootfofhisgiwrd, with CoI©u»$ flying, Draras bcatina hie jsrlvate Guard of ?aniKai5S, witfefomeof his Gentkmen fccfore, and fome behind bareheacfedj t>o&Qt Jttxmhssi Bi&op^ trf LffS^^MX* feehin^c Wrti, sndCoL riw«ft#t wfe® h^d tie charge ef hiBj;t3 the Galltry inWhitcfaall, and fo into the Cabinet Chaihber, wberebt ufedse lye, wfere he eominued at bis ©cveticB, rsfufiBS «® dine (having before tskeii the Sactameist) onely abont n. at neone, bo drasii a eiaffeoJCiatecWinf, and earSftcteef bread. Frotti thcHce be was accompanied by Dr. >x»% CoLTimlMi^i Col. H/cJ^^^sndtheGBardfkfeemeniionedffcoagbtbe Banqatting-hsufe ad- joynJBg. towbichtbeScaffald-wasttcacd, between Whitehall Gate, and the Gate ieading intojfte Gallery from Saint ftfm: The Scaffold was bung round wirh blaclt, aad ihs floor coveted with black, and the Ax aad Blocic bid in tfceBiidtire of the Scaffold. Tbrre weie divers compuiei of Foot and Hotfe, on evety fide chi Scaffold, andtheanuhitodesof people that came to -be Spiaator% very great. Tte King making apaffeuportthe Scrffo'd, lo&k'd very earncHly oa the Bloefc, and asked Col, mcker if there were no higher ; and then (p k- thas ) ditefting his fptcsh to the Gentle*- inen«pon the Scaffold. Km T SKaVl He very IHtfe heaid of any body berc, Iftiall tktt' wefpeafea word Hnto.youheM;jfMisai Ml ceuia hold my pe»ee very wctl» Hi d.4not. think fib*.- holding my peace, wwld aiaie (oir.^ Facsimile page of " The Perfect Diurnal of Passages in Parliament" for Monday, 5th February, 1648-g. Merrie England. 325 without suspicion sometimes of the Diurnal makers being open to bribery, till the London Gazette, published in its first twenty-three numbers as the Oxford Gazette, appeared in September, 1665, and at once took the lead and swallowed up most of the others. The censorship of the Press was rigidly established by Charles and by his brother. The size of the Gazette was increased from an 8vo to a foolscap, and in August, 1663, Roger L'Bstrange pub- lished his first paper in Westminster Hall,^ and began that career which has been powerfully and graphically depicted by Lord Macaulay in his history of that period. The weekly newspaper was said to have been not of Dutch but of Venetian extraction, and called the Gazette from the fact of the price of each paper being one gazetta, an Italian coin of the value of a penny. So that our Penny Paper, like our Penny Post, came into life with the budding liberties of our country, was suppressed by the Stuarts under the name of good government, and was only revived after long-continued struggles in Parliament and the country." One other matter in connection with newspapers must also be mentioned, viz. the advertisements. Every paper, nowadays, lives on its advertisements. These papers, however, lived on the sale of their news, and it was not till the year 1650 that I have found any adver- tisements in the newspapers. The first appears to have been in the Proceedings in Parliament, 1st of May, 1650, and is of " a most excellent book called Glavis Bibliorum or Key of the Bible, by Francis Roberts, M.A., Pastor of the Church at St. Augustins, London — to be sold at the Half Moon in Watling Street, near Pauls Stump." ° Pepys, vol. ii., p. 209. ^ The first daily paper was the Daily Courant, published in 1703^ and tlie first country paper was the Stamford Mercwy, published in 1690, and still in existence. J 26 Side-lights on the Stuarts. After tHis the advertisement of books, mostly religious, continues regularly, and at the end of May, 1650, is an advertisement of a book containing " curiosities (very choyce) concerning the horiscope of the Patriarks and the reading of the starres by James CafFarel. To be sold in Paul's Church-yard." In December, 1660, another form of advertisement appears in the Proceedings in Parliament, viz. notice of the loss " of 2 horses, value lOL, stolen from Mr. Brownloe, Stocking Dier, near 3 Cranes, Thames Street. John Rylands butcher tall and ruddy flaxen haire about 30 years of age is suspected ;" and at the end of the year is an advertisement of the disappearance of a young man with a large quantity of money from sale of cattle, supposed to have met with some misfortune. Thus the advertisements continued, chiefly of books, but interspersed with inquiries for lost horses and occasional domestic wants, till the end of the Commonwealth, thus indicating the quiet, orderly, and well-conducted tone of the people. At the Restoration the new order of things broke forth in the press, as in all else. Hardly had King Charles II. arrived in his capital than one of the most filthy and disgusting papers that has ever disgraced the Press of any age was printed weekly in London, under the title of the Mercurius Democritus, and although it did not survive many months, yet its issue was sufficiently large to permit of various copies being retained. The Mercurius Fumigosus was also pub- lished about this time, and was very much of the same character. The advertisements also changed to the spirit of the times. The quack doctor made his first appearance in May, 1660. "No pay unless a cure- Roland Pippin lives at the Three Pigeons, Strand." "Thomas Thompson will cure rupture, &c. for' charity and make no charge but what you like to give." In June, 1661, is an advertisement of "Pills to cure headache, Merrie England. 327 rheumatism, toothache, corns and warts; " and in 1665 is advertised "Potable gold — a universal medicine to cure all contagious disorders — 61. per ounce." Also a bolus for gout, and various remedies for the plague and the falling sickness, different sorts of tooth-powder, a new-fashioned bedstead for sick people, the Countess of Kent's powder, and Sir Kenelm Digby's sympathetic powder to cure all green wounds and also the toothache, recur over and over again. Nearly every paper also has an advertisement of horses stolen by persons riding away upon them ; and in April, 1665, appears an advertise- ment of a person willing to board and lodge lunatics. On the 14th February, 1661-2, the following occurs : — "The faculty oflfice for granting dispensations and Licences to eat flesh (by Act of Parliament) in any part of England is at S. Paul's Chain, near St. Paul's Church- yard." In May of 1661 is an advertisement for a maid- servant who had run away with her mistress' best clothes, reward 40 shillings. In March, 1662, is an advertise- ment of the exhibition of a mummy lately arrived from Memphis which the king has lately inspected. In 1665 is a notice that " a blackamore maid who speaks English reasonably well " has been found, and may be restored to her owner on application. I copy the following from the News of April, 1665 : — " Over against the Greyhound in Black Friars lives one George Grey periwig maker that will give 10 shillings or 12 sh. per ounce for long flaxen hair and for other long faire hair 6 sh. or 8 sh. per ounce." The True Newes of 27th March, 1680, announces a project for the "conveying of letters notes messages amorous billets and all bundles whatsoever under a pound weight and all sorts of writmgs {challenges only excepted) to or from any part of the City and suburbs," which, if not prevented, will be likely to ruin the freemen porters. 328 Side-lights on the Stuarts. These porters made comuion cause with the Thames watermen, who had sufficient political power to indues the king, shortly after his accession, to issue a Royal Proclamation against hackney coaches coming into the streets for hire. As, however, the freemen porters werj by no means trustworthy, and as the streets, badly paved, lighted, and drained as they were, were to most people preferable to the river, with its dangers and its in- conveniences, these edicts against the principle of Free- trade were of little effect. Later on in his reign the king interfered in a matter with which one would have thought he had little concern. In 1674 he published an edict directed against the reading parsons, and did his best to stop the preaching of written sermons, which he de- nounced as a supine and slothful manner of preaching ; and it must, I think, be admitted that of the two methods, the written and the extempore, that of reading from a printed or written book has usually and naturally the more soporific effect. The Press, by an almost involuntary association of ideas, leads to the consideration of the stage. For, although the newspapers in the early times had hardly a reference to the existence, much less to the representa- tion of stage plays, of the papers of the present day there is hardly one that does not devote a considerable portion of its sheets to the advertisement and criticism of the drama. " The reigns of James I. and Charles I. were the glory of our theatre," says Mr. Hallam,' and when we bear in mind that the period included the works of Shakespeare (who died in 1617), together with those of Ben Jonson, and Beaumont and Fletcher, and that their works were of a healthy and manly tone, the eulogy is ' Lit. Hist., vol. iii., 78. Merrie England. 329 not ill-bestowed. Among the few theatres at this period were the Paris Garden, in Southwark, which was alter- nately a theatre and a bear-garden ; the Globe, built in 1593, at Bankside, owned by Shakespeare's company; the Blackfriars, owned by Burbage, who was the first impersonator of Richard III. and other of Shakespeare's leading characters ; the Fortune, built in 1599, in Golden Lane, and owned by Alleyne, founder of Dulwich College, and distinguished for a serious riot in May, 1628, in the course of which the sailors of the fleet beat the actors on the stage ; the Hope ; the Rose, on Bankside ; the Curtain, at Shoreditch ; the Red Bull ; the Cock-pit, at Whitehall, a house patronized by Charles I., and not to be confounded with the Cock-pit, in Drury Lane, and some few others, together with a limited number of what would now be termed penny gaffs, where the performances were of the lowest class and the entrance fee was a peuny. There was also a distinction, not very well understood at the present day, between public and private theatres, the former being supposed to be the open house suitable only for temperate weather, and the latter a smaller class of house, roofed and lighted, for which an additional payment was required. During the latter years of King James and during the reign of Charles I., the strong and growing spirit of Puritanism oppressed the' stage, and the play-houses languished aa the plays themselves decreased. The drama was also, during this period, under the disadvan- tage that the theatres were continually closed for weeks and months together from repeated outbreaks of the Plague, which drove all playgoers from London, and emptied all places of public amusement. In 1625 the theatres were all closed on account of the Plague, and the actors were dispersed over the country, or were 330 Side-lights on the Stuarts. playing in Holland and other parts of the Continent, and in the licence granted to the players by Charles I. it was provided that the theatres were only to be opened " so long as the infection of the Plague in London did not weekly exceed 40." The consequence of this was that the players were constantly on the verge of starvation, complaining that they were bankrupt when they came to London, could never get a good audience in the country, and could only pick themselves up by going to Rotterdam.^ Driven thus by stress of poverty, Kempe, a celebrated actor of the day, and various other of the original actors of Shakespeare's plays, took their companies abroad, visiting France, Italy, and Holland, and Kempe, with his colleagues, went also to G-ermany, where they played with considerable success before the emperor himself.^ On the outbreak of the civil war, in 1642, the theatres, which had by that time been re- opened, were closed " during the time of the nation's calamity," and in 1648, the Puritans being then in power, they were closed altogether. For the succeeding ten years, from 1648 to 1658, no theatre was open for stage plays, and no company performed either in London or in the country. On Richard Cromwell's accession, however, Sir William Davenant opened the Cock-pit, in Drury Lane, and Shakespeare's and other plays were performed without molestation. At the Restoration the theatres were again opened, but as the whole tone and morals of society had changed, so with them were changed also the plots, the composi- tion, and the language of the plays. The healthy and manly tone of the Elizabethan dramatists gave way to prurience and obscenity. Shakespeare, Beaumont, and * Collier's "Lives of Original Actors of Shakespeare's rtays," p. 143. » Ibid. p. 168. Merrie England. 331 Ben Jonson were supplanted by Shadwell, Etheridge, and Afra Behn. No one nowadays reads the plays of the Restoration, and if to complete a library they are placed on its shelves, they are carefully put out of reach of the members of the household. Shadwell was poet- laureate, and wrote many and the most popular of the plays of that period, but who of the present generation has ever read "The Libertine," "Epsom Wells," or " The Woman Captain " ? And yet these were the plays that held the stage, that were regularly performed by his Majesty's servants, and at whose representations people, a thousand at a time, were turned away from the pit.-' They have disappeared from our national history, and yet they were not wanting here and there in passages of great beauty and true poetic instinct. About this time also was introduced the practice of having women to play the female parts, which had up to the Eestoration been personated by youths. Many of these were choir-boys from the Chapels Royal, others were young men in training for the stage, who, like Davenant, Burbage, and others, when they outgrew the age for depicting the female character, developed into powerful and popular actors of the most important characters in tragic and comic drama. "Methinks," says Miranda in " The Virtuoso," ^ " though all pleasures have left you, you may go see plays." " I'm not such a coxcomb," is the reply. " I have seen 'em at Black- friars. Besides, I can never endure the plays since women came on the stage. Boys are better by half." But though the managers had advanced so far as to have the female parts played by actresses, whose names are ' Pepys, vol. iv., p. 345. ^ Comedy in five acts, by Shadwellj Poet-Laureate. Published in 1676. 332 Side-lights on the Stuarts. now historical — Elinor Gwyn, Maria Davis, Mrs. Kipp, and others — the plays were still presented without scenery, and were played for the most part in open houses and in broad daylight. Shakespeare's company played at the Globe in summer and at Blackfriars in winter, and it was not till after the Restoration that the practice of attending the theatre by night became a recognized custom. Such theatres, slowly increasing in number, as were opened at night were still strewn with rushes, and were dimly lighted by tallow candles, which were snuffed between the acts, and from which the g'rease dripped on the floors and damaged the coats and dresses of the audience. In 1613 the Grlobe, the home of the royal players, having been burnt down through the sparks from a theatrical gun setting fire to the thatch, it was rebuilt in handsome style, and a tiled roof replaced the old and more picturesque covering of reeds. Some additional facilities, it is believed, were also given for scenic repre- sentation. No great improvement, however, was made until 1662, when Sir William Davenant, having obtained a patent, opened in Lincoln's Inn Fields a handsome theatre, believed to have been designed by Sir Christopher Wren, introduced the mechanism of movable scenes, and substituted wax candles for the tallow dips then in use. He also, under the fostering patronage of the Duke of York, played for the first time short operas and intro- duced an orchestra, but the practice of changing scenes during the play did not become general till much later in this reign. He also paid some attention to the appro- priate dressing of his parts, and was enabled by the improved illumination of his theatre to dispense with a good deal of the spangles and sham jewels with which the performers were liberally bespattered, with a view Merrie England. 333 not only to their personal adornment, but to aid by their reflection in the general lighting of the stage. The fashionable part of the house was the pit, for which the price varied, as time went on, from Is. to Is. Qd., 2s. and 2s. 6d. It was frequented alike by men and women, the latter, according to established custom, wearing their masks, and attending in great numbers, and in full dress on the occasion of a first performance, when a stool on the stage, occupied usually by well-known critics or men of fashion, cost an extra shilling. These first nights were then as now a great attraction, both the brothers, Charles and James, being great patrons of the stage, as indeed monarchs and heirs-apparent have been in all ages, the Duke of York having one playhouse especially under his own personal patronage. Bad, however, as the plays of the Restoration were from a moral and an artistic point of view, the authors did not hesitate on occasions to lash the vices of the age, as the following passage from The Virtuoso wiU show. The opening scene finds Bruce in his chair reading Lucretius. To him enters Longueville : — " Longueville : Divine Lucretius! But my noble Epi- curean, what an unfashionable fellow art thou, that in this age art given to understand Latine ! " Bruce : 'Tis true, I am a bold fellow to pretend to it, when 'tis accounted pedantry for a gentleman to spell, and when the race of gentlemen is more degenerate than that of horses, " Long. : It needs must be so, for gentlemen care not upon what strain they get their sons, nor how they breed them when they've got 'em. . . . " Bruce : Some are first instructed by ignorant young household pedants, who dare not whip the dunces, their pupils, for fear of their lady mothers ; then before they 334 Side-lights on the Stuarts. can conster and pearse, they are sent into France with sordid, illiterate creatures, called dry'dnurses or gover- nours : engines of as little use as a pacing-saddle, and as unfit to govern 'em as the post-horses they ride to Paris on ; from whence they return with a little smattering of that mighty, universal language, without being ever able to write true English. ''Long. : Then there are a sort of hopeful youths that do not travel, and they are either such as keep company with theirs sisters, and visit their kindred, and are a great comfort to their mothers, and — scorn to all others ; or they are spearks that early break loose from discipline, and at sixteen, forsooth, set up for men of the town. "Bruce: Sach as come drunk and screaming into a playhouse, and stand upon the benches, and toss their full periwigs and empty heads, and, with their shrill, unbroken pipes, cry, ' Dam-me, this is a damn'd play.' . A sensible plant has more imagination than most of 'em. " Long. : Gad, if they go on as they begin, the gentlemen of the next age will scarce have learning enough to claim the benefit of the clergy for manslaughter.^ .... These are sad truths. " Bruce : You have reason. Say what we can, the Beastly Eestive World will go its own way, and there is not so foolish a creature as a Reformer." Thus went the playhouses after the Restoration. With the Revolution in 1688 came again a more healthy tone of public sentiment. The two Queens, Mary and Anne, ' A prisoner on his first conviction of certain crimes could claim the henofit of his clergy, and ask for a Bible to show that he could read. He was usually required to read a Psalm, and if he succeeded, as he usually did, he was burnt in the hand and roleasod. Sometimes, however, it was found he could not read, and then he was hanged. Merrie England. 335 did their best towards improving tlie stage, and the latter, by prohibiting the wearing of the mask by ladies, made an enormous step towards its purification. Then, again, began the revival of the stage in public estima- tion, and from that time to the present the works of the poet and the dramatist have taken their place on the shelves of our libraries and in the memory of our people. But if in the matter of newspapers, of plays, and of superstitions our ancestors of the seventeenth century were so far behind us, what can be said of the actual condition of the London streets and the amusements of the people ? Up to the time of the Great Pire in 1666 London was, perhaps, the dirtiest, the worst-paved, and the worst- lighted city in Europe. I have already referred to the condition of King Street, the great thoroughfare between Charing Cross and Westminster, with its overhanging dormitories nearly touching at the roof; but it stood well among the streets of London. They were nearly all narrow, ill-ventilated, dark, and unwholesome, paved with cobbles, with nowhere (except outside the Royal Palaces) any protected pathway for the foot-passengers. There was no drainage, and no system of sewage, but public dunghills throughout the city, and sometimes at the very doors of the greatest houses (as in St. James's Square), were appointed for the depositing of all the sewage of the neighbourhood. These beds of pestilence were sometimes carted away, and sometimes left for weeks near the doors of large houses and in the centre of populous districts. There were no waterways except an occasional gutter, which, with more or less regularity, ran down the centre of the street, and into which the water and snow dropped from the tops of the houses, deluging the foot-passengers who did not keep close to the walls and 336 Side-lights on the Stuarts. under the eaves. An umbrella was hardly known, and, in the rare case of its use, was confined to some lady of foreign travel. The ordinary mode of locomotion was either by water, or, when the river was not convenient, by sedan chair, a carriage which was introduced by Prince Charles and the Duke of Buckingham during the reign of James I. after their foreign tour in France and Spain. The general use of coaches was of a later date, and was accompanied by scenes of violence and warfare between the chairmen and the coachmen, recorded in many an old song and many an old play. There was no regular supply of water to the houses, for though the town was intersected by small canals or conduits, giving their name still to many of our streets, yet the water from those streamlets — the Holborn Canal, up which foreign vessels could go as far as the bottom of Holborn Hill, or the Fleet Ditch, although it was cleared out once every fifty years or so* — was not good enough for persons of quality. These were accordingly supplied by men in carts carrying water to the different houses in the town, and selling it in buckets at so much per quart, from the conduit in West- cheap, which was reputed to run with the purest water. No bridge crossed the Thames except Old London Bridge® between the city and Southwark, and though there were numerous ferries, they were dangerous and ill-served, and the watermen rapacious. In one respect, however, our ancestors had an advan- * The Fleet Ditch was cleared out in 1606 ; after the plague it was again cleared and deepened, and in 1764 it was filled up. ° Old London Bridge remained till the year 1825, when the Lord Mayor laid the first stone of the new bridge, which was opened for traffic hy King "William IV. in 1831. The houses had, however, been pulled down in 1755. Merrie England. 337 tage over us, for before the Eestoration, Parliament sat in the daytime, usually from eleven to three ; and even after that date they always legislated by daylight, although Clarendon complains of the disorderly hours kept by the House of Commons, which often continued to sit till after four in the afternoon. Burnet, also referring to the same subject," says of the Houses of Parliament " that their beginning so late in the day to enter upon business is one great occasion of long ses- sions; they are seldom," he says, " met till above twelve o'clock, and except on a day on which great questions are to be discussed, upon which the parties divide, they grow disposed to rise after two or three hours' sitting. The authority of the prince," he adds, " must be inter- posed to make them return to the old hours of eight and nine, and if from that time they sat till two, a great deal of business might be dispatched in a short session." And here I may mention that the origin of the double representation of towns and counties is said to have been in order that the two members might go up to London together and protect each other on the road, so that in the event of one being killed or disabled, there might yet be one left to carry on the representation of the constituency in Parhament. And the Lord Mayor's Show, to go from a big to a little matter, took place by water to Westminster and thence by road to Guildhall, and was after the dinner and not before it. The town was protected from thieves and fire by the watch — carica- tured by Shakespeare in Much Ado about Nothing — assisted, when he could get his help, by the constable of the parish, the result of which was that every man was his own protector and carried arms, a habifc leading, as may well be imagined, to nightly scenes of violence and 6 P. 919. 338 Side-lights on the Stuarts. bloodshed. These encounters were fostered by the general darkness of the city, which, so far as it was lighted at all, was only lighted by a candle in a lanternj slung by a chain across the street, after a fashion still in vogue in many small French and Italian towns. It thus became necessary for any nocturnal wayfarers to carry their own lanterns, or to be escorted by torch- bearers. And there are even now still to be seen aflBxed to the railings in some of the old streets of London the inverted cones in which the servants extinguished their torches after seeing their masters or their visitors home. In this, however, our capital was ahead of Paris, which was only lighted for the first time, by royal ordinance, in 1667; with one candle in a lantern in the middle of each street and one at each end. A good description of the country roads of this period is to be found in the diary of Sir Symon D'Ewes, where he describes his first journey to St. John's College, Cam- bridge, his clothes having been sent on by Old Hobson, the University carrier, immortalized by Milton. Hob- son's outfit was such as may be seen any day on the Western Prairie — a covered wagon or two ploughing through the mud, for the roads were mostly no better than tracks, now sticking fast in the ruts, now nearly swimming a stream, rumbling along at about four miles an hour, with the old carrier himself, on a sturdy Flan- ders mare, riding alongside, his pistols in his belt, looking out for footpads and generally superintending the cara- van. Tony Lumpkin's description of his drive "down Featherbed Lane, where we stuck fast in the mud, then crack over the stones of Up-and-down-HiU, then under the gibbet on Heavy-Tree Heath, and then by a circum- bendibus across CrackskuU Common and through the horsepond at the bottom of the garden" — if somewhat Merrie England. 339 exaggerated in the time of Oliver Goldsmith, was not far from the truth in the days of Oliver Cromwell. But, rugged and uncouth as the town must have looked in its narrow streets, its pestilential alleys, and its innumerable ditches and heaps of refuse, there was one characteristic which discreditably distinguished it from any other centre of civilization. The pastimes and punishments of the people, which continued till the end of the seventeenth century, tended, no doubt, to fami- liarize them, from an early age, with scenes of cruelty and spectacles of horror ; but the town itself, from whatever quarter it was approached, must have presented to the foreigner, or even to our own countrymen who paid their first visit to London, a greater resemblance to a huge Aceldama or the home of a Dyak chief, than to a centre of civilization and life. Every gate of London during the seventeenth century — and every main thoroughfare had its gate — was surmounted by the grisly heads of deceased malefactors grinning from the poles to which they were attached. To the Strand on the west and to Fleet Street on the east. Temple Bar presented a dozen heads and a number of dismembered trunks. London Bridge was covered with these ghastly memorials ; thirty heads were fixed on its great gate before those of the Regicides were added,^ and one of the earliest portraits of King James shows him on his war-horse, backed by the great gate of London Bridge, bristling with the heads of traitors. Peaceful citizens going to their markets or ^ their commerce, aldermen and councillors to their Com- mon Hall, lawyers and judges to their Courts, found the entrance to Guildhall decorated with a cheval-de-frise of heads and limbs, under which they were compelled to ? Pennant, in his " Acoonnt of London," p. 448, says that in 1598, Hertzner, the German traveller, counted thirty heads on London Bridge. Z 2 340 Side-lights on the Stuarts. pass to their daily avocations. The Tower naturally had its quota, and even the Custom-House bore its share. Traitors' limbs were to be seen on Aldersgate ; a gallows swung in Cheapside, and more heads on Finsbury Gate. Tyburn Gate was always crowded with these memorials of crime or misfortune, and Tyburn itself was, indeed, so popular a spot, that a grand stand was erected close to the gallows for the convenience of the numerous spectators ; and as every man who took a prominent part in politics under the Stuarts walked in the shadow of the headsman, there were as many opportunities for the capturing of heads and limbs as would now be afforded to an aspiring warrior of Borneo. New Palace Yard bore on its turrets the heads of Cook and Harrison (the Eegicides), together with others of an earlier date. The heads of Catesby and Percy, the conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot, remained fixed outside the House of Lords at least as late as 1658 ; and inside Westminster Hall, in the Royal Courts of Justice, over the heads of the judges, were to be seen, after the Restoration, the skulls of Bradshaw, Cromwell, and Ireton, mounted on pikes. From Tilbury to the Tower, the bodies of pirates and thieves hung in chains along the banks of the Thames, and every thoroughfare leading into London was planted with the gallows-tree, where the chains creaked and groaned as the bodies in their iron cages swung to and fro in the breeze. So late even as the year 1763, Bdgware road was still ornamented in this fashion, as it appears from the "Annual Register" for that year, that " all the gibbets in the Bdgware Road, on which many maliefaotors were hung in chains, were cut down by persons unknown;"^ after which it may fairly be assumed they were not re-erected. ' " Knight's London," vol. ii. p. 360, Merrie England. 341 Apart from the inordinate number of offences that were then considered capital and followed by death, the system of punishments was barbarous in the extreme. Judicial torture had indeed ceased under the Tudors, though to some extent revived by King James, but cruel and frequent whippings not only of men but of half- naked women publicly through the streets, the public branding of malefactors with a red-hot iron, the pillory in which the prisoner was fixed with his head through one hole and his hands through two others, and thus exposed for hours to be pelted with any missile the crowd might send, were matters of daily occurrence. Men and women were fined and whipped for not going to church, and women for not telling the fathers of their children, so as to make them chargeable to the parish. The awful punish- ment of pressing, or feine forte et dure, which was commonly inflicted during the time of the Stuarts, and of which the detailed sentence is given in the note,® was a remarkable instance of the courage and the fortitude of our ancestors. According to the law, as it then existed, the goods of a person convicted of felony on his own confession or by verdict of a jury, were forfeited to ° The sentence of pressing was as follows : — "It is adjudged by the Court that he he led to the prison whence he came, and there he put into a vile and dark dungeon, and there be thrown on the ground with- out any straw or covering, and without any raiment about him except for covering his private parts, and that he lie upon his back and be covered as to his head and naked as to his feet, and that one of his arms be extended with a rope to one part of the said dungeon and the other of his arms to the other part of the dungeon, and his forelegs he treated in like manner, and that there he put on his body so much of iron as he is able to bear, and more and more, and that on the first day afterwards he have three pieces of barley-bread without drink, and on the second day he thrice drink of the water nearest the gate of the prison (running water being excepted) without bread, and on what day he eats he may not drink, and on what day he drinks he may not eat, until he have died." 342 Side-lights on the Stuarts. the crown. Without, however, a plea of guilty or not guilty, a conviction involving a forfeiture could not take place, and it was to avoid this forfeiture of goods, and this alone, that during the Stuart period many hundreds of our predecessors, both men and women, refused to plead, and consequently suffered this terrible death. They were mostly criminals of the lower orders, unable from their position to make the arrangements by which the wealthier or more educated could elude the talons of the law. They were actuated solely by care for their survivors, in some cases parents and children, in others friends or colleagues, for whom they wished to secure a provision of which the criminal sequestration would otherwise have deprived them. The Diurnal of 26th May, 1668, has the following matter-of-fact entry, show- ing the cold-blooded manner in which these occurrences were regarded : — " "William Tabor (thief) refusing to plead was ordered to be prest, which was accordingly executed upon him with some more than usual severity." On the same day it appears from the same paper that twelve men and two women were branded in the hand. Add to these the barbarities practised by the Stuarts in cases of high treason, and you have a catalogue of curious and revolting cruelties hardly intelligible in a Christian nation. Nearly every offence was capital, and so far was the Royal prerogative pushed that it was by law high treason to counterfeit or to deface the coin of the realm, and as late as 1683 fourteen men were hanged, drawn, and quartered, and one woman was burnt to death at Salisbury for clipping and coining half-crowns and shillings.'' Brawling in the streets, enticing away ' It appears from the Gaol Books of the Western Circuit, that thirteen were executed in July, 1683, and two in March, 1683-4; the latter for " clipping and filing pieces of money." Merrie England. 343 male and female apprentices for felonious purposes, and stealing children and young persons in order to sell them as slaves in Virginia and the West Indies, were amongst the most frequent offences after the Restoration. The poor law was administered by burning a vagrant in his right ear for his first offence and by hanging him for his second. Conventiclers were punished by fine and imprisonment or by deportation for seven years to the plantations, to return whence before the expiration of that period was a felony without benefit of clergy. What the civil wars had left to the citizens of their great collections of gold and silver plate was the subject of frequent and undetected thefts and burglaries, of which the Middlesex records during this period give innumerable instances. Gibbets were scattered through the town, and the custom of executing malefactors near the place of their crime frequently entailed upon an unhappy householder, whose dwelling had been broken into and robbed, the ghastly spectacle of a gallows and a malefactor swinging in chains before his front door. Hangings, pillories, and whippings took place in the main thoroughfares, and were witnessed by crowds of people, not collected as now from the lowest scum of the population, but including in their numbers men and women of gentle birth and of courtly employment. On a line with these punishments were many of their sports ; cock-fighting, bear-baiting, and bull-baiting, prohibited during the Commonwealth, were before and after that period the common amusements of the town, and upon one occasion, after the Restoration, an enter- tainment was given, at which they baited a horse, who, after beating off all his assailants, was at last killed by the knives of the spectators. Prize-fighting, not only with gloves and with fists, but with swords, con- 344 Side-lights on the Stuarts. tinued till the time of Greorge 111., when the Regent, afterwards George IV., being taken ill after witnessing the wounds of one of the gladiators, the sport seems to have been discontinued. Bat of all the inventions of undiluted brutality, cock-throwing, which consisted of tying a live cock to a stake and killing him with bludgeons, was perhaps the worst, and this also was a favourite pastime, especially, for some unexplained reason, on Shrove Tuesday. The stick was also as busy then as it was and is in Turkey. Apprentices were beaten. Dr. Busby, at Westminster, not only made his mark on the time, but on most of the boys and men of the time, and the birch, whose efl&gy still hangs on the walls of "Winchester College, was the universal instructor throughout the country. Men and women servants also, were commonly beaten by their masters, and even the good-natured Pepys ^ speaks more than once in his Diary of basting his wife's maid for some trivial faults. That all this tended to brutalize the people cannot be doubted, and one great virtue of the Commonwealth and one great cause of its unpopularity was the vigorous and ultimately successful protest that the whole Puritan party made against cruelty, either in the form of punish- ment or pleasure. Foreigners regarded us with shudder- ing ahd amazement. The French ambassador, writing to Louis XIV. in 1663, attributes the cruelty of the English nation to the absence of wild beasts, whose pursuit, he says, provides a vent for the cruel passions of other nations, but whose general destruction in England has left that nation no victims for their passions but each other. " Such," he concludes, " is the character of the people that the best thing to do is to leave them altogether alone." " The people of England," says Burnet, " have always been wiser than their rulers," and - Vol. i. p. 160. Merrie England. 345 in this instance they certainly showed their wisdom, for when the last Stuart left our shores in 1688, the Whigs, repairing the error made in the case of King James I., entered into a Parliamentary contract with the new king, one of the principal clauses of which provided against cruel and excessive punishments. This depravity of feeling and of morals reacted, as of necessity, on the more refined pleasures of music and of art. We are all of us more or less acquainted with the portraits of Van Dyck, sombre and solemn, but with a dignity and a nobility conferred by the artist on all his subjects, and taking these as a sample of artistic excellence, a walk through the galleries of Hampton Court will show us in the beauties of Sir Peter Lely and the painters of the Eestoration, the half-clothed and distorted figures of the ladies of the Court, adorned with flowers and sporting with lambs as if innocence and country air were the very end and aim of their existence. And there also we find the men of the Restoration, who received the pay of the foreigner, and who never drew a sword except on a bailiff or a watch- man, in costumes where the warlike severity of the Eoman Consul mingled with the silks and satins of the French Court. The tilt-yard was deserted for Pall Mall, which was played in St. James's Park on a prepared court, with racquets and balls after the same fashion as lawn tennis, with this single exception, that the ball was driven through a large ring instead of over a three-foot net.' ' Th.ey had their pastoral poets as well as their pastoral pictures, but I fancy the pastoral of Captain Morris, the Piccadilly Poet of George IV., would have more truly expressed their views : — " In town let me live, in town let me die, I care not a fig for the country, not I ; If I must have a villa in summer to dwell, Oh, give me the sweet shady side of Pall Mall." 346 Side-lights on the Stuarts. Thus matters went on, extravagance and licence per- vading the Court, discontent gradually rising again among the people, and the king just going to the point of resistance, and then bearing in mind his father's fate and stopping short, till London suffered from those two calamities as they were at the time, which have tended to give us the London of to-day. The plague, which had been intermittent since the beginning of Elizabeth's reign, and had on many occasions driven the Court and the wealthy classes from London, broke out with un- paralleled fury in 1665, and compelled the Londoners, in their own interests, to look to the sanitary condition of their town, and to clear away some of the rookeries and dung-heaps of which it consisted. This was followed in the next year by the great fire which burnt out the plague for ever from the city, and of which Evelyn, and Pepys, and Stow gives us the graphic and lifelike descrip- tions of eye-witnesses of the scene. Looking at some of the drawings made at the time, one is perfectly aghast at the havoc that took place. But the ravages of the fire brought out the good qualities not only of the English people but of their sovereign, who, with innumerable bad points, had also some that were good. The king devoted himself to the troubles of his citizens. Every day he was to be seen on foot in the city and in the parts where the losses were greatest, himself taking part in directing the works and in distributing relief to the homeless and the wanderers, finding for this purpose many thousands of pounds from his own purse. He personally discussed with the citizens and their archi- tects plans and schemes for the rebuilding of the city. He had kind words for the poor and words of thank- fulness and encouragement for the rich. And with that encouragement and with the buoyant and resolute spirit Merrie England. 347 of our countrymen, the population of our great city, for- getting alike, for the time, foreign complications and domestic grievances, busied themselves solely in the task of rebuilding their devastated capital. But great as was the credit due to King Charles, much as we are indebted to Christopher Wren and other architects less known to fame, much as was due to the self-denial and fortitude of the citizens, there was one man to whom London owes a debt of gratitude, which I doubt if it has ever honour- ably repaid. That man was Sir Matthew Hale. He had been trained for the Bar, was a devoted Royalist and defender of Cavaliers, and the adviser of King Charles T. at the time of his trial. After that monarch's death he had been appointed to the Bench by Cromwell, and was one of the Judges under the Commonwealth, retaining that post till the Restoration, when, as Serjeant Hale, he sat on the Commission to try the Regicides, and was now in the proud position of Lord Chief Baron of the Ex- chequer. He had been throughout an impartial and a learned judge, but the service he was now to render to his country was one far surpassing any of his judgments from the Bench or his learned Treatises on the. Law. Seated in the little hall of Clement's Inn, and armed with authority from Parliament, Sir Matthew day by day decided questions arising between the various owners and occupants of the lands that had been devastated by the fire. No one who has not had some experience in litigation relating to land can form the very smallest idea of the difficulty and the complications with which the judge would have had to contend. In ordinary cases when houses are standing and the limits of men's pro- perty are marked out by stake and bounds, questions of great nicety and legal subtlety, requiring for their final settlement the judgment of the highest tribunal of the 348 Side-lights on the Stuarts. country, frequently arise. Disputed boundaries, rights of light and air, rights of way, covenants of various kinds, conflicting rights of owners and occupiers tax the ingenuity of the lawyers and the patience and learn- ing of the judges. What, then, must not have been the difficulty and the labour when the ravages of the fire had obliterated all metes and bounds, had welded into one concrete mass the wrecks of many estates, and when the reconstruction of the city upon a new and a scientific system rendered necessary for its completion an extended but at the same time a practical scheme for compensation and restitution. This Herculean task was taken in hand by Sir Matthew Hale within a few weeks of the fire, and thenceforward day by day the citizens flocked to the Hall of Clement's Inn, where Sir Matthew, sitting as assessor, and discharging in his own person the duties of judge, jury, surveyor, architect, and arbitrator, heard the parties and decided their claims with such despatch and, at the same time, with such universal satisfaction, that for not one single day was the rebuilding of our new city delayed through any dispute or through any litigated claims awaiting the decision of the judge. Without such a man and without a duty so discharged, our great city would never have risen again from its ashes as it did with redoubled splendour and vigour, but it would have been found, as too many of our modern quarters are even now to be seen, with frequent patches of desolate ground and with rows of deserted and dilapidated structures, standing examples, as our people call them, of the lame and halting procedure of our modern courts. The reign of Charles II. was also remarkable for the first issue of stamped money. Before this the coins were all beaten, with the result that they were broad Merrie England. 349 and thin, with rough, edges, and although Cromwell in 1656 had a complete set of coins stamped, bearing on one side his own head finely chiselled, and on the other the arms of England, Scotland, and Ireland, yet for political reasons they were never issued, and they remain in the public depositories merely as medals, but, at the same time, as the earliest specimens of stamped money known to have been struck in England. The golden angel had disappeared as a coin during the Commonwealth, and the sovereign and half-sovereign of the present age came into general circulation under the auspices of Charles II. His reign is also remarkable for the in- troduction of two reforms that have only been completed in the present century. The Post Office was then, as now, a Grovernment monopoly, and it was granted, with many other monopolies, to the Duke of York. But the citizens, suffering from the cost of letters and the delay in their delivery, set up amongst themselves a penny post for the City. It was taken up eagerly and was eminently suc- cessful, when the duke, finding it affected his income, declared it an invasion of his monopoly, and the Penny Post was put down, not to be revived again, till, after many years, Rowland Hill, improving on the scheme of the citizens in 1670, established a penny postage for the entire kingdom. Nor was this the only reform blocked by the Stuart dynasty. An equal suffrage of very limited qualification was provided by the Commonwealth for the election of members of Parliament, in town and in county alike. This, too, was abrogated by Charles, and here, again, after more than two centuries, and after a long struggle, we have revived the reform introduced by the Protector and repealed by the king. Charles' twenty-five years, was, on the whole, com- pared with earlier and later reigns, a somewhat unevent- 35° Side-lights on the Stuarts. ful period, for, although the country suffered from pesti- lence, and from fire, from the indirect action of foreign control, and from a plague of false witnesses and sham plots, yet there was peace through the land, and the people busied themselves more with their own affairs within their own borders, than at any former period, and in the result, when Charles, in due course, went the way of all men and monarchs, there was a general feeling of regret.* He had a certain kindness of heart, and was easily accessible to all classes of his subjects, qualities which, coupled with his goodnature, which, though it would not carry him across the road to help a friend, would not take him out of his way to injure an enemy, went far to ensure his general popularity. He mixed freely among his subjects, who liked to see their king, if only engaged in walking his dogs, or feeding his ducks inRosamond's pond. His early career proved him to have been a man of personal courage, and his tact and industry after the devastation of his capital showed him to be a man of business when he chose to apply himself to it. " The king," said the Duke of Buckingham, referring to the two brothers, " can see things if he will, and the duke would see them if he could." He showed good sense and justice in the case of the Duke of York's marriage to Ann Hyde, and he manifested good feeling and affection towards his queen in the matter of his own proposed divorce. The ministers, finding the king remained for some years without an heir, and fearing the result of James' accession, had proposed to the king and nearly persuaded him to divorce the queen, in order that by another wife he might perhaps have an heir to the throne. "But no," said the king, sending after his minister, " there is no reason why she See the dramatic account of his death, by Lord Macaulay, vol. i. p. 427. Merrie England. 351 should be made unhappy because I am unfortunate."^ His gallantries and his pranks have been the subject of innumerable novels, plays, and satires, and though these cannot be taken as history, yet his general course of life may well have shown them to have some solid foundation. But though his people must have known by ocular experience that their monarch was, even as a monarch., no better than he should be, yet his character was on the whole better suited to the English taste than the solemn pedantry of his grandfather James, the habi- tual though dignified insincerity of his father, or the cold and cynical bigotry of his brother. His anxiety for his own ease, and the last injunctions of his father, prevented his driving the people to extremes, and his own know- ledge of statesmanship, acquired under adverse circum- stances, and in foreign lands, for it cannot be doubted that he was a statesman as well as a king, gave his people an era of peace, under which the nation made great strides in knowledge and prosperity. " No fear, Jamie," said the king to his brother, on hearing of some newly-discovered plot ; " no one will kill me to make you king ; " and it was probably this knowledge that led him to take with calmness and composure events likely to startle many a monarch from his slumber. He played fast and loose with the no popery cry, and while discrediting the great popish plot, allowed the citizens of London to rear a monument in commemoration of the great fire ascribing it to the treachery and the malice of the popish faction.^ Burnet, who served under, and was ° Burnet, p. 178. ° This inscription was removed by James II. and was reinstated in the time of WiUiam III., evoking the well-known lines by Pope : — " Where London's column, pointing to the skies, Like a tall bully lifts its head and lies." It was again removed in the reign of William IV., and has not been replaced. 352 Side-lights on the Stuarts. on intimate terms with, five sovereigns, viz., Charles II., James II., William III., Mary, and Anne, gives the follow- ing description of the first of these monarchs : — " King Charles' behaviour," he says, " was a thing never enough to be commended ; he was a perfectly well-bred man, easy of access, free in his discourse, and sweet in his whole deportment; this was managed with great art, and it covered bad designs ; it was of such use to him that it may teach all succeeding princes of what advan- tage an easiness of access and an obliging behaviour may be. This preserved him ; it often disarmed those resent- ments which his ill-conduct in everything, both public and private, possessed all thinking people with very early, and all sorts of people at last ; and yet none could go to him but they were in a great measure softened before they left him ; it looked like a charm that could hardly be resisted, yet there was no good nature under that, nor was there any truth in him."' He was buried in "Westminster Abbey, but his popularity died with him, and the actual position of his last resting-place is hardly known. Once committed to the grave, few tears were shed for his memory, which was only kept alive in the nation by the substantial grants it was annually called upon to provide for the maintenance and support of his illegitimate descendants. ' Burnet, p. 919. ODj VII. THE KING'S HEALING. Having already discussed the subject of witchcraft during the Stuart period, the concomitant of ignorance and superstition, which particularly characterized the reign of King James I., this is perhaps a convenient moment to refer to another superstition, more harmless in its effects, but equally extended in its scope, which peculiarly distinguished the reigns of Charles II. and James II. I allude to the almost universal belief in the efficacy of the king's touch to heal scrofula, or, as it was commonly termed, the king's evil ; a belief which was also in the latter days regarded as one of the sure tests of a sound loyalist. This miracle-working power was assumed to be de- posited solely in the persons of the kings of England and of France ; but whether the kings of England in- herited or acquired the miraculous power from the kings of France, or whether the kings of France enjoyed the power as an offshoot of the kings of England, who for many years dominated a great part of France, was a subject of discussion in which even Voltaire did not disdain to take part.-^ As far as England is concerned, Edward the Confessor was the first dispenser of this miraculous healing, and his success was naturally at- tributed to his great sanctity. A description of his touching for the king's evil is given by Shakespeare in ' Histoire de Louis XIV." A a 354 Side-lights on the Stuarts. Macbeth, act iv. scene 3. The scene is laid outside the king's palace in London during Malcolm's residence in England.^ Malcolm. Comes the king forth, I pray you 1 DoOTOE. Aye, sir ; there are a crowd of wretched souls That stay his cure : their malady convinces The great assay of art ; but, at his touch Such sanctity hath Heaven given his hand They presently amend. Macduff. What's the disease he means ? Malcolm. 'Tis called the evil ; A most miraculous work in this good king. Which often, since my here-remain in England I have seen him do. How he solicits heaven, Himself best knows : but strangely-visited people, All swollen and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye, The mere despair of surgery, he cures ; Hanging a golden stamp about their neck. Put on with holy prayers : and 'tis spoken, To a succeeding royalty he leaves The healing benediction. With this strange virtue He hath the gift of prophecy; And sundry blessings hang about his throne That speak him full of grace. In France it is supposed to have originated under similar circumstances with Louis IX., commonly known as St. Louis, in 1226, and to have been continued by succeeding monarchs, though it is suggested by St. Thomas Aquinas that even as early as the time of Clovis, A.D. 428, the practice was known. Louis XL in the fifteenth century touched freely and continually for the evil, and on Wolsey's embassy to Francis L, the French king, on his way to the banquet given to the ambassa- dor in honour of the visit, touched great numbers of sick people, distributed money amongst them by his ^ Edward the Confessor reigned 1041 to 1066; Macbeth reigned 1040 to 1056. The King's Healing. 355 almoner, and then, with no unreasonable precaution^ washed his hands in three waters — one of water and vinegar, one of pure water, and one of rose-water — before sitting down to meat. Louis XVI., after his coronation in 1776, touched two thousand four hundred sick people at Eheims Cathedral, using the words, "May- God heal thee. The king touches thee.' ' But T think we may fairly assume that there was very little healing in France after that date.^ In England we find several sovereigns after the conquest touching for the king's evil, but not until the time of Henry VII. were any regulations made, and then for the first time a golden angel, a coin first struck by Henry VI., was suspended round the neck of the sick person as part of the ceremony This was a beaten coin of about the size of a thin half-crown. It was made of the purest gold, and had on one side St. Michael slaying the dragon, and on the other a war-ship of the period, with the legend, " A domino factum est et est mirabile in oculos nostros." Henry VIII. does not seem to have troubled himself much about healing his subjects, and rather to have con- soled the scrofulous persons whom he had about him by granting them permits to come covered into his presence than to have attempted their cure by his miraculous touch. Queen Elizabeth, whether from motives of economy or otherwise, reduced the size of the coin, and substituted for the ancient legend the words, " 80U Deo gloria j" and towards the end of her reign she had the service, hitherto read in Latin, translated into English. ' It is said that there is a gentleman now living in Paris who claims to be a direct descendant of St, Louis, and to cure scrofula hy touching. In other respects, however, he is not a great stickler for the Divine right of kings, as he was a leader of the Commune, and narrowly escaped being shot after the troops re-entered the city. — See Notes and Queries, Series VIII. vol. viii. p. 292. A a 2 356 Side-lights on the Stuarts. One hears little of the practice during the time of King James I., except that it is said of him that out of deference to the susceptibility of the Puritan faction, who neither believed in the miracle nor approved of the service, he gave up the practice hitherto in use of making the sign of a cross when laying his hands on the sick. Mr. Gardiner, in his history,* says also of James I. that he caused considerable anxiety among his ministers on his accession by refusing to touch for the king's evil, describing it as a vain and superstitious practice, and that it was only by extreme pressure and for purely political reasons that he was induced to hold a healing, which he does not seem to have repeated. Charles I., beyond having the service translated again into English, seems to have taken little interest in the ceremony, his time being probably too much occupied with his own private affairs and public ti'oubles. It is related of him, however, and the tale is repeated by Mr. Leckie,^ that on his way to Windsor from Hurst Castle, an innkeeper of Winchester, through which city he passed, threw himself on the ground and prayed the king to heal his infirmity. The king being surrounded by his guard and not able to touch the man, looked upon him and said, " God bless thee and grant thy desire," and there- upon the man was immediately healed. Cromwell, whatever may have been his heart's aspira- tions after a royal crown, never gave any countenance to the Eoyal Touch, and it may well be that from 1640 to 1660 there had accumulated a great number of sick persons, who looked to the return of an anointed king as affording them a chance of being delivered from their ailments. However this may have been, no sooner was Charles II. restored to the throne than this supersti- Vol. i. p. 502. ' History, vol. i. p. 69. The King's Healing. 357 tion burst forth again with redoubled vigour, and crowds of scrofulous persons from all parts of the country flocked to Whitehall to try ther eflacacy of the king's touch. Whether all these people believed in this super- natural power of a reigning monarch, it is difl&cult to say : the probability is that many of them went more by way of experiment than otherwise, and like many prosperous and well-educated sufferers at the present day, who put themselves into the hands of a quack, when ordinary remedies and the recognized physician have failed to give them relief. Some estimate of the numbers may be arrived at by the fact that on the 23rd of June, 1660, no less than six hundred poor creatures were " streaked " by the king, and had an angel of gold thenceforward called a " touch-piece " of the value of about 10s. (money of the time) suspended by a ribbon of white satin hung round their necks.^ The angel as a coin of the realm had by this time disappeared, having been withdrawn from circulation by the Commonwealth, when a new set of coins were struck by Cromwell with the arms of the Commonwealth on one side and the figure of the Pro- tector on the other. On the Restoration, the guinea and half guinea were introduced, and the angel, a much smaller coin, then used solely as a touch-piece, was specially struck with a ship of the period, for the healing operation. So numerous were the applicants for this miraculous relief, and so great was the pressure on the king's time that notices were published in the newspapers fixing the times at which alone the king would heal, and warning all persons against the loss of time and money which they would incur through attempting to undergo the miracle of the king at any other times than those specially appointed. A little printed book called " Ostenta Garo- ^ Pepys' Diary, vol. i. p. 105. Mercurius Puhlicus, 28tli of June 1660. 358 Side-lights on the Stuarts. ima," ^ may also have fanned this flame, for it professed to prove not only that " Ricketts in children shall vanish through the mercy of Almighty God, and by the means of King Charles," but it also prophesied, and in this respect was not so very far wrong, that " King Charles is the last of kings that shall by the imposition of his hands heal the king's evil." Having touched six hundred on the 23rd of June, he touched two hundred more on the 16th of July, and on the 23rd of July notice was given in the papers and by proclamation that his Majesty having already touched seventeen hundred per- sons, and there being over a thousand persons waiting in London, he will touch the persons now in waiting but no more until further notice.^ Of this crowd of nearly three thousand people of all sorts and conditions, it is not, I think, uncharitable to say that the prospect of the silk ribbon and the golden angel may have had no incon- siderable attraction for many of the poorer and less scrupulous of his Majesty's subjects. Even, however, allowing for a large deduction on this ground, the spectacle of all these scrofulous persons hovering round Whitehall year after year, presents a desolate picture of the sanitary condition of the English people. In the summer of 1662 the healing services were fixed and regulated by royal decree. On July 21, 1662, a Royal Proclamation " was issued, appointing the times for the touching for the king's evil to be from All Hallow- tide to a week before Christmas, and the month before Easter, and ordering all who came to bring certificates from the vicar and churchwardens where they dwelt, that they had not been previously touched for that disease."^ ? State Papers, Chas. 11. Dom. vol. xlvii. p. 112. ' Parliamentary Intelligencer, 23rd of July, 1660. " State Papers, Chas. II. Dom. vol. Ivii. p. 15. ' These certificates were given in thousands ; many are still in exist- The King's Healing. 359 Accompanying the proclamations were issued " Regu- lations for touching for king's evil." ^ By these regula- tions the sergeant-surgeon in waiting was to give tickets only to apparent cases, those that were doubtful were to be further examined. The people were to be taken in order as they came, except at general healings, when those that came from afar were to be taken first. Tickets of admission were to be given to those only who had the evil, and to none such in "Whitehall : and no fee was to be demanded by the surgeons. The patients being thus certified, and ticketed and admitted to the king's presence, found him surrounded by his court, and attended by bishops and clergy, when a short service called " The King's Healing" was read by the bishop or chaplain in attendance.^ It commenced by the reading of the first lesson (Mark xvi. 14 to " miracles follow- ing"), during which, according to the rubrick, at the words they shall lay hands on the sich, and they shall recover, " the infirm persons are presented to the king upon their knees, and the king layeth his hands upon them." This was followed by the reading of the second lesson (Johni. 1, to "grace and truth"), during which " they are again presented to the king upon their knees and the king putteth his gold about their necks." Then came certain short prayers and responses " to be made ence, and the records of many others are given by correspondents of Notes and Queries. 2 State Papers, Chas. II. Dom. vol. Ivii. p. 6. 3 I have taken this account of the Healing Service from " A Collection of Articles, &c., with other published records of the Church of England chiefly in Times of King Edward VI., Queen Elizabeth, King James and King Charles I. London, 1684," p. 165. After the accession of "William III. the second lesson was omitted and the service slightly altered, so as to give it a more Protestant tone. It appears as altered in the Oxford editions of the Book of Common Prayer. Some information on the subject will be found in Notes and Queries, scries i. vols. iii. vii. viii. ;6o Side-lights on the Stuarts. by them that come to be healed." Then followed this prayer, " Almighty God, giver of all health and the aid of all them that seek to Thee for succour, we call upon Thee for Thy help and goodness, mercifully to be showed unto these Thy servants that they being healed of their infirmity may give thanks unto Thee in Thy Holy Church, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen." After which the patients were dismissed with the Blessing and with a caution that if they ever lost the angel from their necks the evil might return, and would then never be cured, except by another submission to the healing of the king. And thus every spring and autumn persons who were victims of this terrible scourge resorted to the presence of the sovereign to have the touch of his sacred hand to cure them of their ills. Lord Macaulay states that as many as a hundred thousand persons in all were touched by King Charles II. during the twenty- five years of his reign, and he calculates the annual cost of the ceremony at not less than 10,000Z.* So wide- spread was the superstition and so ready were the Stuart kings to give it encouragement. And I doubt not thab Charles's good-nature and accessibility in regard to this ceremony, in which the poorer classes had the most implicit belief, went a long way towards establishing that ■* History, vol. iii. p. 480. In the Gentleman's Magazine for 1811, p. 123, the following figures are given from the Eegisters kept by the Sergeant of the Chapel Koyal and the keeper of the closet, of persons touched by the Royal hand. 1660 6725. J \J\J\J 1661 ... ... U 1 uu, 4619. 1662 4271. 1663 4667. 1664 3335. 1067 3073. 1681 6007. 1682 8477. 'So account is given of tho intermediate years. The King's Healing. 361 personal popularity wHcli lie enjoyed to- the very last. James II., who held a healing service in the Cathedral at Worcester in 1687, not only touched in England, but continued to do so in France after his flight, a practice which gave rise to curious speculation as to whether this miraculous power was appurtenant to the French or English monarch wherever he might be, or was not rather confined solely to the monarch cle facto et de jure in his own dominions. During these two reigns the angel was again reduced in size, but was still struck with the figure of St. Michael slaying the dragon on one side, and on the other a ship of war with the legend as settled by Queen Elizabeth. The die, however, was far inferior to that of Henry VI., and the token was altogether meaner in appearance. The death of James II. was, however, not allowed to pass without some spiritual manifestation of his divine power, for the Bishop of Autun, who had suffered some years from scrofulous eruptions, was warned by the nuns of Ohaillot that he might expect a miraculous interpo- sition in his favour through the saintly interposition of the dying monarch. And accordingly, within a few days after the king's death, the Bishop, while celebrating mass for the repose of the king's soul, suddenly became relieved of his infirmity, and from that time forward had no recurrence of his distressing malady. After the death of James II. the old and the young Pretenders suc- cessively touched for the evil when living abroad, and on those occasions used a still further reduced coin, and latterly gave an angel of silver in the place of one of gold, with the legend — " He layd his hands on them and they were healed." Many of these pieces are in existence, and in 1875 one of them was advertised in a Kentish o 62 Side-lights on the Stuarts. paper as having been put round the owner's great grand- mother's neck by King Charles himself. It was, how- ever, obviously a touch -piece of one of the Pretenders, who, as they saw their chances of temporal success steadily diminishing wished, after the manner of their kind, to accentuate their spiritual powers. In the col- lection at the British Museum is a touch-piece of the old Pretender. It is in silver, about the size of a six- pence ; it has on one side an angel, with the inscription. Soli Veo gloria, and on the other a ship in full sail, with the inscription, Gar. III. D.G. M.B. Fr. and Hi. Bex. In 1716 the Pretender is said, while in Paris, to have cured a young man named Christopher Lovell, who travelled from Bristol in order to be subjected to the royal touch, and in 1745 he held a healing at Edinburgh.® How long the practice of " Healing" was continued by the sovereigns of this country, it is difficult accurately to determine, but it seems to have been about co-terminous with witchcraft, for as the last thoroughly authenticated case of witchcraft appears to have been in 1712, so the last recorded instance of healing appears to have been that of Dr. Johnson, whose royalist and high Tory parents in 1712, as we learn from Boswell's life, took their infant son, at the age of 2^ years, to be touched, and to have the angel hung round his neck by Queen Anne, for the disease from which he suffered to his dying day. It may be that the great run on King Charles' powers, with the consequent number of failures, had the effect of very seriously damaging his reputation in this respect, which, like many another great reputation, was killed by the excess of its own popularity. It is possible also that the royal prerogative may have been invaded by some outside practitioners, as there arose about ' Leclne's History, vol. i. p. 223. The King's Healing. 363 tliis time a celebrated philantliropist named Yalentine Greatrex, of Assayne, in Ireland, called the great stroaker, who cured all manner of diseases by tte imposition of tis hands, and is said to have succeeded in many cases where the king had failed — a miraculous power, also supposed to have been conferred upon him by reason of his great piety. His picture, which was engraved by Faithorne in 1666, portrays him giving sight to a blind boy, by laying his hands on his eyes, while in the background are to be seen the lame and the paralytic wending their way to his house, while others in joyful attitude are crossing the fields with their crutches on their shoulders and their diseases cured. Nor was this recognition of his powers confined to a picture, for the Corporation of Worcester, in 1666, gave Dr. Greatrex a public enter- tainment, at a cost of \0l. 145., in acknowledgment of the cures he had gratuitously effected in their city. William III. absolutely refused to practise the healing touch, though he was willing to distribute the coin, and, it is said, that being persuaded against his inclination to touch one scrofulous person, he prayed God to give him better heath and more sense,^ and though efforts were made to persuade the king that, notwithstanding his reluctance and want of faith, the man whom he touched had actually recovered from his sickness, he was never induced to repeat the operation. And George I., who was not usually given to jokes, is re- ported to have advised an applicant for his royal touch to go to the king over the water. Queen Anne, however, on ascending the throne endeavoured to rekindle the embers of this dying superstition, and in the Gazette of March, 1712, gave notice of her intention to receive patients at certain intervals, and to touch for the evil ; 6 Macaulay, vol. iii. p. 430. 364 Side-lights on the Stuarts. and of this invitation Dr. Johnson's parents, as already stated, amongst many others, eagerly availed themselves. Upon what ground this miracle-working power was originally attached to the English and French kings does not clearly appear. Although Edward the Confessor and St. Louis of France were each men of high and saintly reputation, yet it is difficult to recognize any superior life of sanctity in many of the sovereigns who, succes- sively in both nations, claimed to dispense this miraculous gift. And neither the first nor the second lesson of the service gives any warrant for applying to a disso- lute and atheistical monarch the virtues and the power of working miracles promised by the Evangelist to those who were faithful preachers of the Word. Neither could any perversion of Scripture have given to the blood of King Charles I. or to that of the Duke of Monmouth the efficacy it was supposed to possess, by the mis- guided persons who wiped it iip from the scaffold, or who afterwards made pilgrimages to the shrine where the blood-stained garments were enclosed. But however it may have been, and from whatever cause it may have arisen, the King's Sealing, like the practice of witchcraft, gradually died out. It was cer- tainly never practised by any sovereign of the House of Hanover ; it disappeared as a Service from the Book of Common Prayer soon after the death of Queen Anne,'' and it is with much difficulty that information is obtained on the subject of this curious and superstitious usage. " "When golden angels cease to cure the evil, You give all royal witchcraft to the devil." So sang Pope in 1736, and certainly by that time the English people had arrived at the same conclusion. ' It is said, however, to have been seen in a rare edition of the Prayer Book, published in 1727. 3^5 VIII. MONMOUTH'S REBELLION. It has happened that manj of our most unsatisfactory sovereigns have commenced their reigns with consider- able popularity. Mr. Froude says of Queen Mary that no English sovereign ever ascended the throne with more public sympathy, which was enhanced by the attempts of Northumberland and others to rob her of her birthright.-' James I. was received with an acclamation that surprised his friends, no less than himself ; and Charles II., as we have seen, was received with an enthusiasm such as nothing could exceed. Similarly James II., by his fair promises, his declaration of respect for the laws of Eng- land and for religious toleration, entered on his reign with an amount of good-will in remarkable contrast to the apprehension and dislike with which the prospect of his succession had been previously received. That unpopularity as a prince may be suddenly converted into popularity as a sovereign, was exemplified of late years in the case of George IV., who, from the depths of unpopularity as Regent, immediately rose to the height of popularity on ascending the throne. I venture, how- ever, to doubt whether James's early popularity, if it ever existed, was more than the merest lip-service, and, perhaps, to a great extent, the reflex of that of his late brother. His career during the last reign had not been such as to commend him to the favour of the crowd. ' " History of England," vol. vi. p. -527. o 66 Side-lights on the Stuarts. His name was not associated with any of the romantic episodes of Lis elder brother, and his escape from St. James's by means of a game of bo-peep was wanting in the elements of chivalry and romance, which cha- racterized the escape of Charles from Worcester. Like his brother, in early life he was somewhat addicted to gallantry, but even then his mistresses were ugly and unpopular, and were said by the king to have been given to him by his confessors by way of penance ; neither were the details of his marriage with Ann Hyde, and its attempted repudiation, calculated to raise him in the popular estimation. He had devoted himself to the for- mation, or rather to the consolidation of the British Navy, and was on more than one occasion in personal command of the British Fleet in foreign waters. But though he had worked honestly and assiduously in his office of Lord High Admiral, he was not credited with success, and on the invasion of the Dutch in 1667, the odium of that dis- graceful episode was somewhat unjustly thrown upon him. He was of a religion detested by the great mass of the English people. His name had been openly asso- ciated by the lowest of ruffians with the Popish Plot, and to retrieve his character he had been compelled to appear as plaintiff in an action for libel, where he had obtained a fruitless verdict of 100,000Z. damages against a defendant who was at once a convict , and a pauper. He had been pelted with the bon-viots and sarcasms of the king, his brother, and had narrowly escaped on two occasions being excluded from the succession by the direct vote of Parliament. Added to this, his manners were cold and uninviting, and it was currently reported upon good authority that he had, on at least one occa- sion, been present and assisting at the infliction of torture upon an unhappy schismatic in a Scotch gaol. TliE RIGHT HON"'" GEORGK, EAUL OF FLINT, VISCOUNT WKIKHAM, BARON OF WElfil, L'' High CLttncelour of Englnnd, ono of hia Ma'"=» most Lou' '■' Privy Councell. Fiom his portrnit by Sir Godfrey Knollor. Monmouth's Rebellion. 367 Under these circumstances it would seem that James came to the throne under most discouraging auspices, and with a prospect of failure, which the most prudent and conciliatory action could alone have averted. Mon- mouth's rebellion, occurring as it did almost immediately after his accession, afforded him an opportunity of displaying any goodness of heart and soundness of judgment that he may have possessed, but imhappily for him and for his reputation. Sir George Jeffreys^ had been bequeathed to him as a damnosa hcereditas by the late king. This very remarkable lawyer, who was born in the year of King Charles's execution, and who, by his own talents and strength of purpose, had attained at the early age of thirty-five, the dignified position of Lord Chief Justice of England, has left a name in history second to none for lawlessness and brutality. The ver- dict of posterity has been unanimous in this respect, and his sins were visited on his children of the third genera- tion, when the Countess of Pomfret, travelling with her children on the Western Road, was hooted by the peasants, who learned she was the granddaughter of the Lord Chief Justice. It may be very questionable whether Jeffreys or his master was the more blame- worthy in regard to the occurrences to which I am about 2 The accompanying portrait of Jeffreys, describing him as Earl of Flint and Viscount Weikham, is from a very rare engraving in the British Museum. It was taken from his portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller, painted at a cost of 501. for the Inner Temple, of which Jeffreys was a Bencher. In 1696 the Benchers gave the portrait to John Lord Jeffreys, but an engraving of it still remains in the Inn. It represents him as a man of handsome features and of intelligent countenance, and does not suggest the besotted mien and the aspect of brutal ferocity which one is accustomed to associate with the lineaments of " the wicked Judge." Whether he was ever duly created Earl of Flint is not known, certainly his son never claimed the title. 368 SiDE-LIGIITS ON THE StUARTS. to refer, but even assuming that the convictions for Monmouth's rebellion vrere well-founded in law and in fact, as indeed I conceive they were, and that some thousands of rebels taken with arms in their hands were undoubtedly liable at law to the penalties of high treason, yet the indiscriminate withholding of mercy, the highest prerogative of the Crown, the exercise of which, in this instance, the king had confided to his trusty and well- beloved Lord Chief Justice, has accumulated upon the heads of the two chief offenders a load of shame and of blood-guiltiness, none the less heavy because they may be in a position to say that they shared it equally between them. Monmouth's case rested on the allegation that King Charles II. had, when at the Hague, married Lucy Walters, who had always asserted the marriage, and of whom it was stated that she kept the written evidence of the marriage carefully locked up in a black box, which went through as many adventures as the celebrated necklace of Alexandre Dumas. To the moral sanction thus given to his claim, he added the political programme that he represented the Protestant faith, and that if he succeeded to the throne, freedom of conscience, of speech, and of action should be the common right of all his subjects. A semblance of probability was given to the story of Lucy Walters and the black box, by the known profligacy of Charles's youthful habits. Nor were the traditions in regard to the old king, his father, probably forgotten. People recollected the masquerading of Charles I. and Buckingham in France and in Spain, when the Prince of Wales wandered about the continent as Tom Smith, and professed to fall in love with various beauties of the several courts. It could not be suggested that there was anything in Charles II. 's regard for law. Monmouth's Rebellion. 369 for morality, or for religion, to make his marriage with the fair Lucy at all impossible or even improbable. His brother James had married Ann Hyde, the waiting-maid to the Princess of Orange, and it was known well enough that had it not been for the pressure of the king and of the queen mother, he would have repudiated Ann Hyde as Charles repudiated Lucy Walters. Her story was also one to catch the popular ear. She was the daughter of a Welsh gentleman, and had lived with Charles for some years as his wife, having been so described by the Princess of Orange, if not by other members of the Royal Family in their private correspondence. Neither was the time of the alleged marriage altogether immate- rial. It was supposed to have taken place when Cromwell was firmly seated on the throne, when Charles was a wan- derer on the face of Europe, and when there was as little prospect of his own restoration as of the resuscitation of his father. Charles, it was true, had, on more than one occasion, while professing his affection for Monmouth, denied that he was married to the fair Lucy, and had, in fact, published a declaration to that effect in the Lo7idon Gazette, but there was at that time no Royal Marriage Act to prevent the king, or any member of his family, marrying whomsoever he chose, and as poor Hickes said on the scaffold, it was just one of those things which reasons of state would appear to justify a king in deny- ing, if the supposed interests of his kingdom would be advantaged thereby.^ There was, therefore, some excuse, at least for those who believed Monmouth's tale, and who, hating the prospect of a Popish king, were willing to accept any plausible justification for opposing his assumption of the crown. The Bloody Assize, &c. Hickes' trial. B b 370 Side-lights on the Stuarts. Some or all of these considerations might have moved the king towards a merciful view of the unhappy persons concerned in the absurd and abortive rising in the West of England, where Monmouth landed in June, 1665. The attempt was as short-lived as it was ill-conceived. It was confined to a comparatively small area, and was concluded after a few weeks by the capture of Monmouth himself, in the disgtiise of a peasant, hiding in a ditch. He was executed on Tower Hill, his fortitude and his resignation at the last hour effacing from the public mind the recollection of his previous weakness, of his more than equivocal relations in private life, and of the injury he had inflicted on some hundreds of innocent persons by his ill-advised and reckless attempt to subvert the Government of the day. The great culprit being thus disposed of, Jeffreys, armed with a military commission as General-in-Chief of the Western District, proceeded in his double capacity of General of Division and Lord Chief Justice of England, with four other Common Law Judges, to deliver the gaols on the Western Circuit and to try the culprits of the late rising, some fifteen hundred of whom had been tsiken with arms in their hands soon after the battle of Sedgemoor.^ They had been committed to the various prisons in the counties of Southampton, Devon, Dorset, and Somerset, and these not being sufficient for the purpose, they were also confined in the numerous poor- houses, bridewells, and other places of detention in the several counties. Those who have read Macaulay — and who has not ? — must have had their blood run cold over his graphic descriptions of the brutality and the butchery of the Bloody Assize. Having passed through this pre- liminary stage, one's natural inclination is to consider '' In the indictments described as King's Edfjenioor. Monmouth's Rebellion. 371 whether after all the story may not have been somewhat exaggerated ; whether Jeffreys was the bloodthirsty and lawless tyrant there described, and whether those heca- tombs of victims existed in fact or in imagination. Circumstances recently put into my hands the gaol- books of the Western Circuit, containing a complete record of the prisoners and of the convictions during this remarkable period, and I am bound to admit that I do not find the record to be altogether in accordance with the statement of Lord Macaulay and of others who put the number of the slain at this assize at figures varying from three hundred and twenty to seven hundred . This gaol-book is, as far as I am aware, the only original and authentic record of the proceedings at this assize. The entries are made regularly day by day, recording the name of, and the charge against, the accused, together with his plea of guilty or not guilty, and his sentence if convicted. They are entered at the time with great care, but they are not, by the uninitiated, very easy to decipher. During the Commonwealth the Protector had introduced a very practical and serviceable reform in requiring all legal proceedings, both civil and criminal, to be conducted in English, " the language understanded of the people," and accordingly, during that period all indictments and sentences were in English, the use of the old monkish Latin being entirely dis- continued. At the Restoration, however, the Latin usage was restored, with this difficulty superadded, that the want of practice for some twelve years seems to have induced in the entries a mixture of bad English with bad Latin ; and this, together with a host of abbreviations, make the work of transcription exceedingly difficult. I have, however, in the Appendix, set out to the best of my ability a complete copy of every entry in the gaol- B b 2 372 Side-lights on the Stuarts. book in any way referring to tlie trials for liigli treason or sedition at this assize ; and I have, for the convenience of the lay reader, appended in notes an explanation of the various abbreviations, which would otherwise render the list almost unintelligible to the public of the present day. The prisoners enumerated are those committed for high treason in levying war against the king, in proclaiming the Duke of Monmouth king, or in harbour- ing rebels, or for misdemeanour in uttering seditious language, in publishing false news, or in suffering prisoners to make their escape. It was the ordinary summer assize of Oyer and Ter- miner and general gaol delivery, and not an assize solely confined to cases of high treason. I have already referred to certain trials for witchcraft at that period, and there were also trials for other offences usually to be met with in an assize calendar. It was, however, a special com- mission in this sense, that it was not confined as usual to two Judges of Assize, but Jeffreys had associated and sitting with him in court during the whole circuit four other judges ; viz. Sir William Montagu, Lord Chief Baron ; Sir Cresswell Levinz, Justice of the King's Bench ; Sir Francis Wythens, Justice of the Common Pleas ; and Sir Kobert "Wright, Baron of the Exchequer. And although during the circuit one or other of these judges was probably engaged at each town trying civil causes, and it may have been that one was also trying the minor charges in a second criminal court, yet the five judges met, consulted, and lodged together day by day, and whatever of ignominy rests upon the com- missioners of this assize must be borne jointly and severally by all the five. It is also the fact that the counsel for the crown who conducted the prosecutions for high treason was the celebrated Henry PoUexfen, Monmouth's Rebellion. 373 then Solicitor- General, and afterwards Attorney-General and Chief Justice of the Common Pleas to WilUam III. On July 8th, 1685, within a month of Monmouth's landing, and the very day of his capture, the Commission was issued for the Western Circuit, and in August, Jeffreys, who was not only the Chief Commissioner of Assize, but as General Commanding the Western Divi- sion, had the troops, with their ofl&cers, under his com- mand, set forth from London on what was not inaptly called his campaign in the west. The first town on the circuit was then, as now, the old historic town of Win- chester, memorable for many a day as the capital of the empire, and as the scene of many a celebrated trial. There, in the old Hall of Justice, seated under King Arthur's round table, which then hung over the judg- ment-seat, the Lord Chief Justice, supported by the Lord Chief Baron and three puisne judges, on August 25th, 1685, opened the Commission for the County of South- ampton, and immediately proceeded to business. There was a heavy calendar of ordinary offences, but the only case of high treason was that of Alice, Lady Lisle, widow of John Lisle, one of Bradshaw's assistants at the trial of Charles I., a Lord of Parliament under the Commonwealth, and, after Bradshaw's death. President of the High Court of Justice. The narration of this case has inspired one of Lord Macaulay's finest passages. Burnet is equally eloquent in his description of the lady and his denunciation of her conviction. Her story has been made the ground- work of many a romance, her name was a talisman for the authors of the Revolution, and her death forms the subject of one of the most beautiful frescoes that adorn the corridors of the House of Lords. But, notwith- standing the fact that her history has been dealt with 374 Side-lights on the Stuarts. by these learned and eloquent authors, both writing from the intensely popular side, it will not, perhaps, be amiss to look at this case in the sober light of reason and common sense. She was indicted for harbouring the Eeverend John Hickes, a well-known and violent Nonconformist preacher, and an active partisan of Monmouth, who with one Eichard Nelthorpe, a Presbyterian divine who had been proclaimed and outlawed on a charge, from which he had fled, of being party to a projected assassi- nation of the king and the Duke of York, had taken refuge at her house some weeks after their escape from Sedgemoor. Within a few days after her return from London, where she had been living at the time of the outbreak, she received on the 25th of July a visit from James Dunne, a baker at Warminster, who brought a letter from Hickes asking whether he and a friend (who turned out to be Nelthorpe) could be received and lodged by her. To this she returned a favourable answer, appointing the following Tuesday night for the purpose. The men were accordingly taken after dark on the 28th of July, through woods and byeways from where they had been in hiding since the battle, to Lady Lisle's house at Ellington. There Hickes and his companion, together with Dunne, were received by Lady Lisle, and all supped together, discussing the battle which had been fought on the previous 6th of July, Monmouth's fate, and other topics of the day ; after which they were shown to their respective chambers and the house was closed for the night. Unfortunately, however, Dunne, not being very familiar with the country, as he lived twenty-seven miles away, had sought as a guide one Baxter, who had formerly been a servant and supporter of Monmouth, and was for that reason believed to be trustworthy. This man, after guiding the party secretly to Lady Monmouth's Rebellion. 375 Lisle's, went straight to Colonel Penruddock, a neigh- bouring magistrate, whose father had suffered under the Presidency of Lord Lisle, and gave information that Lady Lisle was harbouring two rebels from Sedgemoor. The colonel accordingly on the following morning made a descent upon the house with a troop of soldiers, and after much diflB.culty in getting admittance, and a stout denial from Lady Lisle that any rebels were concealed, Hickes and Dunne were found hidden in a malt-house, where they lay covered with sticks and stuff, and Nel- thorpe concealed in one of the rooms " in a hole by the chimney."^ The whole party was then taken into custody and sent to gaol, Dunne, however, being discharged with a view to his being called as a witness for the Crown. On Thursday, the 27th of August, Lady Lisle was brought to trial on the charge of having on the 28th of July received, aided and assisted one John Hickes, a rebel against the king. She challenged nineteen of the jurors as they came to the Book to be sworn, and in considera- tion of her being over seventy years of age and slightly deaf, one Matthew Brown, was at her request permitted to sit by her and assist in her defence. It was proved clearly enough that Hickes had been with the duke's army, and indeed it was notorious that he spoke and preached in Monmouth's favour, and was a firm believer in the duke's legitimacy and in his father's marriage to Lucy Walters. It was not disputed that Lady Lisle was well acquainted with Hickes,or that she had offered him the shelter of her house, and indeed Hickes, who was brother to the equally well-known high ToryDean of Worcester, was at this time almost as well known in England as the duke * I am informed that this chimney with the hole through which admis- sion may be gained to a small room built in the walls, still exists in Lady Lisle's house at Ellington. 376 Side-lights on the Stuarts. himself. Her defence was first in point of law tbat Hickes not having been convicted of high treason, she could not be convicted of treason in harbouring him ; and secondly, in fact that she harboured Hickes and sent for him by night under the belief that he was hiding from warrants out against him for unlicensed preaching, and without any knowledge that he had been with Monmouth in the army. As to her denial of any rebels being concealed, she said she spoke under terror of the soldiers, who were ransacking the house and putting her in bodily fear. Upon these facts, the jury, after putting several questions to the judge and having retired three times to consider their verdict, found her guilty as charged, and she was put back for sentence on the following morning. The case against her turned upon the evidence of Dunne and Baxter, the former of whom greatly prejudiced her case and destroyed any chance she might have had by his lying and prevarication arising from the comparatively honest desire to shield to the best of his ability the unhappy lady whom he had brought into so terrible a plight. And it is probable that the jury, who had been evidently most anxious to acquit, thought, after con- siderable pressure from Jeffreys, who was bent on obtaining a conviction, that there must have been a good deal more against the lady than Dunne chose to reveal. The latter was introduced by the Solicitor- General as a witness hostile to the prosecution, and was immediately taken in hand by Jeffreys, who submitted him to a rigid cross-examination, tempered with short speeches to the jury, the utterance of moral and noble sentiments, and a general abuse of Presbyterians. But in the end the judge got very little out of Dunne that was not proved by other witnesses. And although we might not at the present day follow the example of Monmouth's Rebellion. 377 Jeffreys and call the witness " a strange, prevaricating, shuffling, snivelling, lying rascal," yet it was not alto- gether far from the truth. The conduct of the trial by Jeffreys was in the worst style of the times, but on the other hand it must not be forgotten that the Crown was represented, and that the prosecution in this, as in other cases through this assize was conducted by the Solicitor-General (Pollexfen) who was generally well affected towards the Presbyterians, whose name stands honourably prominent among the lawyers of the period, and who for his genuine honesty of character was appointed Attorney- General in 1688, and afterwards Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. The account of the trial as given by Burnet," and I suppose the version popularly received at the time is, however, greatly exaggerated. It is there said that the jury three times found the prisoner not guilty, and only after being threatened by Jeffreys with an attaint of jury were induced to bring her in guilty. I find from the report that the jury did not in fact on any occasion find the prisoner not guilty, but they did twice return into the court to be resolved on questions as to which they had doubt. They first asked whether it were the same thing to have received Hickes before he was convicted as if it had been after. To this the judge replied, "It is all the same, there can be no doubt : for if, in case Ihis Hickes had been wounded in the rebels' army and had come to her house and there been entertained, and he had died there of his wounds and so could never have been convicted, she had nevertheless been a traitor." A second time they came in to ask whether there were sufficient proof that she knew Hickes had been with the army, as to which some of the jury doubted, and held a '■ Life of James II., p. 69. 3/8 Side-lights on the Stuarts. conversation with the judge. After this they returned again for about a quarter of an hour, and then returning into court for the third time, found her guilty. But there was no threat of an attaint. It was the last case for trial at the assizes, and the only threat that Jeffreys held out was that if the jury did not hasten to agree he would adjourn the court and have them locked up till the next morning. Burnet also states that Lady Lisle, on hearing from Hickes that he had been with the Duke of Mon- mouth's army, went immediately out of the room, and ordered her chief servant to send an information con- cerning them to the next justice of the peace, and in the meanwhile to suffer them to escape. With respect to this statement, if it is not the product of the worthy Bishop's own imagination, which one can hardly suppose, it was one of the tales current at the time, but it finds no corroboration either in the trial or in the lady's own statement. It is obvious that such matter would have been most pregnant for her defence, and could have been estabhshed not only by her own statement but by the evidence of the servant that was sent and of the magis- trate to whom he gave the information. But, in truth, nothing of the kind was ever hinted, nor did either Hickes or Nelthorpe ever suggest that Lady Lisle did not know they were fugitives from Sedgemoor. Jeffreys, he further says, told the jury that Hickes and Nelthorpe had confessed to him that they had been with the Duke of Monmouth. I do not find any such statement ; but I do find evidence that Hickes was with the army, given by three persons, who having been taken prisoners by Monmouth, found Hickes at the head- quarters giving orders as to the treatment of the prisoners of war. It is, however, the fact that Jeffreys, while cross-examining the witness Dunne, did most improperly tell the jury that Monmouth's Rebellion. 379 Nelthorpe had told him the details of the conversation they had at the supper, though such, he added, was not to be taken in evidence against Lady Lisle. Burnet also says that so old and infirm was the prisoner that she fell asleep during the Chief Justice's charge to the jury. How this may have been I know not. There is no other record of it, but she certainly interrupted the judge at the com- mencement of his charge to the jury, and also wished to address the court at its close in reference to some obser- vation he had made as to Nelthorpe. The evidence as to ISTelthorpe shows, I think, that she did not know who he was till after he was apprehended. In Nelthorpe's speech at Newgate in October, 1685, he implored the forgiveness of Lady Lisle's family, and distinctly stated that he was wholly a stranger to her when he came to •her house with Hickes, nor did she know who he was till he was taken. This is also borne out by the fact that she was not indicted for harbouring Nelthorpe, and, as he had been proclaimed an outlaw for treason pre- viously committed, if the Crown could have established her knowledge of Nelthorpe, her conviction, apart from any harbouring of Hickes, would have been assured. Hickes, on the other hand, who was tried and convicted at Wells, on his own confession, and executed at Glasen- bury, never asserted that Lady Lisle was ignorant of his being a fugitive from Sedgemoor, but in referring to the trouble he had brought on many households, likened himself to David, who in the course|of his persecution by Saul, caused tbe death of Ahimelech and all his family, without, however, carrying the analogy any further or suggesting that like David he had obtained the hos- pitality he sought by falsely pretending that he was the emissary of the king. Upon these facts, therefore, and bearing in mind that the lady was a fervent sympathizer 380 Side-lights on the Stuarts. with Hickes and his party, and that it would hardly have been possible for them all to have supped and talked together without the battle having been the chief subject of conversation, if the jury believed, as they well might, that she knew Hickes was a fugitive from Sedgemoor, th e conviction would have been right, and if she had been tried at the present day most undoubtedly she would have been convicted, though with equal certainty the preroga- tive of mercy would have been exercised in her favour. Upon the point of law, the preamble of an Act of 1 William and Mary, to annul the attainder of Lady Lisle, declares that the trial was irregular inasmuch as Hickes at the time of his reception by Lady Lisle was not attainted or convicted of treason. The Act, however, was passed at a time when the nation and Parliament were smarting from the tyranny and cruelty of the previous reign, when Jeffreys was in the Tower, and the Protestant succession, on whose behalf it was popularly believed that Monmouth had been sacrificed, was on the point of being permanently established. And there is in my judgment more to be said for the argument of Lord Jeffreys than persons at that time were willing to concede. On Friday, August 28th, Lady Lisle was put to the bar with nine persons convicted of housebreaking, high- way robbery, and other capital offences, and sentenced to death by burning that same afternoon in Winchester market. The others were sentenced to be hanged in the neighbourhood of their crimes. She was, however, respited till September 2nd, and in the meanwhile, in consideration of her being the daughter of Sir White Beconsaw, a member of an ancient and honourable family related to several of the nobility, and on the petition of her friends and neighbours, the Countess of 5.\ § ^ * ^ .1 ^ Translation of Preceding Page. Southampton, to wzV; -Hitherto the Autumpnal Circuit, in the first year of King James II., 1685. Pleads not guilty — v. guilty — no goods, &c. Clergy : Asks for the book, Felony JOHN GUBBINS— Stealing 30s. in money 2 steel tobacco boxes, value Is. ; 5 iron keys, val. 6d. ; the goods of William Harrison. Pleads not guilty — v. guilty of stealing goods of value of 8s. 8d. reads, and is burnt. Is burnt with Felony MARIA STEPHENS.— Stealing 5 gold rings, letter T -^ value ;^4, the goods of Robert Griffen. Pleads not guilty — ■y. guilty — no goods, &c. Clergy : Asks for the book, Felony Richard Brody.— Stealing a wether reads, and is burnt. sheep, price los., the property of Edward Pr^att. Pleads not guilty — v. guilty — no goods, &c. To be drawn to High Alicia Lisle. — Treason in receiving, the stake and Treason „:j- . ,. , burned by fire ^'^'"S' ^ssistmg, and till she is dead., ' comforting John Hicks, I being a rebel against the King. A woman was not allowed benefit of Clergy, but she was sometimes, on a first offence, branded on the left thumb with a T (meaning Thief) and discharged. Monmouth's Rebellion. 381 Abergavenny and Lady St. Jolin, wto spoke of her loyalty and moderation in the highest terms, her sentence was altered by King James from burning to beheading/ On "Wednesday, September 3rd, this unhappy lady accord- ingly suffered death in Winchester, praying for the king that he might long reign in peace " and the true religion flourish binder him." Barbarous as the sentence was, in this respect at all events, the judges were not to blame, for the law which they then administered precluded them from passing any other sentence in the case of a woman convicted of high treason. From Winchester the judges, on August 28th, after sentencing the various prisoners, went to Salisbury, where six persons were convicted of speaking seditious words and fined xiiis. iiijrZ. each. But Wiltshire had shown no sympathy with Monmouth, and New Sarum in particular was profuse in its loyalty to King James, so that there were no trials for high treason in the county of Wilts. But Hickes and fifteen other rebels in Sailsbury gaol were sent for trial at Wells. From Salisbury they went, on September 3rd, to Dorchester, where three hundred and twenty prisoners were indicted for levying war against the king. Of these persons thirty-four pleaded not guilty, and of these twenty-nine were found guilty and five were acquitted. After which, either through the threats of Jeffreys or by reason of their cases being hopeless, two hundred and eighty-five pleaded guilty. Of the latter, fifty- seven were left for execution ; of the former, one Matthew Bragg, a local attorney-at-law, as to whose guilt there seems to have been considerable doubt, was alone left for death. Seventeen persons were tried for ' She stated in the course of her defence that one of her sons had heen in the royal army " during this business. " 382 Side-lights on the Stuarts. uttering seditious words, four of them were acquitted, and the remaining thirteen, amongst whom were two women, were fined 13s. 4d., 5 marks, and lOOOZ. respec- tively, and sentenced to be whipped. Amongst those convicted of seditious language was one Thomas Tutchin, who, under the alias of Pitts, pleaded guilty to an indictment for misdemeanour in spreading the false news that Hampshire was up in arms for the duke ; that he (Pitts) had seen both horse and foot soldiers on the hills near Christchurch, and that Argyle, in great strength, was on his march and within sixty miles of London. So far as seditious language could go towards raising the standard of rebellion and encouraging an ignorant peasantry to withstand the royal troops, probably nothing could have been worse ; and without the belief thus wickedly instilled into the minds of the people of Somerset and Dorset, they would never have been induced to fight the battle of Sedge- moor. A sound and condign punishment was therefore due to Mr. Tutchin, who was a man of education and a writer for the press ; but Lord Macaulay and Mr. Wool- rych, in commenting on the sentence assumed to have been given, pursue the coiirse too often • adopted, of criticizing the punishment without regarding the offence. Nothing could have been more mischievous than the deluding of this ragged host of West-country hinds by the promulgation of news which this gentleman of the press must have known to be untrue, for he confessed to having said that he saw troops at Christchurch when there was not a rebel soldier to be found in the whole county of Hants ; and the report of Argyle being within a day's march of London was entirely without founda- tion. I believe that Tutchin received little more than his deserts, and that the account of his sentence is in many respects inaccurate. Lord Macaulay and others Monmouth's Rebellion. 383 concur in saying that lie was sentenced to " imprison- ment for seven years, and once a year to be whipped through all the market-towns in Dorsetshire; to be fined 100 marts, and to find security for his good behaviour during life." The record of his conviction shows that he pleaded guilty to the words set out, that he was sentenced to be fined 5 marks, to be whipped, to be imprisoned for seven years, and to enter into recognizances for good behaviour during life. Woolrych says that Tutchin, under the name of Pitts, was tried for high treason at Taunton, and was acquitted for want of evidence, and that aflerwards Jeffreys, having found out his true name, declared that he had been outreached, and consequently passed the sentence referred to. In truth he pleaded guilty to the seditious words at Dor- chester during the first week in September, and was then and there sentenced, the judges not having in fact reached Taunton till September 17th. The whipping through every market-town in the county does not ap- pear in his recorded sentence, nor in the Treasury Book referred to by Macaulay, where Thomas Pitts is bracketed with five others convicted of seditious language, and, like them, ordered to pay five (not 100) marks, and to be whipped. But the account of Tutchin's trial and martyrdom was, I have little doubt, written by Tutchin himself, and it does not, under these circumstances, bear the necessary impress of authentic history.^ It is, however, remarkable that one William Wiseman, who was convicted at Dorchester of a scandalous and seditious libel about the same time as Tutchin, was fined lOOZ. and was ordered to be whipped "at every market- town in the said county;" a sentence which is duly recorded in the Treasury Book, and which Tutchin in ^ The editor of the " Bloody Assizes '' says the account was written by a gentl eman in Dorchester gaol, who saw most of what took place. 384 Side-lights on the Stuarts. his story appears to have adopted as his own. Whatever may have been the extent of whipping to which Tutchin was sentenced, he did not undergo any strokes of the cat, for an attack of small-pox relieved him in the first instance, and he was discharged from prison by Chief Justice Herbert on March 11th, 1685-6, on paying to the king his fine of five marks ; an amount which has been, with some exaggeration, described as a bribe which reduced him to beggary. He was not in any respect an estimable character, for he appears to have treated himself to the somewhat mean and spiteful gratification of an interview and a glass of wine with Jeffreys in the Tower after the flight of James II. In 1703 he was convicted, and pilloried for seditious writings, and he died in 1707 from the efiPects of a beating that he received from a gentleman whom he had slandered in his paper. From Dorchester the judges went on the 12th of Sep- tember to Exeter, where twenty-five persons were tried for levying war against the king, and two, Thomas Hobbes and Lewis James, for high treason in proclaim- ing James Scott, the late Duke of Monmouth, king. Of these latter both were convicted, but Hobbes was alone left for execution. Of the twenty-five indicted for high treason, two only, viz., John Foweracres and Robert Drower, stood their trial. They were both convicted and left for execution, but Robert Drower was afterwards reprieved. Twenty-three pleaded guilty to the charge of levying war against the king, but none of them, accord- ing to the book, were left for execution. Three were indicted for allowing prisoners to escape. Of these one was convicted and two were acquitted. Twelve others were convicted of speaking seditious words, but (except one who was fined bl.) their sentences do not appear. Monmouth's Rebellion. 385 From Exeter thejudges, on the 17th of September, went to Taunton, where four men, Simon Eamblyn, William Gatchell, William Cooper and Joseph Cooper, having put themselves on the country, were tried, convicted and left for execution for levying war against the king ; after which five hundred and nine others pleaded guilty to a similar charge. Joseph Cooper appears, however, to have been reprieved for a time, and it is doubtful if he was executed. The prisoners who pleaded guilty were mostly put up in batches of twenty, and after pleading guilty were recommitted to their prisons. The session being heavy and there being numerous other cases to try, the court was adjourned to the 22nd of September, at Wells, where five hundred and twenty-seven prisoners were charged with high treason in levying war against the king. Of these, three pleaded not guilty, of whom two were acquitted and one was convicted; and five hundred and twenty-four pleaded guilty. Six others pleaded guilty to uttering seditious words, and one, Robert Thatcher, pleaded guilty of harbouring John Bovett, a rebel against the king. Of those convicted at Wells I do not find from the Calendar that any one was left by the judges for execution, and T find that at the end of the list seven convicts had certificates of pardon allowed. The Cornish men, equally with those of Wilts, had no part in the Rebellion, and for the only time in the recol- lection of the generation no assizes were held in and for the county of Cornwall, in the summer of 168-5. Bristol, which had an assize of its own, was reached towards the end of September, and there six persons were convicted of high treason and three were actually executed. Woolrych, in his " Life of Jefireys," sets out at length a warrant^ from the sheriff of the county of Somer- 9 p 220. V c 586 Side-lights on the Stuarts. set, dated the 16th of November, 1686, to the Mayor of Bath, directing him to provide sufficient materials for the execution on the following Wednesday of four traitors within the said city. These were probably the convicts of Bristol. This concluded the business of the assize, the result of which (excluding Bristol) appears from the gaol-book to have been as follows : — Indictments por High Tkeason. Seditious I jANGTTAGE. No. Guilty. Not guilty. Executed. Guilty. Not guilty. Winchester Salisbury Dorchester Exeter . Taunton . Wells . 1 320 27 513 527 1 315 27 613 625 '5 '2 1 58 2 i 13 12 "e '4 Total 1388 1381 7 65 37 4. Within a month, therefore, of their starting from London the judges had ordered the executions of at least sixty-five persons to be carried out with all the sickening barbarities of the law of treason. This was assuredly a very serious and bloody calendar, but it by no means comes up to the mark of the picturesque and thrilling accountgiven by LordMacaulayorby the little book called " The Bloody Assize," from which that historian has taken almost verbatim his account of this period. " The Bloody Assize" mixes up trials in London, Edinburgh, and elsewhere, with the trials of the Western Circuit, and refers to individual cases in different accounts, so that a careless reader would imagine an almost endless series of executions. It was published in the reign of William and Mary, and is dedicated to the memories of the various Protestant and Nonconformist leaders who perished after the Restoration and mainly during the reign of James II. Monmouth's Rebellion. 387 It contains a great number of their letters to their friends and their speeches to the cro-wd, and, except when dealing with individual cases, its statements must be taken with caution. The author puts the total of those who suffered at the Bloody Assizes during the whole of this period at two hundred and fifteen, including, I think, many killed by Colonel Kirke during his reign of martial law.^ The universal practice at that time, continued, I believe, to the present day, was for the clerk of assize sitting under the judge to record against the name of each prisoner the term of his sentence, and to put a star against the names of those left by the judge for execu- tion. The books of this assize will be found to have been carefully kept with regard to this, and I see no reason whatever to doubt their accuracy. The number of death sentences at this assize was, however, increased by those for crimes other than that of high treason. The assizes were unusually heavy in general criminal business, and there were many capital cases in addition to those of levying war against the king, and consequently the public may not have too clearly discriminated between the various offences, but have not unnaturally ascribed all the deaths to the same cause. Thus at Winchester nine persons were left for execution for housebreaking, high- way robbery, and other offences. At Salisbury and at Dorchester there were no persons except those convicted of treason left for death, but many were sentenced to whippings and brandings for theft. At Exeter seven persons were left for execution for various offences, and at Wells sixteen persons were left for death for murders, highway robberies, and cattle and horse stealing, making a total of thirty-two executions and numerous public ' Macaulay says 320 were executed by Jeffreys' order : "Woolrych makes the number about 400 : Burnet says 600 : other writers say 700. C C 2 388 Side-lights on the Stuarts. wliippings in addition to those already referred to. The details of an execution for high treason were long, tedious and revolting. The culprit was ofter taken a consider- able distance from his prison to the place of execution, a journey involving numerous stoppages, and he in- variably made a somewhat lengthy speech to the assembled crowd. Even in Loudon, with all the acces- sories ready to hand, the execution of four persons on the same day was found almost impossible, and the number seldom exceeded two. One can therefore well conceive that even ninety-six executions taking place about the same time in the various small towns of two counties, would create an impression in the minds of the people, naturally prone to exaggerate horrors, which might easily be mistaken for many hundreds. If they saw a man swinging from a gallows by the roadside, they could hardly discriminate whether he was convicted of theft or of high treason, nor was it perhaps very easy to say which were the victims of Kirke and his drum- head court-martial, and which of the Chief Justice and the judges of assize. It is probable also that many were accounted by their friends and relations as slain who were actually at the very time on their road to some distant plantation. Considering also that these ninety-six deaths would at the lowest computation have put two hundred families in mourning, the state and condition of these western counties can well be conceived. It will, however, be remarked that except for three persons at Taunton there are in the gaol-book no pri- soners left for execution in the county of Somerset. With a view to test the accuracy of this, I have exa- mined a curious record referred to by Lord Macaulay, and now to be found in the Record Oflfice-^ After Jeffreys' return from the west a warrant, dated Monmouth's Rebellion. 389 November 12tli, 1685, was issued by the Treasury to certain commissioners, "to enquire after tlie estates of the Traytors lately convicted of High Treason " in the several counties of Southton, Wilts, Dorset, Somerset and Devon, and indorsed on the warrant is "An account of the proceedings against the Rebells and other prisoners by virtue of the Commission of Oyer and Terminer, and General Gaol Delivery issued to Lord Jeffreys and other Judges on July 8th, 1685." This account gives a return of prisoners already executed, of those remaining to be executed, of those handed over to various persons to be transported (in other words to be sold into slavery in the plantations), of those punished by fines, &c., for misdemeanours, and of those to be pardoned or other- wise released. According to this statement, seventy- four persons had been executed for high treason in Dorset, and eleven had been executed in Devon — numbers considerably in excess of those vouched by the Assize Book. All others were "to be dealt with " after Novem- ber, 1685 — the judges having returned at the end o-f September. The remainder of the statement works out as follows : — At Taunton, one hundred and thirty-nine prisoners were "to be executed," and there would have been fifteen more, but they were accidentally omitted in the warrant for execution. At Wells, ninety-six were " to be executed," and here, again, it is said that five persons were accidentally omitted from the list. This, with those already executed, would bring the total up to three hundred and twenty, which, however, is more than a hundred in excess, even of the number given in the " Sloody Assize." I conceive, however, that the fact of no sentences being recorded in the county of Somerset, and so few in the county of Devon arose from the king's own intervention, who, as stated 390 Side-lights on the Stuarts. by Dalrymple, sent down to Jeffreys, after the warning of the Lord Keeper, to slacken the proceedings till further order. This matter is thoroughly discussed in " Bur- net's History of James II., published in 1852,^ with notes by Lord Dartmouth, Speaker Onslow, and Dean Swift. Macaulay rejects the suggestion of the Lord Keeper's warning and the king's intervention, on the ground that the former had died before the judges had got to business. In this connection, therefore, dates are all important. The trial of Alice Lisle was on August 25th, the trials at Salisbury were on August 28th, and those at Dorchester on September 3rd and following days. The Lord Keeper, who is said to have risen from his death-bed to warn the king, died, according to Lord Campbell,^ on September 5th. There were thus eleven days from the trial of Alice Lisle, during which the Keeper's warning might have been given. The date of Lord Guildford's death, however, is not given by his brother, who tells the story, and it may, therefore, well be that Lord Campbell is not strictly accurate, and that Lord Gruildford did actually die on some day between September 3rd and the day when Jeffreys and the other judges returned to London. It also appears from the Gaol Books, and the entry is consistent with the Treasury Minute, that after September 5th, assuming that to have been the date of the Lord Keeper's death, until the final settlement of the list in London, only five persons were executed, viz. two at Exeter and three at Taunton. Unless, therefore, Guildford's warning had induced the interposition of the king, it is diflBcult to account for the fact that nearly '' Page 72. ' " Lives of the Chancellors," vol. iii. p. -190. From a recital in Jeffreys' appoiiitmont. Monmouth's Rebellion. 391 one thousand persons were left in gaol for two months after their conviction for high treason without any sentence being formally recorded against them. It is also consistent with the theory of the king's uneasi- ness at Jeffreys' proceedings, that the subject of these trials should have been almost ignored in the London press. I find in the London Gazette, then under strict censorship, pubUshed on September 7th, 1685, four days after the opening of the Commission at Dorchester, that " Alice Lisle was convicted at the Sessions of Oyer and Terminer and Gaol Delivery at Winchester, for harbouring John Hickes, a rebel, and received sentence accordingly, and to-day (September 3rd) she was executed." Beyond this short paragraph no reference whatever is made in the press to any of the cases dis- posed of at this Assize. The final settlement of the fatal list was, I conclude, left to the king and his advisers, including the Chief Justice, who, among his other appointments, included that of a Cabinet minister. There were, therefore, many persons high in ofi&ce, in addition to Jeffreys and the king, to whom the responsibility of the later sentences must rightfully attach, but who have con- trived, at the expense of others, to relieve them- selves of the odium of the transaction. It is also abundantly clear that many and pressing demands were made upon the Court for gifts of these unhappy persons to the nominees of the crown, who anticipated making considerable sums out of the profits of their trans- portation. According to the list as indorsed on this warrant, no less than eight hundred and forty-three victims had been given to these various applicants, and I doubt not that many, if not most of those marked " to be executed " were similarly dealt with, being given 392 Side-lights on the Stuarts. over by tlie crown for purposes of ransoms. The net value of a prisoner for transportation was said to range from 101. to 151., and in individual cases large sums were reported to have been obtained as ransom. The persons named as receiving prisoners to be delivered to their orders to be transported were as follows : — the Queen had ninety-eight, worth from lOOOZ. to 1500Z., delivered to her order, from the prisoners at Taunton, exclusive of the children who had presented flowers and flags to Monmouth, and who were given for purposes of ransom to her maids of honour ;* Jerome Niplio had one hundred and one ; Sir William Booth had one hundred and ninety-five ; Sir Christopher Musgrave had one hundred ; Sir William Stapleton had one hundred and three ; Sir William Howard had two hundred and five ; and Captain Price had fifty. Among the lists are also various notes to the effect that as certain prisoners had obtained pardons, an equal number, taken from some other gaol, were to be given to the applicant to make up his quota. For instance, among those given to Sir William Howard were Thomas Andersey and Richard Hoare, but these persons having been reprieved, it was ordered, "Instead of Thomas Andersey and Richard Hoare, he is to have out of Exeter Gaol, Robert Drower and Elias Holmes," then lying under sentence of death. The number, therefore, of executions and of persons who were ultimately transported, cannot be ascertained with any precision, but I believe, for the reasons already given, that the number of three hundred and twenty, suggestea by Lord Macaulay and Mr. Woolrych, or even two hundred and fifteen, as given in the Bloody Assize, is very much in excess of the truth, which I should be disposed to put * The ransom of the children was valued at 7600/., but tlio maids of honour only got 2000/. Monmouth's Rebellion. 393 at about one Inandred and fifty, or ten per cent, upon the numbers taken. At the following Spring Assizes at Winchester, on March 3rd, 1685-6, John Reeves was convicted of saying, " The Devil take the king," and was ordered to be whipped and pilloried at Stockbridge. At Dorchester, on March 11th, James Lawes was tried for high treason and ac- quitted, and at the same time and place, Anna Strode was tried and acquitted of " entertaining Joseph Kelway, a rebel convicted, knowing him to be so." Four men were also acquitted of speaking seditious words, and one being convicted was sentenced to be put in the pillory at Mel- combe. The following entry appears as to Tutchin : "Thomas Pitsals Tutchin rem'^ quousque solv domino regi 5 marks." Thirty rebels were pardoned, and three ordered for transportation. At Exeter, on March 23rd, eighty- seven rebels were pardoned, and one Henry Parsons held to bail ; and at Taunton, on March 30th, one hundred and thirty-two rebels were pardoned. At the Summer Assizes at Exeter, on August 2nd, 1686, Thomas Salter was acquitted of high treason in being a captain in Monmouth's army. Robert Hatch- well was convicted of uttering seditious words, and sentenced to be whipped; and George Godfrey was acquitted of saying, " The king is a popish tyrant, and they are all rogues that serve him." At Taunton, on August 9th, three persons were sentenced to be pilloried and whipped for seditious words. At Salisbury, Maria Hayne was ordered to be put in the pillory for seditious language ; and at Dorchester, on March 2nd of the fol- lowing year, Robert Eyres and John Langford were ordered to be pilloried for an hour, and to pay 20s. for cutting down rebels' quarters. On the following March 21st, at Wells, Reginald 394 Side-lights on the Stuarts. Tucker and Thomas Place were convicted of high treason, and left for execution on April 15th following. This was the last sentence on the rebels in the west, so that the month of March, 1686-7, saw the last expiring flicker of the Bloody Assize. The cruelties of this legal campaign seriously and immediately impeached the popularity and prestige of the king, and contributed to his downfall. Reasonable people at Court protested, the Lord Keeper rose from his bed of death to warn the king of the results of his severities, the country gentlemen on the grand juries, though bound by their oaths to find true bills against rebels taken in arms, left the court with pain and sorrow on learning the fate of so many of their poorer neigh- bours, and one gentleman, of greater courage than the rest,^ refused to meet the Lord Chief Justice at the sheriffs' dinner, and was consequently put to the indignity of having a rebel executed at the gates of his park. When the end of his reign approached, the king felt that this assize was one of the heaviest records against him, and he accordingly made it one of his chief subjects of justification. And as has happened many times before and since, when a crime has been in process of investiga- tion, the two confederates, for as such the king and his Cbief Justice must undoubtedly be regarded, endeavoured each to clear his character by denouncing the other. Jeffreys declared in the Tower that however severe he had been in the west, his conduct fell short of what was required of him by the Court, who " snubbed at him" on his return for his want of vigour, and he told the Jti'V. Dr. Scott, who attended at his death-bed, that what he did was by express orders, and that he was not half bloody enough for him who sent him.'' James and ' Loiil St/awell, of Cotheleslun. AVuclrycli, p. 219. » Wuolrych, p. 2'r2. Monmouth's Rebellion. 395 his friends, on the other hand, declared that the king was ever bent on roercy. They pointed to the paucity of executions after Jeffreys returned to London, and alleged that the latter acted on the bent of his own inclinations, and contrary to the orders that he received from the king. So far as the Chief Justice is concerned, no pity need be shown to a man who, having in his own discretion the exercise of the royal prerogative, used it for the purpose of drying up the fountain of mercy instead of pouring its beneficent stream upon the guilty in his hands. James is also, in my opinion, equally con- victed of unmerciful and of wanton cruelty. Burnet, who gives as his authority the Dutch Ambassador in London,^ says that James had the accounts of Jeffreys' proceedings in the west sent to him day by day, and we know by the Treasury minute above referred to that as late as Novem- ber, 1685, two months after the judges had returned to London, there were still languishing in the gaols of Somer- set no less than two hundred and thirty-five prisoners under nominal sentence of death, but whose fate would thenceforward rest entirely on the head of the king and his personal advisers. Whatever excuse may be made for the king before the Dorchester assize, none can be found for him after the intervention of the Lord Keeper early in September, and after the return of Jeffreys, leaving over one thousand convicted prisoners still incarcerated in the west. Let the king be judged in this respect by his conduct to his own household, when he gave to his queen, the loyal partner of his throne and of his affections, no less than ninety-eight miserable convicts, in order that she might, by pressure upon them or by exactions from their friends, obtain an extortionate ransom .for their liberties and their lives. Of these ninety-eight victims of the rebellion, history does not record that in any one ' Liiniet, p. HG. 39^ Side-lights on the Stuarts. single instance the queen, or tbe king at her intercession, granted either a gracious pardon or a moment's allevia- tion of the rigour of their sentence. As James left the country, the last of the sacred monarchs, his daughter Mary took up her residence at Whitehall, the first of the constitutional sove- reigns, and closed the records of a dynasty which had signalized its three generations by bringing upon a people naturally peaceful and law-abiding the unparal- leled horrors of a civil war, and by introducing into every hamlet and every family in the country the elements of discord and disunion. It was remarked at the time that on the very first night after Queen Mary's arrival in London, while her father's fate was even yet uncertain, she sat down with her friends and her courtiers to the card-tables at the palace. And thus the social light of the Stuart dynasty went out as it had come in. The Stuart of 1603 introduced himself to English society at the green table of Whitehall, and the Stuart of 1688 opened her reign also with cards and dice, to the openly expressed disgust of many of her subjects, who thought that the sorrows of a parent might well have softened the heart of a child, even though she was called to the throne that her parent had been forced to resign. The great seal of England had been thrown into the mud of the Thames — no unfit receptacle for an instrument that had impressed its die upon so many outrageous acts. Jeffreys had died in the Tower, his writ of habeas corpus having been wantonly refused him, and the king by his unlucky reticence towards his daughters had succeeded in branding his undoubtedly legitimate heir with the charac- Monmouth's Rebellion. 397 ter of a cliarigeling, imposed upon the nation througli the ridiculous medium of a copper warming-pan in the hands of a Catholic priest. During his enforced seclusion in France, James after the fashion of other monarchs retired from business, gave himself up to a life of piety, and wrote a history of his own times. The consideration of the later years of his life, and of his personal justification as con- tained in his memoirs, shows him to have been a man of ill-directed mind, though of good intentions, who loved his country, and who might, under other auspices, have been an estimable monarch. Burnet speaks of him as having had great application to business, though without a right understanding, and says, " If he had not come after King Charles II. he would have passed for a prince of a sweet temper and easy of access."® But he had imbibed all the worst instincts and the kingcraft of the old king his father, with not a little of his bad luck, and it is a day ever to be remembered with satisfaction when he left the shores of Great Britain, never to return. Treachery, tyranny, and kingcraft have met with their retribution. The Stuarts, and their friends and pro- tectors the Bourbons, have ceased to exist as reigning families in Europe. If there had been a Stuart worthy of his name and capable of striking a blow for the throne, there were many occasions at the beginning of the eighteenth century when the blow might have been struck with success. But no such Stuart was to be found, and the last of the race not long since passed away. No Bourbon now occupies a throne, but there is hardly a capital in Europe where one at least of that family is not to be found, an exile from his own country and a pensioner on the hospitality of others. « P. 919. 598 Side-lights on the Stuarts. APPENDIX. Extracted from the Gaol Book of the Western Circuit for the Aijtumpnal Assizes, 1685, and the Hiernal and Autumpnal Assizes, 1686, giving the names, the pleas, and the sentences of all the Prisoners charged WITH High Treason and with seditious language during Monmouth's Rebellion. Southton S. S.— Delibaoo Goale Dni Rg. Com Pd de Prisonibus in ea existen apnd cas- tram "Winton in et pro eod Com Die Martis Vicesimo quinto die Augast, Anno regni Dni nri Jaoobi Secundi Dei grao Anglie Sootie Francis et Hibne Eegis fidei defensoris etc. Primo Annoqne Dni 1685. Cora Georgio Dno JeflFerya, Capital Justic dem Dni Eegis coram ipo Eege tenend assign™ Willo Montagu Capital Baron Sooy De™ dni Eegia Creswell Levinz mil Uno JuBtio de™ dni Eg de Banco Franoiaons "Wythens mil Uno Justic de™ dni Keg ad Plitis cora ipo Eege tenend assign Et Eobto Wright mil uno Baron Secy de™ dni Eg Justic, etc. Higli Treason, ad Furca et cremetur quousque mor tua sit. Trahetur igne cou- Po. se 1 oul.' ca. nnll.^ * Alicia Lisle. Treason in receiving, ayding, assisting, and comforting Johem Hicka, being a Eebell ag' the King. Wiltes S. S. — Delibaco Goale Dni Eegis Com Pd. de Prison in ca existen apnd Nova Sarum in et pro eod Com Die veneris vicesimo octavo die August Anno Regni Dni Jacobi Secundi Dei grao Anglie Scotie Francie et Hibnie Eegia fidei defensoris, etc. Primo Annoque Dni 1685, Coram pfat Justic, etc. Transgr.* Transgr. Transgr. Transgr. Po. se cul. Eicns White. Po. ae cul. Willus Ingram. Po. se cul. Fin. xiijs. iiij'/.*' Stephus Moore. Po. se cuL Fin. xiijs. iiijd. Johes Palmer. Speaking seditious words. Speaking seditious vrorda. Speaking seditious words (viz') That he would not goe to Church untill the Duke of Monmouth was king. Speaking seditious words (viz') I heare Monmouth is dead, but I hope he is not, for I wish him as well as my owne heart's blood. * The star » against a name indicates that such prisoner was left for execution. ' Po. se =: ponit se, puts herself on the country, i.e. pleads not guilty. The common form was : — Glerh of Arraigns. — How say you, prisoner, are you guilty or not guilty ? Prisoner. — Not guilty. Cleric of Arraigns. — How will you be tried ? Prisoner. — By God and my country. '■' Cul. — culpabilia, i.e. guilty, so found by tho jury. 3 Ca. null. = catella nulla, i.e. no chattels. The common form was : — Olerk of Arraigns. — How say you, gentlemen, is the prisoner guilty or not guilty ? Foreman of Jury. — Guilty. Cleric of Arraigns. — Any goods and chattels ? Foreman. — None that we know of [or as the case may be]. On conviction of treason or felony all the prisoner's goods and chattels were forfeited to the Crown. ■• Transgr.' = transgressio. Trespass or misdomeanonr. '■• Fined 13.9. 4d. Monmouth's Rebellion. 399 Transgr. Po. se onL Mauricius Morgan. Transgr. Po. se cnl. Beniamin Buckler. Speaking seditious words (viz') I am for Monmouth, and by God I will fight for Mm as long as I live. Speaking false newes (viz*) That Monmouth had fired Froome. and that they are oome- ing to fire Warminster. Dorset S. S.— Delibaco Goale Dni Rg Com Pde de Prison in ea existen apud Dorchester in et pro eod Com Die Jovis Tercio Die Septembris Anno Reg Dni nri Jacobi Secundi Dei grao Anglie Scotie Francie et Hibaie Regis fidei defensoris, etc. Primo Annoque Dni 1685. Cora Pfat Justio, etc. Po. Be cul. oa. null. • Po. se oul. Thomas England. Robtus White. Po. se oul. Po. se oul. Beniaminus Grey. Johes Woodward. Po. se cnl. Po. se cul. oa. null. Franoisous Puckett. Johes Foane als Ford. Po. se cul. Po. se cul. Willus Cumden. Willus Seiwood. Po.se oul. Po. se oul. Johes Look. Thomas Shingler. Po. se cuL Po. se cul. High Thomas Smith. Phus Levermore. Treason. Po. se cul. Levying Po. se cul. Levying Johes Gardiner. warr Matheus Elliott. 1 warr Po. se cul. against Po. se oul. against- Willns Lush. the king. Robtus Penney. the king. Po. se cul. Po. se oul. Henrious Ford. Johes James. Po. se cul. Po. se cul. Johes Game. Johes Wills. Po. se cuL Po. se cul. Josephus Speede. Barthus Barge. Po. se cul. Po. se oul. Georgius Seward. Thomas Welch. Po. se cuL Po. se non cul.^ neo rec.^ Johes Sterriok. Willus Saunders. Po. se ouL Po. se oul. Samuell PauU. Edus Wale. " Non cuL = non culpabilis. Not guilty. '' Nee rec. = nee recessit, nor did he fly from the charge. There has been much discussion as to the meaning of the entry non cul. nee rec, and it is asserted by anno- tators of industry and experience that the meaning to be attached to it is that the jury found the prisoner guilty, nor did they (the jury) withdraw from their finding. There is, I believe, no ground for this interpretation, which has, I imagine, arisen from some misunderstanding of the law. The common form is to be found as early as the trial of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, temp. 1 Mary (a.d. 1554) in State Trials, vol. i. p. 899, as follows : — Sendall [Clerk of the Crown]. — Nicholas Throckmorton, Knight, hold up thy hand (which be did). You of the jury look upon the prisoner. (The jury did as they were enjoined.) Sendall, — How say yon, is the prisoner at the bar guilty of the treasons whereof he hath been indicted and arraigned in manner and form, yea or no ? Whetston [Foreman of the jury] — No. Sendall. — How say you, did he fly upon them ? Whetston. — We find no such thing. Other instances are to be found at later dates ; and on the trial of John Wilkes, 10 Geo. 400 Side-lights on the Stuarts. Po. se cul. Cogn. Samuel Hillard. Josephus Strong. Tr.efcss., Po. ee oul. Cert. Cogn. etc.^ Matheus Bragg. all.^ Rious Danver. Po. Be non cul. neo reo. Cogn. Willus Hodder. Sile.' Johes Butcher. Po. se non oal. nee reo. Cogn. Robtns Butson. Beuiaminus Crew. High Po. se non. oul. neo reo. * Tr. et Cogn. Treason. Samuel Johns. ss., etc. Henrious Watts. High Po. se non. oul. nee reo. Cohn. Treason. Johes Johns. Thomas Gamidge. Pdona- Po. se oul. Cogn. tus.' Thomas Lgwrenoe. Stephus Cooke. X Cogn.i Cogn. Abrahamus Holmes, Thomas Bennett. Cogn. High Cogn. Johes Marders. Treason. Johes Fisher. Cogn. Levying Cogn. Levying Josias Ascwe. warr Johes Manning. warr * Tr. et Cogn. ' against Cogn. > against ss., etc. Sampso Larke. the Robtus Lumbard. the ( Cogn. king. Cogn. king. Willus Huling. Willus Wadford. Cogn. Cogn. Christopherus Bettis- Rious Keech. oombe. Cogn. High Cogn. Georgius Pliimley. Treason. Leonardus Jackson. Cogn. Cogn. Thomas Allen. Samuel Glisson. Cogn. Cogn. Johes Reason. Johes Smith. Cogu. Cogn. Johes Spearinge. ,Johe8 Jowes. 1 Cogn. * Tr et^ Joies Hayes. ^^-'^^"-^ Johes Kidd.^"' Cogn. Cogu. Matheus Porter. Cogn. * Tr et j ■'^"^'^^^ -'^^11- «^''«t<=-WohesBu?L^°' Edrdus Lather. Cogn. Cogn. Robtus Spurway. Johes Downe. y III. (A.D. 1770), reported in the State Trials, vol. xix. p. 1098' Lord Mansfield, in the course of his judgment, gives this exposition of the law at that date. " Flight in criminal oases is itself a crime. If an innocent man flies for treason or felony he forfeits all hia goods and chattels." It was therefore necessary in the interests of the prisoner that in the case of an acquittal for treason of felony he should have a verdict also acquitting him of having fled, and thus be relieved from the vexation of a further prosecution on behalf of the Treasury. Under the Commonwealth, when the proceed- ings were in English, the formula was " not guiltie, &o., and no flienge," " not guiltie, &c , did not flie." [See Middlesex Records, vol iii. pp. 209 and 216.] * Tr. et ss. &o. = Trahetur et suspendatur, &o. "Let him be drawn to the place of execution and there be hanged," &c., with all the details of a sentence for high treason. This prisoner was executed at Dorchester. The clerk appears, in this instance, to have omitted the star, though he inserted the order of the Court. ' Pardoned. ' Cogn. : Cognovit, i.e. confessed the charge, otherwise pleaded guilty. " Cert. all. : certificate of pardon allowed. -' Sile. : similiter, the like. Monmouth's Rebellion. 401 Cogn. ~ Cogn. Johes Sprake. Matheus Hutohins. Cogn. C^ogn. Johes Edwards. Ricua, Smith. Cogn. Cogn. Nathaniel Swaffield. Mallachias Mallack. Cogn. Cogn. Johes Hardiman. Azaria Penney. * Tr. et Cogn. Cogn. ss., etc. Beniaminus Sandford. Cogn. Johes Munfee. Cogn. Bernardus Bryant. Cogu. Reginaldus Clotworthy. Cogn. Johes Lee. Cogn. Willus Quinten. Johes Glover. Cogn. Emanuel Collins. Cogn. Johes Bovett. Cogn. Rogerus Hobbs. Cogn. Johes Gay. Cogn. Johes Trottle. • Tr. et 1 Cogn. * Tr. et Cogn. ss., etc. Thomas Clapp. Cogn. -Thomas Cook. Cogn. Johes White. S8.,eto. Tristramus Elliott. Cogn. Josephus Hallett. Cogn. Nathaniel Webber. " Tr. et Cogn. Cogn. 88., etc. Georgius CoUyer. Edwardus Moreton. Cogn. Levying * Tr. et Cogn. Levying Jacobus Pomeroy. warr ss.,etc. Robtus Slatie. warr Cogn. against Cogn. V against Robtus Shale. the Jacobus Salter. the Cogn. king. Cogn. kinge. Thomas Hoare. Willus Loveridge. Cogn. Cogn. Abell Pinnell. Ambrosius Ashford. Cogn. Cogn. Petrus Rowe. Rogerus French. Cogn. Cogn. Johes Leveridge. Josephus Phelpes. Pardo- Cogn. Cogn. natus. Robtus Fawne. Ricus Warren. * Tr. et Cogn. Cogn. ss., etc. Johes Beamont, sen. Cogu. Johes Beamont, jun. Cogn. Elias Stephens. Cogn. Daniel Parker. Cogn. Johes Bridle. Cogn. Thomas Parsons. Robtus Sandy. Cogn. Willus Wills. Cogn. Johes Pry or. Cogn. Willus Tucker. *Tr.et Cogn. ss., etc. Willus Lancaster. Cogn. Willus Browne. • Tr. et Cogn. Cogn. ss., etc. Thomas Porte. Cogn. Rious Palmer. Samuel Lawrence. Cogn. Johes Hutchins. • Tr. et Cogn. Cogn. ss., etc. Johes Beavis. Cogn. Zaohariaa Drower. Cogn. Willus Clarke. Thomas Williams. _, D d 404 SiDE-UGHTS ON THE StUARTS. Cogn. Johes Hippesly. Cogn. Johes Hitchootte. Cogn. Humfrus Phelpes. Cogn. Thomas Foroey. Cogn. "Willns Giles. Cogn. JosephuB Gage. Cogn. Thomas Berry. Cogn. Johes Mnnfee. Cogn. Willus Grove. Cogn. * Tr ei /Samuel Waldron. ss.,eto.\, , .pCogn. VJohes PuUmg. Cogn. Eobtua Mnllens. Cogn. Eogerus Bryant als Hooper. Cogn. * Tr. et AndreasEUisalsCossens ss., etc. Cogn. Carolus Broughton. Cogn. Ricng Parker. Cogn. Johes Hayne. Cogn. Josephua Bowditoh. Cogn. Johes Connett. Cogn. Bernardus Lowman. Cogn. * Tr. et Josias Restoriok. Cogn. Phillippus Cox. Cogn. Johes Heathfield. Cogn. Edrus Venn. Cogn. Rious Pyne. Cogn. Thomas Pester. Cogn. * Tr. et Willus Martyn. ss., etc. Cogn. Ricus Hoare. Cogn. ' Tr et/^^™"®-' ^'''^^^''^• ss.. etc. 1„.,, ^Cogn. * WiUuB Coze, sen. Levying warr against the king. ss., utc. Cogn. Willus Coze, jun. Cogn. Ricus Coxe. Cogn. Petrus Ticken. Cogn. Johes Welman. Cogn. Johes Samm. Cogn. Henrious Symes. Cogn. * Tr. et Johes Holloway. ss., etc. Cogn. Willus Deale. Cogn. '■' Tr. et Adamus Hawley. sa.,etc. Cogn. Willus Clarke. Cogn. Waltus Osborne. Cogn. Rious Hoare. Cogn. Willua Haynes. Cogn. Thomas Pranokly n . Cogn. Cert, all Johes Bowditoh. Cogn. Sile. Johes Barridge. Cogn. Sile. Willus Knight. Cogn. Sile. Jacobus Baker. Cogn. Cert. all. Samuel Stoodley. Cogn. Sile. Robtus Halston. Cogn. Sile. GeorgiuB Rickman. Cogn. Sile. Rious Burrage. Cogn. Sile. Jacobus Pitts. Cogn. Sile. Rious Hellier. Cogn. Sile. Willua Hardy. Cogn. Sile. Thomas Calway. Cogn. Sile. Willus White. Cogn. Sile. Samuel Coaaens. Cogn. Sile. Rious Bartlett. Cogn. Willus Guppy. Monmouth's Rebellion. Cert, all. Cert. all. Cogn. Johes Butcher, Cogn. Daniel Bntter. Cogn. Simo Long. Cogn. Cert. al!. Ricas Stone. Transgr. Transgr. Levying warr against the king. Cogn. Cert. all. Davidns Gardiner. Cogn. Sile. Willus Eoper. Cogn. Sile. Johes Roper. 405 Levying warr against the king. J Po se cnl. fin. 1 Edrus Jarvis. Po. se cul. fin. Willus Holm an. Transgr. Transgr. Pd. Transgr. Transgr. Transgr. Transgr. Transgr. Transgr. Transgr. Transgr. Transgr. Transgr. Transgr. Po. se non cul. Marcus Warman. Po. se cul. Willus Holnian. mercas = et flagiletur.* Seditious words. I am a Monmouth, and a Mon- mouth I will love. . mercas et fiagiletur. Seditious words. To-morrow morning I will goe to the Duke of Monmouth and be a Captaine, for I have a Captaine's place promised me. Seditious words. That the Duke of Yorke was not Crowned king, but the Duke of Monmouth. Pr. b. g. pr. termino vite.' False newes, viz. the Duke of Monmouth is not taken. Po. se oul. fin. v. mercas et fiagiletur. Henricus Allen. Seditious words. Art not thou madd to wear such things (Bandileers meaning) for the Duke of Monmouth has the best of it and shall have the best of it. Cogn. fin. V. mere, et fiagiletur pr. vii. annis.^ Thomas Pitts. Seditious words. Hampshire is npp in armes for the Duke of Monmouth. I saw both horse and foote souldiers on the liill neaie Chi-istohurch. Argile is much increased in stiength, and is on his marohe in England and within Ix. miles of London. Po. se cul. fin. v. mere, et ilagiletur. WilluB Wiseman. Publishing a scandolous libell. Po. se non oul. Johes Holmer. Speaking seditions words. Po. se cul. fin. v. mercas et fiagiletur. Eulalia Brown. Speaking seditious words. Po. se cul. fin. v. mercas et fiagiletur. Johes Dober. Speaking seditious words. Po se cnl. fin. v. mercas. Edrus Young. Speaking seditious words. Po. se non oul. Ambrosius Way. Seditious words. I am not for King James, but for the Duke of Monmouth. Po. se cul. fin m£ et pro b.b. pro b.g. pro tmno. vite.' Hugo Greene. Publishing Monmouth's Declaracon. Po. se oul. fin. v. mercas et pro b.b. pro b.g. pro uno anno.' Robtus Grosse. Speaking seditious words. Po. se cul. fin. xiijs. et iiijd. Susanna Doleman. Spreading false news. 5 To be fined five marks. * Plagiletur, to be whipped. ' To be fined five marks and whipped — imprisoned seven years. " Pro bono gestu pro termino vitse =: to enter into recognizances for good behaviour during life. ' To be fined lOOOi. and to give good bail for good behaviour during life. 1 The same for one year. 4o6 Side-lights on the Stuarts. Po. se non oul. Transgr. Johes SaunderB. For perswadeing John Crabbe to goe into the Duke of Monmouth's Armey. Po. se oul. fin. xiijs. efc iiijd. et flagiletur. Transgr. Eicus Moores. Publishing false newes. The king is dead and Monmouth not, and woulde come againe. Devon, ss. — Delibaoo Goals Dni Regis Com. pde. de Prison in ea existen apud Castrum Exon in et pro eod Com Die Satt Duodecimo die Septembris Anno Eegni Dni nri Jaoobi Seoundi Dei grao Anglie Scotie Francie et Hibnie Regis fidei defensoris, etc. Prime Annoque Dni 1685, Cora Pfat Justio, etc. *Tr. et ss., etc. High Treason. *Sile. Reprd.2 *Trahetm ss., etc., H. Tr. Po. se cul. ca. null. Johes Poweraores. Po. se oul. oa. null. Eobtus Drower. Po. se cul. ca. null. Thomas Hobbs. Cogn. Johes Oliver. Cogn. Henricus Knight. Cogn. Abrahamus Hunt. Cogn. Christofer Cooper Cogn. Bdus Bovett. Cogn. Samuel Potts. Cogn. Willus Seller, jun. Cogn. Johes Knowles. Cogn. Johes Pollett. r«. Cogn. Blias Holman. Cogn. Willus EajpBons. Levying warr ^ against the king. High Treason. Transgr. Transgr. Transgr. Transgr. Transgr. Transgr. Transgr.. Transgr. Cogn. Thomas Connet. Cogn. Willus Andridge. Po. se oul. -SBndovicus James. T V -"' Po. se oul. Willus Fisher. Po. Be cul. Willus Hadder. Po. se cul. Samnel Staple. Po. se oul. Stephus Burrough. Po. se cul. Willus Curtis. Po. se oul. Johes Holmes. Levying warr against the king. Proolameing James Soott, late Duke of Monmouth, king. Cogn. Thomas Quinton. Cogn. Thomas Broughton. Cogn. Petrus Bird. Cogn. Johes Kemplyn. ,Cogn. Johes Gosling. Cogn. Johes Sprake. Cogn. Willus Clegg. Cogn. Waltus Teape. Cogn. Jacobus Coxe. Cogn. Tymotheus Dunkin. Cogn. Johes Rosse. Levying warr against the king. Aydeing and assisting James Soott, etc. Assisting Roger Bryant to make his escape. Proolameing James Scott, late Duke of Monmouth. Speaking seditious words. Consile.' Consile. Consile. Consile. Speaking seditious words. Reprieved. He was afterwards transported. Consile = oonsimiliter, the like. ^ P^t inS^ /^^ t^ ir^^n^ :p: a^ 1 4?M ■ft ^P^ r^^'Ml^^'t 4 ^ U X 4?« iuai^ •^(Ji^oiK* ^piw <^w(» w '>-). against Edms Eves, the king. Cogn. ' against Cogn. the king Johes Fowler, sen. Thomas Debnam. Cogn. Cogn. Johes Fowler, jun. Thomas Hendy. Cogn. Cogn. Bious Stephens. Bgidius Crane. Cogn. Cogn. Bicus Perkins. Thomas Beeves. Cogn. Cogn. Johes Hooper. Walter Phillipps. Cogn. Cogn. Bobtus Haswell. Ricus Drake. Cogn. Cogn. Willus Farmer. Mathns Pottle. Cogn. Cogn. Johes Bissell. Osmond Barrett. Cogn. Cogn. Thomas Blaokmore. Georgius Robertson. Cof against Johes Kerls. the king. Cogn. Thomas Galhampton. Cogn. Johes Trott. Cogn. Roger Guppy. Cogn. Georgius Carrow. Cogn. Abrahamus Pollard. Cogn. Johes Bridge. Cogn. Willus Harvey. Cogn. Willus Hall. Cogn. Johes Knight. Cogn. Ezaia Davys. Cogn. Willus Phippen. Cogn. Johes Chilcott. Cogn. Willus Williams. Cogn. Robtus Coward. Cogn. Johes Oantlebury. Levying warr against the king. Monmouth's Rebellion. 413 Gogn. Cogn. ^ Johes Jervis. Simo Poole. Cogn. Cogn. WniusWoolridge. Hugo Roper. Cogn. Cogn. Georgiue Lumbard. Johes Wall. Cogn. Cogn. Thomas Lumbard. Johes Dutch. Cogn. Cogn. Thomas Summy. Ricus Wadham. Cogn. Cogn. Rious Sweete. Stephus Rodway. Cogn. Cogn. Bdrus Lyde. Prancus Carne. Cogn. Cogn. Josephus Irish. Rious Harris. Cogn. Cogn. JPrancus Deane. Ricus Stodgell. Cogn. Cogn. Johes Chappell. Willus Smith. Cogn.. Cogn. Rious Ash. Henr Hickwell. Cogn. Cogn. Robtus Easton. Johes Smith. Cogn. Cogn. Johes Walter. Humfrid Hitohcooke. Cogn. Cogn. Thomas Brock. Willus Meade. Cogn. Cogn. Georgius MuUins. Levying Georgius Keele. Levying Cogn. warr Cogn. wai-r Daniel Pomeroy. ! against Johes Keele. against Cogn. the king. Cogn. the Jeremia Atkins. Willus Godfrey. king. Cogn. Cogn. Samuel Boone. Edrus Counsell. Cogn. Cogn. Thomas Gooding. Josephus Wickham. Cogn. Cogn. Thomas Edwards. Johes Harris. Cogn. Cogn. Samuel Garnish. Abrahamus Pill. Cogn. Cogn. Georgius Mihill. Robtus Teape. Cogn. Cogn. Willus Drew. Timotheus Hawker. Cogn. Cogn. Thomas Dennis. Willus Davy. Cogn. Cogn. Johes Avoake. Willus Smith. Cogn. Cogn. Willus Tiverton. Josephus Kewberry. Cogn. Cogn. Josephus Unnoott. Henr Cartabrooke. Cogn. Cogn. Willus Moggeridge. Jacobus Every. Cogn. Cogn. Johes Seymor. Robtus Dyer. Cogn. Cogn. Johes Leaker. Johes Smith. Cogn. Cogn. Johes Hurman. ^ Jacobus Dummett. _^ 414 Side-lights on the Stuarts. Oogn. Johes Clode. Cogn. Jonas CroBse. Cogn. Bdrus Warren. Cogn. Johea Bragg. Cogn. Gnideon Dare. Cogn. Willns Hutchins. Cogn. Johes Mitchell. Cogn. Edrug Vildy. Cogn. Simo Crosse. Cogn. Johes Crosse. Cogn. Stephas Nowman. Cogn. Christofer Knight. Cogn. Robtus Luckesse. Cogn. Thomas Meade. Cogn. Johes Phinimore. Cogn. Johes Needes. Cogn. Willns Eock. Cogn. Thomas Pitt. Cogn. Robtus Richards. Cogn. Christopherus Rowe. Cogn. Johes Satchell. Cogn. Matthus Crafts, Jan. Cogn. Ricus Percey. Cogn. Johes Miller. Cogn. Georgius Snow. Cogn. Samuel Collins. Cogn. Johes Cockeram. Cogn. Jacobus Cockeram. Cogn. Christoferua Holbyn. Cogn. Johes Marwood. Oogn. Thomas Burnard. Oogn. Johes Pacey. Lerye ing warr , against ' the king. Cogn. Willns Wellen. Oogn. Johes Timothy. Cogn. Thomas Austin. Cogn. Moses Osborne. Cogn. Walter Hackett. Oogn. Randus Babbington Cogn. Johes Knight. Cogn. Job Hunt. Coen. Willus Woodcock. Cogn. Johes Adams. Oogn. Willus Sherborne. Cogn. Ricus Reynolds. Cogn. Thomas Pomfrett. Cogn. Jacobus Patten. Cogn. Thomas Banbury. Oogn. Jacobus Clitt. Oogn. Johes Parsons. Cogn. Johes Chamberline. Cogn. Humphr. Justin. Oogn. JohesGlover,als.Tucker. Oogn. Isaacus Dyer. Cogn. Ricus Symonds. Cogn. Thomas Trooks. Oogn. Johes Butfield. Cogn. Samuel Adams. Cogn. Johes Turle. Cogn. Jacobus Turle. Oogn. Johes Northam. Cogn. Thomas Bayly. Oogn. Lodovious Harris. Oogn. Stephus Holmau. Oogn. Edrus Halswell. \ Levye- lug warr > against the king. Monmouth's Rebellion. 415 Cogn. Jacobus Herring. Cogn. Johes Gilling. Cogn. Howell Thomas. Cogn. Georgius Baddi. Cogn. Moseus Wagstafe. Cogn. Robtas Hampton. Cogn. Eicus Edghill. Cogn. Francus Gardiner. Cogn. Robtus Burge. Cogn. Robtus Jenkins Cogn. Edrus Higg. Cogn. Tobias Hacker. Cogn. Thomas Clarke. Cogn. Daniel Hallett. Cogn. Thomas Bartlett. Cogn. Thomas Parsons. Cogn. Johes Pope. Cogn. Lewes Hagley. Cogn. Johes Furber. Cogn. Henr Webb. Cogu. Johes Lyde. Cogn. Johes Evans. Cogn. Johes Gray. Cogn. Thomas Cutler. Cogn. Willns Martin. Cogn. Jacobus Edmonds. Cogn. Willus Searle. Cogn. Johes Bisse. Cogn. Willus Hooper. Cogn. Roger Carsewell. Cogn. Thomas Redwood. Cogn. Henr Hooper. Cogn. Willus Baker. Levye- Cogn. ing warr Elisha Davys. I against Cogn. the Ricus Lang, king. Cogn. Jacobus King. Cogn. Thomas Gray. Cogn. Thomas Adams. Cogn. Willus Goodland. Cogn. Humfrus Gillard. Cogn. Thomas Cornish. Cogn. AUeyn Leversage. Cogn. Samuel Newberry. Cogn. Willus Weekes. Cogn. Alexander Townesend. Cogn. / Johes Prickman. Levye- ing warr against the king. Soms. ss. — Delibaco Goale Dni. Regis com pd de Prison in ea existeu tent per Adiornament apd. Civit Wellen in et p eod com die Martis vicesimo seoundo die Septembris Anno Pd cora Pfat. Justic, etc. Po. se cul. oa. null. Willus Mangell. Cogn. Rious Alwood. Cogn. Jacob Adams. Gogn. Samuel Blackmore. Cogn. Johes Browne. Levye- ing warr ) against the king. Cogn. Jacobus Broughton. Cogn. Carol Baker. Cogn. Thomas Bigwoode. Cogn. Stephus Benchfield. Cogn. Walter Baker. Levye- mg warr I against the king. J 4i6 Side-lights on the Stuarts. Cogn. Jobes Bright. Cogn. Willua Bush. Cogn. Thomas Browne. Cogn. Henr Body. Cogn. Gerrard Bryant. Cogn. Francus Bagwell. Cogn. Johes Browne, Cogn. GeorgiuB Blanchflower. Cogn. Rious Beadon. Cogn. Christofer Bray. Cogn. Johes Bartlett. Cogn. Jacobus Bickley. Cogn. Thomas Collins. Cogn. Thomas Clotworthy. Cogn. Robtus Court. Cogn. Johes Classy. Cogn. Johes Combe. Cogn. Samuel Clarke. Cogn. Johes Coterell. Cogn. Johes Clarke. Cogn. Johes Collins. Cogn. Johes Coleman. Cogn. Henr Collins. Cogn. Johes Carter. Cogn. Robtus Cooke. Cogn. Johes Cooke. Cogn. Nicus Cumins. Cogn. Robtus Clarke. Cogn. Beuiamin Clarke. Cogn. Rious Chaplyn. Cogn. Josephus Course, Le vye - ing warr against the king. Cogn. Bdrus Cruse. Cogn. Johes Colburne. Cogn. Willus Coles. Cogn. Johes Casewell. Cogn. Thomas Churchhouse. Cogn. Petrus Drayton. Cogn. Jacobus Dow. Cogn. Willus Dow. Cogn. Simo Dyer. Cogn. Thomas Daniell. Cogn. Eicus Denham. Cogn. Rions Dyer. Cogn. Francus Dunning. Cogn. Edrus Day. Cogn. Johes Domming. Cogn. Phus England. Cogn. Willus England. Cogn. Rious East on. Cogn. Eicus Edghill. Cogn. Jacobus Elford. Cogn. Cornelius Elliott. Cogn. Johes Ervin. Cogn. Thomas Ferris. Cogn. Edrus Ford. Cogn. Samuel Farmer. Cogn. Arthur Ford. Cogn. Walter Preston. Cogn. Rious Powei-acres. Cogn. Johes Fowler. Cogn. Johes Poster. Cogn. Willus Peare. Monmouth's Rebellion. 417 Cogn. Franous Gamblyn. Oogn. Josephus Goale. Cogn. Thomaa Gamling. Cogn. Jacobus German. Cogn. Nehemia GougU. Cogn. Willns Guppy. Cogn. Edrus Goodman. Cogn. Petrus Goodgroomo. Cogn. Johea Holmes. Cogn. Johes Henaon. Cogn. Thomas Hooper. Cogn. Thomas Horring. Cogn. Thomas Hutchins. Cogn. Robtiis Hannam. Oogn. Humfrid Hodge. Cogn. Thomas Hayward. Cogn. Edrus Harris. Cogn. Eobtus Harris. Cogn. Eious Howells. Cogn. Andreas Howard. Cogn. Johes HulL Cogn. Moses Higwell. Cogn. Thomas Humphryes. Cogn. Francns Hales. Cogn. Simo Hussey. Cogn. Willns Higden. Cogn. Johes Hellyer. Cogn. Georgius Halfeard. Cogn. Josias Howard. Cogn. Jacobus Haraian. Cogn. Thomas Hill. Leyye- Ung warr against the king. Cogn. Willns Jackson. Cogn. Johes Jerman, Cogn. Johes Jones. Cogn. Hicns Jacob. Cogn. Carol Jones. Cogn. Willus Johnson. Cogn. Samuel Knigbt. Cogn. Edrus Keare. Cogn. PhuB Keepeing. Cogn. Johes Keepeing. Cogn. Willus Key. Cogn. Johes Lewis. Cogn. Johes Larkeham, Cogn. Willus Lock. Cogn. Johes Langford. Cogn. Paul Moore. Cogn. Johes Morley. Cogn. Humfrus Mandry. Cogn. Jacobus Moodey. Cogn. Thomas JlitcheU. Cogn. Eadus Middleton. Cogn. Willus Meyrick. Cogn. Edrus Mitchell. Cogn. Johes Moore. Cogn. Johes Muttlebury. Cugn. Josephus ihiUings. Cogn. Roger Mhrtimer. CogQ. Thomas Napper. Cogn. Nathaniel Neale. Cogn. Baldwin Parker. Cogn. Henr Partridge. E e Le'vye- ling warr against the king. 4i8 Side-lights on the Stuarts. Cogn. Willus Preist. Cogn. Andreas Palmer. Cogn. Georgius Potter. Cogn. Silas Phillippa. Cogn. Johes Pope. Cogn. Franous Plummer. Cogn. Jacobus Parker. Cogn. Jacobus Peirce. Cogn. Thomas Peirce. Cogn. Georgins Palmer. Cogn. Johes Palmer. Cogn. Georgins Bussell. Cogn. Christofer Riohards. Cogn. Jobes Eicbards. Cogn. Henr Eookes. Cogn. Willns Reade. Cogn. Alexander Robbinson. Cogn. Argentin Rust. Cogn. Eobtus Smith. Cogn. Johes Staple. Cogn. Eobtus Sly. Cogn. Johes Smith. Cogn. Willus Sheppard. Cogn. "Willus Smith. Cogn. Willus Sherry. Cogn. Johes. Symon. Cogn. Franous Savage. Cogn. Willus Selfe. Cogn. Georgius Serle Cogn. Johes Saunders. Cogn. Jonathan Sutton. Levye- ing warr the king. Cogn. Jacobus Smith. Cogn. Jobes Say. Cogn. Jonas Say. Cogn. Francns Smith. Cogn. Eious Spiller. Cogn. Eious Selwood. Cogn. Eious Symes. Cogn. Jobes Skiflfe. Cogn. Jacobus Standard. Cogn. Thomas Tuokey. Cogn. Eious Tapper. Cogn. Eicns Turner. Cogn. Johes Tilley. Cogn. Lodovicna Tricks. Cogn. Samuel Till, als. Vile. Cogn. Petrus Wellis. Cogn. Eobtus Wilkins. Cogn. Jobes Willey. Cogn. Eicus Wilcoxe. Cogn. Jobes Williams, sen. Cogn. Jobes Williams, jun. Cogn. Thomas Wall. Cogn. Johes Woolmington. Cogn. Johes Worrell. Cogn. Josepbus Warren. Cogn. Thomas Walter. Cogn. Willus Warren. Cogn. Eious West. Cogn. Eobtus Willis. Cogn. Jobes Watts. Cogn. Stophus Walsh. Levye- ing warr I against the king. Monmouth's Rebellion. 419 Cogn. Eious Young. Cogn. PhuB Uther. Cogn. Matbus Woodland. Cogn. Thomas Waggett. Cogn. Ricus Evans. Cogn. Edrns Kempe. Cogn. Johes TinknelL Cogn. Eobtus Beamont. Cogn. Hugo Banton. Cogn. Willua Clotworthy. Cogn. WilluB Clement. Cogn. Tristram Clarke. Cogn. Thomas Cardon. Cogn. Ednas Gilbert. Cogn. Willus Greeneland. Cogn. Thomas Goodsen. Cogn. Hugo Goodenough. Cogn. Johes Humpbryes. Cogn. Ricus Hooper. Cogn. Henr Hunt. Cogn. Georg Hussey. Cogn. Willus Harris. Cogn. Willus Hellier. Cogn. Robtag Jennings. Cogn. Ricus Lyne. Cogn. Willus Lyneing. Cogn. Johes Lush. Cogn. Carol Mason. Cogn. Eobtus Mann. Cogn. Ricus Miller. Cogn. Thomas Norton. Levye- ling vparr ) against the king. E e 2 Cogn. Jacobus Norville. Cogn. Thomas Paull. Cogn. Henr Quick. Cogn. Johes Scarr. Cogn. Johes Stone. Cogn. Henr Roper. Cogn. Gabriel Smart. Cogn. Henr Cooke. Cogn. Isaac Pryor. Cogn. Laurence Lott. Cogn. Thomas Lott. Cogn. Willus Eyres. Cogn. Jacobus Paine. Cogn. Nicus Kefford. Cogn. Johes Butcher. Cogn. Christofer Candy. Cogn. Johes Bennett. Cogn. Thomas Orchard. Cogn. Nathaniel Dunuock. Cogn. Humfrus Davys. Cogn. Henr Symes. Cogn. Jonathan Drew. Cogn. Johes Jones. Cogn. Robtus Millard. Cogn. Robtus Stuckoy. Cogn. Pasckey Stuckey. Cogn. Jacobus Field, sen. Cogn. Jacobns Field, jnn. Cogn. Humfrus Peadon. Cogn. Eicus Boole. Cogn. Israel Balster. Levye- ing warr ) against the king. Side-lights on the Stuarts. Cogn. Cogn. Robtus Francis. Thomas Salisbury. Cogn. Cogn. Johes Howell. Thomas Andersey. Cogn. Cogn. Johes Hnssey. Johes Holdsworth. Cogn. Cogn. Andreas Staley. Jacobus Heale. Cogn. Cogn. Johes Reynolds. Simo Chinn. Cogn. Cogn. Arthur Bveserd. Robtus Beaton. Cogn. Cogn. Rious Harvey. Willus Chinn. Cogn. Cogn. Robtus ReeTes. Johes Portnell. Cogn. Cogn. Robtus Norton. Jacobus Pulman. Cogn. Cogn. Bdus Hurd. Thomas Millis. Cogn. Cogn. Johes Tucker. Johes Patten. Cogn. Cogn. Thomas Hiird. Johes Bishopp. Cogn. Cogn. Thomas Lawrence. Joshua Sully. Cogn. Cogn. "Willus Holland. Ambrosius Vineirg. Cogn. Cogn. Hugo Holland. Levye- Petrue Burden. Leyye- Cogn. 1 ing warr Cogn. ing warr Thomas Bowdon. f against Josephus Hawker. against Cogn. the Cogn. the Ricus Wilmott. king. Thomas Snooke. king. Cogn. Cogn. Egidius Whittle. Henr Snooke. Cogn. Cogn. Georgius Hallett. Johes Ashwoode. Cogn. Cogn. Johes Hart. Thomas Smith. Cogn. Cogn. Johes Lawrence. Johes Dorchester. Cogn. Cogn. Jacobus Aymes. Georgius Harding. Cogn. Cogn. Samuel Elworthy. Nicus Davidge. Cogn. Cogn. Johes Holway. Johes Combe. Cogn. Cogn. Ricus Chynn. Johes Hanning. Cogn. Cogn. Willus Craise. Jacobus Moore. Cogn. Cogn. Jacobus Hurd. Willus Ashford. Cogn. Cogn. Georgius Pavier. llenr Mills. Cogn. Cogn. Johes Field. Jacobus Wake. Cogn. Cogn. Johes Wceoh. Johes Attwood. Cogn. Cogn. Willus Stounton. Willus Lacey, _-' Monmouth's Rebellion. 421 Cogn. Johes Dorchester, jun. Cogn. Johes Greaves. Cogn. Thomas Speede. Cogn. Adamus Smith. Cogn. Robtus Seale. Cogn. Eioas Hoare. Cogn. Arthur Salway. Cogn. Christofer Uray. Cogn. Johes Woodrow. Cogn. Arthur Woodrow. Cogn. Eoger Cole. Cogn. Edrus Vile. Cogn. PhuB Lacey. Cogn. Willus Best. Cogn. Edrus Wilmott. Cogn. Georgius Adams. Cogn. Willus Prowse. Cogn. Christofer Masters. Cogn. Willus Lane. Cogn. Johes Crowder. Cogn. Thomas Eodbeard. Cogn. Jacobus Best. Cogn. Eobtus Best. Cogn. Johes Stower. Cogn. Henr Eussell. Cogn. Thomas Laver. Cogn. Georgius Knight. Cogn. Johes Baker. Cogn. Edrus Vagg. Cogn. Eobtus Clarke. Cogn. Josophus Eobbins. _ Levye- ing warr ' again st the king. Cogn. Eobtus Wine. Cogn. Thomas Pettard. Cogn. Timothe Toleman. Cogn. Jacobus Sheppard. Cogn. Jacobus Elford. Cogn. Johes Harwood. Cogn. Eoger Channing. Cogn. Thomas Channing. Cogn. Jacobus Baker. Cogn. Carol Pople. Cogn. Willus Cheeke als. Chick, Cogn. Johes Webb. Cogn. .Georgius Allen. Cogn. Henr Grange. Cogn. Preston Bevis. Cogn. Johes Palmer. Cogn. Eobtus Burridge. Cogn. Edrus Eawbone. Cogn. Thomas Nashion. Cogn. Eicus Wiseman. Cogn. Thomas Eghu. Cogn. Eicus Snooke. Cogn. Thomas Lookyer. Cogn. Eicus Phinneare. Cogn. Moses Moore. Cogn. Samuel Euddle. Johes Parsons. Cogn. Eobtus Mudford als. Mumford. Cogn. Johes Bishopp. Cogn. Johes Sprake. Levye- ^ing warr against the king. J Side-lights on the Stuarts. Cogn. Eobtus Upcott. Cogn. Johes Crocker. Cogn. Thomas Yiles. Cogn. Dayid Thomas. Cogn. Willus Powell. Cogn. Roger Cornelius. Cogn. Willus Prowse. Cogn. Hnmfrus Edmonds. Cogn. Johes Comer. Cogn. Tiobtus Sweete, jnn. Cogn. Edrus Hody. Cogn. RicuB Peiroe. Cogn. Josephus Smith. Cogn. Johes Gillham. Cogn. Johes Withy. Cogn. Josephus Witherell. Cogn. Willus Sweete. Cogn. Josiah Gilham. Cogn. Edrus Hamond Hamwood. Cogn. Eions Napper. Cogn. Johes Partridge. Cogn. Egidius Bramble. Cogn. Johes Bramble. Cogn. Jacobus Bramble. Cogn. Georgiue Butcher. Cogn. Edrus Abbott. Cogn. MathuB Goodman. Cogn. Beniamin Traskc. Cogn. Ilonr Noone. Cogn. Johos Key. Cogn. Phus Smith. als. Cogn. V Johes Weslake. Cogn. Willus Eadbearde. Cogn. Alexander Key. Cogn. Jacobus Pitts. Cogn. Johes Dummett. Cogn. Willus Meade. / Cogn. Johes Quick. Cogn. Thomas Saunders. Cogn. Willus Chilcott. Cogn. Thomas Vile. Cogn. Thomas Doleman. Cogn. David Boyle. Levye- Cogn. ing warr Joshua French. > against Cogn. the Eobtus Carter. king. Cogn. Prancus Carter. Levye- Cogn. )ing warr Johes Fathers. against Cogn. the Johes Laver. king. Cogn. Shadrac Morley. Cogn. Mathus Pryor. Cogn. Samuel Cox. Cogn. Nious Gill. Cogn. Thomas Goade. Cogn. Robtus Doleman. Cogn. Johes Hurle. Cogn. Johes Loafe.als Gamling' Aideirg Cogn. Carolus Speake, sen. and assisting / the Cogn. Willus Plomley. 1 Eebells against the king. Cogu. Samuel Denham. 1 Levyo- Cogn. l'"S ""7 Johos Oram^ '^f'^'^' Eobtus Hiiywood. J iviiiB- Monmouth's Rebellion. 423 Cogn. s Cogn. Johes Helpes. Johes Poote. Cogn. Cogn. Willua Meade. Johes Eeeves. Cogn. Cogn. Jacob Tripp. Johes Gill, sen. Cogn. Cogn. Johes Burd. Johes Gill, juu. Cogn. Cogn. Johes Peircy. Edrus Hawlsty. Cogn. Cogn. Jacobus Pyer. Willus Broadbeare. Cogn. Cogn. Johes JollifFe. Edrus Chedroy. Cogn. Cogn. Robtus Peirce. Johes Hill. Cogn. Johes Dodds. Thomas Trott. Cogn. • Johes Broome. Willus Collier. Cogn. Cogn. Levye- Henr Pittman. Johes Parsons. ing warr Cogn. Cogn. against Will lis Somton. Johes Rotherton. the king. Cogn. Cogn. Willas Ostler, sen. Johes Arnold. Cogn, Cogn. Nathus Beaton. Willus Aplyn. Cogn. Levye- Cogn. Petrus Cordilion. ing warr Robtus Acastle. Cogn. 1 against Cogn. Thomas Burton. the Johes Brock. Cogn. king. Cogn. Willus Biggs. Henr Norton^ Cogn. Cogn. Johes Sheppard. Jacobus Norman. Cogn. Cogn. Willus Pitman. Chrus Wornell. Cogn. Cogn. Johes Cooke. Robtxxs Dawe. Cogn. Cogn. Abrn Bond. Willus Russell. Cogn. Cogn. Johes Brice. Johes Harcombe. Cogn. Johes Collins. Cogn. _, Cogn. Georgius Bisse. Nathus Standerwok. Corn, Aydeing Cogn. Johes Hioks.^ and as- Eicus Dyke. Cogn. sisting Cogn. Andreas Holcombe. \ the Johes Denham. Cogn. Rebells Cogn. Johes Hooper. against Abrus Grodden. Cogn. the king. Cogn. Thomas Monday. Edrus Tippet. Cogn. _ Cogn. Thomas Burrell. Cogn. Samuel Davison, Cogn. 1 Levye - ) warr Johes Meade, Thomas Venner. against Cogn. Thomas Hillary. J Cogn. Laurenc Casewell '' the king. ^ The Rev. John Hicks, for harbouring whom Alice Lisle was executed. 424 Side-lights on the Stuarts. Cogn. Thomas Chinn. CogQ. Samuel Weaver. Cogn. Robtus Batt. Cogn. Johea Hooper. Cogn. Johes Goald. Cogn. Jobes Cooke. Cogn. Robtus Thatcher. Cogn. Roger Hoare. Cogu. Cert. all. Johes Woolley. Cogn. Consile. Willus Gawler. Cogu. Consile. Willus Buckler. Cogn. Consile. Robtus Fisher. Cogn. Phus Cambridge. Cogn, Cogn. Johes Johnson. Cogn. Johea Willis. Levyo- Cogn. ing warr Johes Butcher, against Cogn. the king. Ricus Nash als. Lisaant. Cogn. Ricus Pearce. Levye- ing warr against the king. For enterteyneing, aydeing, Assisting and comforting John Boyett, being a Rebell against the king. For aideing and Assisting the Rebells against the king, Cogu. Cert. all. Johes Pitt. Cogn. Levye- Edrus Merrick. Levyc- warr Cogn. ling warr against Jacobus Price, (against the king. Cogn. the king. Cert. all. Johes Denham. J High Treason. Ui'rh Treason. Johea HoUoway. Po. se non cul. nee rec, Johes Richards. Po. se non cul. nee roc. Nicus Pearson. Cul. Leonard Gofi's. Cogn. Willus Williams. Cogn. Hour Gatthell. Cogn. Samuel Viney. Cogn. Thomas Anstis. Cogn. Jacobus Osin. Levyeiug warr against the king. The like. Being in Armes against the king. Speaking seditious words.*" Tlielike. The like. The like. The like. The like. Suuthton S. S. (Dmnus). — Spring Assizes, 3rd of March, 1685-6, before Sir Henry Herbert, L.C.J., and Sir Robert Wright. Po. ae cul. flagiletur apud Winton VI. die marc instan et po in et super collistrigium apJ Stockbridge Jovis," etc-. Transgr. Johes Reeves. Speaking seditious words : (viz') : The devill take the king. Dorset S. S. (Dmnus Wright). — Die Jovis uudeoimo die March, 1685. Po. se non cul. nee rec. High Treason. Jacobus Lawes. Levying warr against the king. Po. se non cul. nee rec. High Treason. Anna Strode, Entertayneing of Joseph Kelway,' a Rebell convicted, knowing him soe to be, ' John Bovett pleaded guilty at Dorchester, p. 101. " A note in the Treasury Book says these prisoners are to be whipped at five several market-towria. '' To be whipped at Winchester the 6th of March instant, and to be put in the pillory (collistrigium) at SI;ockbridge on Sunday, etc, ' He pleaded guilty aL Taunton, p. 110. Monmouth's Rebellion. Transgr. Transgr. Transgr. Transgr. Transgr. Po. se cuL poDatnr in et super colUstrigium apud Jlolcombe Eo- - -Uenricus Cuttance. .c;r,oa.i-iT,rr c,ori;f;„„„ ,i_ °" Po. se Don cnL Johes Voakes. Po. se Dou cuL Thomas Hollins. Po. se uon ouL Edrus Keeoh. Po. se non cuL Thomas Clarke. Edrns Wale. Bartholomeus Barge. Johes Butcher. Speaking seditious words. Speaking seditious words. Speaking seditions words. Speaking seditious words. Speaking seditious words. Pdonantus et ex per spec Pardon. •'' Jacobus Dawbney. Mattheus Lontr. Aaron Mitchell. Beniaminus Tuck, liious HoUyday. Willus Orchard. Georgius Salter. Jacobus Orchard. Mattheus Bowditoh. Jo-'ias Bartlett. Pdon- Johes Swayne. Pdon. anturper G-eorgius Stoakea. lauturper proclam Thomas Palmer. proclam DnLRg.-i Johes Wyatt, sen. Dui. Rk Johes Wyatt, juu. Willus Collins. JoseiDhus Butcher. Johes Bellen. ) Thomas Pitts als. \ Pdonantus per proclam. Dni Eg. Tutchin. Eicus Goad als. Eord. Eogerus Downe. Johes Bale. Lionel Whiffen. Willus White. Johes Parris. Samuel Bedlow. Franous Browne. Johes Soott. > Eem. quoasque sol Dno. Eeg Pdon- , anturper proclam Dni. Eg. Johes Chard. Eicus Burd. Susanna Gerrard. V. mercas.* I Trans- f portand. Devon (Dmnus Wright).— Die Martis Tioesinio tertio die March 1685. Anno regui Caroli Seeuudi/ &o. Secundo Anuoque Dni 1685. Dni High Henricus Parsons. Treason. Georgius Yandall. Kobtua Yandall. Johes Yandall. Waltus Holwell. Antonius Hole. Eobtus Smale. Humfrus Mitchell. Nathaniel Eowe. Johes Glegg. Georgius Farrant, Fraucua Porter. Eicus Wakely. WOlus Searle. ]un. Eem pro b. b. pro b. g. et com in Ea. High Georgius Hore. Treason. Caleb Bragg. Johes Beere. Samuel Staple. Mathus Staple. Pdo- Johes Bartlett. nanturet Thomas Willis, ex. Johes Clegg. Matheus Lane. Henricus Lane. Thomas Manning. Johes Michell. Eicus Blackalter. Pdo- nantur et extur. - To be put in the pillory at Melcombe Regis. 3 Pardoned and released by special pardon. * Pardoned by proclamation of the king. * Eemanetur quousque solvit Domino regi v. mercas. Eemanded till Ide marks to the king. ' Caroli, a clerical error for Jacobi. The date is March, 1683-6. pay five 426 Sidelights on the Stuarts. Jacobua Mafly. Antoninus Locke. Johes Maflfy. Eicus Way. Georgius Maffy. Georgius Scadding. Georgius Hallett. Simo Bennett. Willus Collier. Willus Turner als. Eobtus Gay. Goles (?). Johes Gay. Eicus PoUett. Johes Baker. Thomas Chapman. High Andreas Sqnire. Pdo- manturet extur. Johes Newberry. Pdo- Treason . Petrns Markes. Georgius Dare. Ti ciTif n f Pr. Eobtus Hayman. Prancisous Greene. Josephus James. Johes Grange t/AUUl * Hugo Downe. Beniaminus Newton. Johes Hamlyn. Matheus Tucker, sen. Riciis Ttimson. Matheus Tucker, jun. Sampso Palfrey. Eobtus Searle. Willus Saunders. Johes Coles. Johes Wood. Andreas Treby. Eobtus Clode. Willus Tidball. Willus Hawkland. Johes Richards. ^ In Le Workehouse. Thomas Long. Jasperus Ta.yler. Agueta ClifFe Vid. Waltus Phiilipps. Thomas Broadridge. Stephus Eewell. Edus Bnrt. Willus Hingston. Johes Peard. Pdo- Samuel Powsland. Pdo- Dionisius Lutley. iHanturet Eicus Jones. ^nanturet Eleanora Thatcher. extur. Eicus Stoneman. extur. Johes Foxwell. Georgius Greeneway. Eieua Newell. Prudentia Bowdon. Johanna Leach. Johanna Horwell. Johes Davy. Egidius Libbett. Sums., S. S. (Dmnus Herbert). — Wellen die Martis Trioesimo die March anno regni dni nri Jacobi secundi etc. Secundo Aunoque Dni 1686. 73 rebels pardonantur et extur. In le Bridewell apud Taunton. 59 rebels pdonantur et extur. Eobtns Hodges. Johes Dummett. Hugo Clotworthie. Isaacus Hufcohins. ( Convict I apd. ult. Sess.,eto. Martinus Salter. Willus Hooper. Egidius Hutchinson. Samuel Ashton. 1 Convict Vapd. ult. I Sess.,etc. Southton (Dmnus Young). — Winton Die Mercury decimo quarto die July Anno regni Jac See. Secundo Annoque Dni 1686. Po. so cul. flagiletur apud Winton. Tiausgr. Petrus Ibsley. Speaking seditious words. Devon, 1686 (Dmnus Jenner). — Castrum Exon die luna) secundo die August! anno regni dni nri Jao Sec. etc. secundo Aunoque Dni 1686. Po. se non cul. nee rec. High Treason. Thomas Salter. Levying warr against tho king being a Captaiuo. Po. se cul. flagiletur. Transgr. Eobtus Hatohwell. Spreading false newcs. Monmouth's Rebellion. 427 Transgr. Po se non cul. Georgius Godfrey. Speaking Beditious words. The king is a Papist Tyrant and they are all rogues that serve him. Soms., S. S., Dmnus Street, 1686. Transgr. Transgr. Transgr. Cogn. Riciis CoUard. Po. se cul. Georgius Pocock. Po. se cul. Christoferus Winter. Die lunfe nono die Aug d. 1. Jao Sec. seoundo. Po. in et super coUistrium apud Civit "Wellen et Taunton? pro Spac Duarum Horarum. Publishing false newes. Po. in et super collistrigium apud Langport. Speaking seditious words. Po. in et super coUietrigm apud Wellington. Speakiug seditious words. Wilts, S. S. Nova Sarum, 23 Peb. Jao. Sec. 3, Dmnus Wythens. 1686. Po. se non cul. Transgr. Carolus Floyd als. Lloyd. Pretending himself to be Duke of Mon- mouth. Po. se cul. Maria Haynes. Po. in et super Collistrigm apud Novo Sarum. Speaking seditious words. Dorset, S. S. Dorchester, March 2. Jac. Sec. 3. Dmnus Heath, 1686. Po. se cul. Robtus Eyres. "j Po. se cul. p Johes Langibrd. J Respect.' Ponatur in et super collistrigm apud Dor- chester die Satt vi die instan March pro Spac Unno Hore et Pin xxs. Cutting Downe Rebells Quarters. Soms., S S. Wellen, March 21. Jao. Sec. 3. Dmnus Wythens. 1686. *Tr. et ss. etc., Reprd. High Treason, *Tr. et ss., etc. Cogn. Reginald Tucker. Cogn. Super Decimo Thomas Place. Quint diem Aprilis prox. Po. se non. cul. nee reo. High Treason. Georgius Pippen. Levying warr against the king. Perswadeing Divse subjects to joyne with Monmouth and concealing Traitors and directing them to escape. " To be put in the pillory at Wells and at Taunton for the space of two hours. ^ To be put in the pillory at Dorchester on Saturday the 6th of March instant, fur the space of one hour, and to be fined 20 shillings. THE END. INDEX. AcTOES in seventeenth century, 329. Addisoa on witchcraft, 125. Ague, cures for, 20. Angel, golden, used as touch-piece, 354, 356, 363. Ann of Denmark, 3, 8. Arabella Stuart: birth and parent- age, 23 ; portraits, 23 ; title and estates, 25 ; in care of Earl of Shrewsbury, 26 ; Spanish intrigues, 28; at Elizabeth's court, 29, 36; lodging with Sir Henry Goodeve, 29 ; her appearance, 30 ; projects of marriage, 31, 35, 36, 50 ; proposal by Elizabeth to marry her to King James, 31 ; legacies from Mary Queen of Scots, 32 ; in charge of Thomas Fowler, 32 ; letter from King James, 35, 75 ; Catholic in- trigues, 35 ; Stanhope and Caven- dish factions, 37 ; plots to secure her accession, 28, 39 ; suspeott d marriage with Edward Seymour, 38 ; Cardinal D'Ossat's views, 39 ; death of Elizabeth, 41 ; her recep- tion by Queen Anne, 42 ; governess to Princess Elizabeth, 45, 85 ; Brooke and Cobham's plot, 44; festivities at Oxford, 46 ; presents to the queen, 47; godmother to Princess Mary, 48 ; carver to the queen, 48 ; winter evenings, 49 ; corresisonilence with Shrewsbury family, 45 ; entertain- ments and masques, 49 ; correspon- dence with Sir William Sinclair, 51 ; her allowance, 26, 29, 37, 51 , 52 ; plan of campaign, 52 ; Tethy's Festival, or the Queen's Wake, 54 ; engagement to William Seymour, 56 ; statements to the Council, 56 ; marriage at G-reenwich, 58 ; com- mitted to the custody of the Chan- cellor of the Duchy, 59 ; Seymour sent to the Tower, 59 ; escape from Barnet, 61 ; recaptured and sent to the Tower, 62 ; letters to king and queen, 66, 66 ; applies for writ of habeas corpus, 65 ; again before the Council, 67 ; dies of dysentery, 67; burial, 67; appendix of letters, 72. Archbishop of St. Andrew's, 171. Argent, Dr., 67. Argyle's progress, 147. Asbburnham, John, 248. Aske, Mr., 217. Axtell, Colonel, 223, 237, 261, 294. Benefit of clergy, 154, 331. Benevolence, 15. Bible of 1611, 18. weighed against a witch, 187. Blake, Admiral, 306. Bloody Assize, 369. Bodurdo, Mr., 221. Bolingbroke, Roger, 131. Bond, Sir William, 391. Booth, Sir William, 392. Bothwell, 34, 149. Bowes (Scotch agent), 147. , Isabella, 102. Bradshaw, Anne, 60, 120. , President, 218. Brandon, Gregory, 260. Briat, William (rat-killer), 15. Bristol assize (1685), 384. Brodrick, Mr., 184. Broughton, Andrew, 222. Brown, Sir Thomas, 167. Buckingham, Duke of, 19, 20. Bugge, John, 57. Cauey, Sir Robert, 41. Catholics, English, 199. Cavendish family disputes, 37. 430 Index. Cawley, William, 301. Cecil, Lord, 91. Chandos, Lady (letter), 122. Charlemagne's mistress, 127. Charles I. : turning-point of English history, 195 ; position of religion and politics, 198 ; treatment of Puritans, 202 ; state clergy, 203 ; difficulty of disposing of, 207 ; the king's judges, 211 ; removal to Windsor, 213; new clothes, 214 proclamation by King of France, 215 ; proclamation o£ trial, 217 committee to arrange trial, 218 arrangements for the king, 219 description of Westminster Hall, 221,225; the trial, 226 ; Lady Fair- fax, 227 ; his silver staff, 227 ; News of Prince Eupert, 230 ; the judg- ment, 231; lodged at St. James's, 233 ; interview with his children, 234 ; messages to his family, 234 ; his execution, 238 ; his speech, 243, 251 ; gifts to his friends, 243 ; public in- difference, 245 ; his funeral, 249, 250 ; executioners unknown, 259 ; Eikon Basilike, 267; the Newmar- ket witch, 160; Lancashire witches, 159 ; anecdote by Lord Brougham, 271 ; newspaper accounts of trial, 250, 324; proposed public funeral, 308 ; alleged loss of his body, 309 ; identified by George IV., 311. Charles II : proposed marriage to Cromwell's daughter, 273 ; procla- mations, 279; supposed clemency, 279 ; supposed clemency to Milton, 313 ; restoration, 815 ; his conduct after the fire, 346 ; proposed divorce, 349 ; Burnet's character of him, 360 ; his healing sei'vices, 355 ; Lucy Walters, 367. Chatterton, Margaret, 48. Clergy, benefit of, 334. ■ , state, 203. Cobham, trial of, 44. Cockburn, Sir Alexander, 17. Colley trial of, 186. CoUingwood, Alice, 109. Corbet, Miles, 210, 298. Cotton, Sir Eobert, 219. Croft, Sir J., 60, 64. Cromwell, Oliver : his death and funeral, 276 ; body hanged and head exliibited, 303 ; his superstitions, 126 ; his coinage, 349 ; at trial of Charles I., 223. Cromwell's mother, 305. daughter (Elizabeth), 305. Cromwell, Eichard, 278. , Lady Frances, 273. ■ ■ — —, Lady, 133. Crull's "Antiquities of Westminster Abbey" (extract), 68. Cuttings, the lute-player, 48. D'Anveks, Sir John, 211. D'Aubigny, 36. Dean, Colonel, 306. De Beaumont, letters from, 39. Declaration of independence, 217. " Demonologia," 17, 138, 141, 142, 1 13. Dendy, Serjeant-at-arms, 217. Denmark, King of, Devon (see Exeter), 383. D'Ewes, Sir Symon, 5, 338. Digby, Sir Kenelm, 19. Disbanding the Ironsides, 316. Dorchester assizes, 380, 392. Dorislaus, Dr., 217. D'Ossat, letter from Cardinal, 39. Dover and others (printers), 299. Drummond, Lady, cousin of Arabella Stuart (letter), 112. Durham, Bishop of, 60, 109. Dutch invasion of the "Thames, 307. Dutch witch, 147. Bdwakd the Confessor, 363. Elizabeth (Queen), 2, 25, 34, 41. Princess, daughter of James I., 8, 45, 85. • Charies I., 234. Bndor, witch of, 129. Essex, Prances, Countess of, 12, 55. Evil eye, belief in, 126. Executioners of Charles I., 237. Exeter Assizes (1685), 383. Pairtax, Lady, 229. Paithorne, William, 6. Farnese, Alexander, 36. Penton, Viscount, 116. Fleet Ditch, 336. Porman, astrologer, 12, 15. Fowler, Thomas, 82 ; warrant from Mary, Queen of Scots, 33 ; pro- phesies death of Queen Elizabeth, 3t. Frain or Pian, Dr., register of witches, 137. Index. 431 Gaol-Books, extracts from, 190, 397. G-arnet's straws, 128. trial, 48. Geoffrey, Margaret, 151. Gloster, Duke of, 234. Gosling, Charles, 48, 101. Gough's British Topography, 175. Gray Malkin (devil's doorkeeper), 137. Greatrex,Yaleiitiiie (the stroaker), 361. Gueldres, Duke of, 53. Gurdman, Margery, 131. Gwyun, Dr. Matt., 67. Hackek, Colonel, 237, 242, 294. Hale, Sir Matthew, on witches, 130, 166 ; rebuilding of London, 346. Hampton Court, conference at, 18. Hannoker, Susan, weighed against the Bible, 187. Hardwick, 48. Harrison, Major-General, 213, 284. Hathaway's case, 180. Hats, iron and steel, 224. Heads and limbs of malefactors, 339. Healing service, 359. " Heaven and Hell," 219. Henry, Prince of Wales, 67. of Navarre, 36. , Duke of Gloster, 234. Henson, Colonel, 305. Herbert, Mr., 174, 237. Hervey, Dr., 160. Heydon, 126. Hiokes, Eev. John, 373. 's Hall, 173, 281. Hicks, Dr., 171. Hilary Term adjudged for King's trial 219. Holbein's Gate at Whitehall, 239. Holt, C. J., 183, 194. Homilies of Elizabeth, 162. Hopkins, Mathew, 155, 169. Howard, Sir William, 392. Hutchinson, Lucy, 201. Hutchinson's Essay on Witchcraft, 163. Inns at Barnet, 111. Ireton, Henry, 305. Ironsides disbanded, 316. Jambs I. : accession, 3 ; personal ap- pearance, 5 ; voyage to Denmark, 7 ; attempts by witches to sink his ship, 1 38 ; his character, 7 ; gam- bling, 10; projected palace at White- hall, 11; vidoms and baronetcies, 13 ; sale of Crown timber, 14 ; re- cusants, 15; Sir Walter Raleigh, 16 ; as author and orator, 17 ; Bible of 1611, 18 ; courage on his death- bed, 19 ; Duohess of Buckingham's plaster, 20; demonologia, 17 ; ob- jects to touch for the evil, St 5; rights of the Crown over the marriages of collaterals, 69 ; his funeral, 21. (See Arabella Sttjabt, Witchcbapt). James II: prospects of his reign, 364 ; inherited Jeffreys, 367 ; re- sponsible for deaths after Dorchester Assizes, 394 ; grants of prisoners for transportation, 390 ; his cha- racter, 395; touching for king's evil, 360 ; miracle at his death, 360. Jeffreys, Sir George, afterwards Lord Chief Justice and Lord Chancellor, 366; portrait by Kneller, 366, n. ; condact at trial of Alice Lisle, 376 ; proportionment of blame between Jeffreys and James II. Jenner, Serjeant, 184. Joan of Arc, 127. Jonson, Ben, 54. Jones, Inigo, 21, 66. Juxon, Bishop, 54. King's healing, 353 ; form of service, 358. King Street, Whitehall, 239. Lady's clothes at 30?. a year, 52. Lands, sale of Crown, 14. Lankister, Richard, 161. Laud, Archbishop, 126. Legge, Colonel, 127. Lennox, Margaret, Countess of, 23. , Charles Stuart, Earl of, 25. , Elizabeth, Countess of, 25. Levinz, Sir Cresswell, Judge of King's Bench, 371. Lewis, Eev. Thomas, 162. Licence to cast out devils, 154. Lilly (astrologer), 126. Lisle, Lady Alice, 222 ; her trial, 372 ; , John, 222. Lister, Dr. Edward, 67. Ijondon under the Stuarts, 335. Index. Louis le Saint, 353. Louis XI., 353. Mackenzie, Sir George, 1G4. Martin, Dr., 180. , Henry, 223. Masks worn by ladies, 226 ; forbidden by Queen Anne, 335. " Masque of Queens," 49. beauty, 49. Matthias of Germany, 36. Maurice, Elector, 57. May, Thomas, 308. Middlesex Records (1550—1666), 169. Mildmay, Sir Henry, 228, 296. , Sir Walter (letter), 74. Milton, John, 311. , Sir Christopher, 313. Money, stamped, 347. Monmouth, Duke of, 364, 369. Montagu, Sir William, Lord Chief Baron, 173, 371, 397. Morley, 29. Moundford, Dr., President of College of Physicians, 67. Mucciolanti, 185. Mud Book, 197. Murders, secret, condemned by Ireton and Harrison, 209. Musgrave, Sir Christopher, 392. Navaebb, Henry of, 36. Newburgh, Lord, 213. Newmarket witch, 160. Newspapers, 319; advertisements, 325. New Sarum (1685), 380. Nipho, Jerome, 392. Noble, Rev. Mark, 210. North, Sir F., 172. Nottingham, Countess of, 8, 49. Oats, taxes on, 52. Okey, Colonel, 398. Ordeal by water, 142. Ostenta Carolina, :!57. Overbury, Sir Thomas, 12, 15. Oxford festivities, 81. Paddy, Dr. William, 67. Painted chamber, 216. Palmer, Dr. Richard, 67. Parker, (J. J., 143. Parliament, sittings by daylight, 337. Parry, Sir Thomas, 59. Partridge (astrologer), 126. Peacham, state prisoners tortured, 145. Peacock, torture in Tower of, 14.j. Peine forte et dure, 341. Penny papers, 325. Penny post, 348. Phelps, John, 222. Pierrepoint, Sir Henry, 44. Pitts als. Tutchin, 381, 392. Plan of Campaign at Mansfield, 52. Plumer, Colouel, 176. PoUexfen, Sir Henry, 372, 376. Powel, Justices, 175, 179. Prayers for casting out devils, 154. Pressing to death, 341. Pretender, touch-pieces, 361. Price, Captain, 392. Prideaux, A. G., to Cromwell, (note 2), 271. Progress of Earl Argyle, 147. Progress of Queen Anne, 42. Psalter and key, 152. Punishments in the seventeenth cen- tnry, 341. Pym, John, 308. Qtjeen Anne of Denmark, 8. ■ Elizabeth, 2, 21.,-31, 38. • ■ Elizabeth of Bohemia, 8. Henrietta Maria, 267. Jane Seymour's tomb, 310. Mary II., 395. Mary of Modena, 392, 394. Mary, Queen of Scots, 24, : 33. Randolph, Letter to Earl of Leices- ter, 146. Rayleigh, Sir Walter, 16, 31, 44. Raynsford, Sir Richard, 171. Rebuilding of London, 345. ■ Regicides : — Axtell, Colonel, 237, 294. Barkstead, Colonel, 298. Bradshaw, President, 218, 221, 303. Broughton, Andrew, 222, 301. Oarew, 290. Cawley, William, 301 . Clements, Gregory, 292. Ciirbet, Miles, 298. Cromwell, Oliver, 27:1, 276, 30:!. Deane, CdIc^uoI, 306. Index. 41 n 00 Dorislaus, Dr., 217, 223, 302. Garland, Augustus, 257. Hacker, Colonel, 237, 242, 294. Harrison, Major-General, 213, 284. Hewson, Colonel, 305. Holland, Cornelius, 280. Hutchinson, Colonel, 293, 300. Ireton, 303. Jones, John, 292. Lisle, John, 222. Love, Nicholas, 301. Ludlow, Edward, 301. Martin, Henry, 223, 300. Mayne, Simon, 300. Okey, Colonel, 298. Peters, Hugh, 261, 290. Say, William, 222, 280, Scott, Thomas, 292. Scroop, Colonel, 292. Steel, 217, 302. Tomlinson, Colonel, 236; commis- sion to try, 282. Eodney, George, 68, 119. Eoundhead, 323. Royal Society, 188. ■ Charles, 307. James, 307. St. Lawbence (legend), 101. Salisbury Assizes, 380, 392. Sampson, or Simpson, the great witch, 135, 147. Say, William, 222. Schoppius, Gaspar, 10. Scott, Eev. Dr., 393. ■ , Sir Walter, demonology and witchcraft, 185. ' , Thomas, of Smeeth, Kent, 144. Second sight, belief in, 126. Seymour, Arabella, see Arabella Stuart. ■ , Edward, 38. ,William, see Arabella Stu- art. Shenston, Nicholas, 52. Shrewsbury, Earl of, 26. , Countess of, 42, 64. Sieve and sheers, 152. Sinclair, Sir Andrew, letters, 94, 97. Smith, Marie, 156. Somerset, Earl and Countess, 16. Sortilegium, 124. Spectral evidence, 161. Sports, 342. Squibb's gallery, 221. Stage, the, 328. Stanton, Robert, 151. Stapleton, Sir William, 392. Starkie, Rev. Mr., 39. Stigmata, 169. Steele, A. G.,to Parliament, 217, 302. Stoke.s, Job, 151. Strafford abandoned by Charles I., 205. Streets of London, 335. Stuart services, 196. Style, old and new, 206. Suffolk, Mary, Duchess of, 1. Sully, 47. Talbot, Edward, 76. • , Lady, 75. Tarbury, Nazareth, 151. Taunton Assizes (1685), 385, 406. Tethy's Festival, or Queen's Wake, 54. Theatres, 328. Timber, sale of crown, 14. Tobit, book of, 129. Tomlinson, Colonel, 220, 236. Torturing witches, 144. Touch-pieces, 354, 356, 361. Treasury minute (1685), 387. Tresilian, Sir Robert, 128. Turner, Mrs., 12, 15. Tutchin's case, 381, 392. TJdo Gall, 97. ViDOMS proposed by James I., 13. Yirginals, 102. Virtuoso, the, 333. Waad, Sir William, 65. Walters, Lucy, 367. Water supply, 336. Wells Assizes (1685), 384, 392. Westminster Hall, 221, 225. Whitehall, fire at, 12. Wilbraham, Sir Roger (letter to), 98. Winchester Assizes (1685), 372. Wiseman, William, 382. Witches and Wizards : — Allen, Joan, 165, 169. Bankes, 154. Barber, Mary, 175. Barley, Thomas, 151. Benet, John, 151. F f 434 Index. Berry, Agaes, 169. Berwick witches, 135. Bibb, Joan, 166. Bill, Arthur, 175. Bodenham, Alice, 165. Bolinbroke, Roger, 131. Bothwell, 149. Brook, Jane, 165. Brown, Agnes, 175. , William, 152. Charlemagne's mistress, 127. Oobham, Elinor, 131. Cox, Julian, 165. Cullender, Rose, 166. Douglas, Janet, 170. Dugdale, Richard, 164. Dulyne, Alinora, 152. Duny, Amy, 166. Dutch prophetess, 147. Edwards, Susannah, 173, 192. Ellyse, Joan, 169. Endor, witch of, 129. Essex witches, 161. Fian, als. Frain, John, 137. Flower, John, 158. , Margaret, 158. , Philippa, 158. Forman (astrologer), 12. Frome witch, 185. Grraham, Richie, 148. Gurdman, Margery, 131. Hannoker, Susan, 187. Hartley, Bdmond, 161. Hickes, Mary, 177. , Elizabeth, 177. Hopkins, Mathew, 169. Hunte, Joan, 169. Jenkenson, Helen, 175. Lancashire vvitches, 159. Lankester, Richard, 151. Lewis, Rev., 164. Lloyd, Temperance, 173, 192. Mackallum, Effie, 149. Morduck, Sarah, 180. Middlesex witches, 169. Napier, Barbara, 148. Newman, Elizabeth, 170. Newmarket witch, 160. Northampton witches, 175. Parfoothe, 152. Peacock, 150. Peacock, Elizabeth, 171, 191 . Pearbeok, Lady, 150. Persore, Mother, 152. Peterson, Joan, 165, 170. Philips, Mary, 175. Read, Simon, 150. Renfrew witches, 175. Rutter, Elizabeth, 169. Ryley, Josia, 170. Sampson, Agnes, 135, 147. Samuel, Agnes, 133. , Alice, 133. , John, 133. Shaw, Eleanor, 175. Smith, Marie, 156. Stevens, Maria, 173, 194. Stokes, Job, 151. Styles, EHzabeth, 166. Thompson, Agnes, 136. Tilling, Anna, 171, 191. Trefulaok, Stephen, 169. Trembles, May, 173, 192. Vaughan, Joan, 175. Weaoh, Christian, 150. Weir, Major, 175. Welland, Alice, 173, 192. Wenham, Jane, 175. White, John, 151. , Moll, 190. Witchall, Judith, 171, 191. Wood, Mary, 155. Young, Margaret, 173, 193. Witchcraft : — Bull against, 132. Confessions, 163. Demonologia, 138. Made a felony, 154. Modes of detection, 141. Of ecclesiastical cognizance, 124. 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