I frit)!/ & ^ ^ v ‘3B1 j N*r V'w 5s> A m> : X EJ; /Rr jfl WWlM : \ J lai' if /''/My yJMM |1\» ' W v®C’’W- J ■' 1 ""WiMHrT 'iir' / iWMrMfi'ir' >,J T"" 5jjpR^\ 'iii XW*Wk --t . / . o' s/-"' ; 2- j|(i-f ; ! j : fl‘ : tg|5taJVf p less heavily backed. Though his lordship’s colours, “ violet, green sleeves, white cap,” have not been seen out in recent years, he took an active part in the [administration of turf affairs, having as a member of [the Jockey Club served diligently on many important [committees. It was on his proposal that the Jockey Club passed the new rule which came into force at the beginning of the last “ illegitimate ” season, enabling [long distance flat races to be run during the winter under National Hunt rules. Ho edited portions of the Badminton Library, and was chief editor of the “ Ency- clopaedia of Sport, ” now appearing in parts. Various articles from his pen on sporting subjects have appearedi in magazines. Lord Suffolk possessed a celebratedl | picture-gallery. In politics he was a Liberal Unionist. Lord Suffolk is succeeded by his son, Henry Molyneux Paget, Viscount Andover, Lieut. 4th Batt. Gloucester- shire Re giment, who was born in 1877 .~£- FT- ' A ‘ "’'Jf! ]|| T e are requested to state that the late Lord Suffolk I .,$1 not, as was mentioned in our obituary notice yester-1 [day, edit portions of the Badminton Library ; he con- ! tributed to various volumes of the series .TLJ'ZjLAp J ? j Our New York Correspondent telegraphs that | Miss Marguerite Hyde Leiter, youngest daughter of the late Mr. Levi Z. Leiter, and of Mrs. Leiter, of Chicago and Washington, and sister of Lady Curzon, was married at noon yesterday to the Earl of Suffolk. The ceremony | took place at the residence of Mrs. Leiter In Washington, ! and wns attended only by the immediate relatives of the bride and a few friends of the bridegroom. The Rev. ' Rowland Cotton Smith, Rector of St. John's Protestant Episcopal Church, Washington, officiated. The bride was given away by her brother, Mr. Joseph Leiter. The Hon. Lionel Guest acted as best man. The Earl and Countess of Suffolk started later for New York, whence they will sail on Wednesday for England. " ' • ; , ■: "f RICE. On the lltli inst., at DanefieM, Kent, Major CHtrr vs A Rrms cnnT.'w.'.,. ..e o. „ i„x. rat V ° at her residence, Cowley Grovo, HOWARD.— On the 11th Nov.. ------ Uxbridge. Lady Fanny Howard, formerly Lady of Bedchamber to H.R.H. the Duchess of Kent. The death is announced of Lady Frances Margaret Howard, daughter of the 16th Earl of Suffolk. Lady Frances Howard, who was born iu 1817, was formerly Lady of the Bedchamber to the Duchess of Kent. She died on Sunday at her resi- | deu ce, Cowley-grove, Uxbridge. " ', u.. ! ~ v •' The funeral of Cady Frances Margaret Howard took place yesterday at Norwood Cemetery. The coffin containing the remains was conveyed by road from Cowley-grove, Uxbridge, being met at the cemetery gates by the Rev. W. Leveson, who officiated. Sir Michael Biddulph represented the Queeu. Among the chief mourners were the Earl of Suffolk and Berkshire, Lady Victoria Howard, the Hon. Cecil Howard, the Rev. the Hon. Frederick Dutto u, the Hon. Charles Dutton,’ and the Hon. Julia Duttou. Wreaths were sent by the Queen, Lady Victoria Howard, Colonel and Lady Isabella Atherley, Sir Redvers and Lady Buffer. Lord and Lady Sherborne, Susan Lady Sherborne, and others. ST. LEGKR..— On the 9th Aug., at Clarendon, Lowestoft. C-OT.ONEU John St. Lbgbr, of Park-bill, nr. Rotherham, York- shire, aeed_£2. Funeral at Ashtesd, Surrey, 4 p.m. to-day (Holi- day) , 14th. “JL. „ |v , j- r . |h A Cl V y«- latf jt'-* JTINCLFJt.— On the 11th Aug., at Eastbourne. Anna Sarah widow of the lata Francis Green Tinci.er, of King-stown. Co’ Dublin, and youngest daujrhtor of the late John Henrv Blennerhassett, of Tralee, Co. Kerry, aged 81. Irish papers, please copy. WICKHAM. On the’ 11th Ang-., 1905, at. West Mead, Dawlish Devon, Margahet Ann, widow of Benjamin Wickham R.n.’ and daughter of Capt. Robert Heriot Barclay, R.N.,in the 91st year Df her ape. J „ WRIGHT.—On the 11th Aug., at Hill Farm, Great, Bealings, Suffolk, Agnes Louisa, the beloved wife of Arthur W. Wa vv-.i ( formerly of Harlesden), aged 49. 1 A terrible fire, resulting in loss of life, occurred between Saturday night and Sunday morning at Headley Park, the property of Mr. J. Newton Mappin, of the arm of Mappin and Webb. A new wing had onlv recently been added 10 the original building, and it was the intention of Mr. Mappin and his friends to spend Christmas there, but this idea has been firstrated in the most unfortunate manner, for both the old building and the addition have been completely gutted, the only portion remaining being the outer walls and some scarred scaffold poles, which had beer, used by builders The house was in care of the house- keeper, an old and valued servant of Mr. Mappin, who had with her a younger servant as companion. The origin of the fire at present is unknown, and it can only now be attributed to overheating, large fires having been kept up to air the rooms. It is known that the housel teeper perished, although, up to late last even- ing. not a vestige of her remains could he found. The younger woman escaped from a window just in time to see the floor on which she had been standing col- lapse. and the bed on which the housekeeper was lying disappear. The girl jumped from the window upon a conservatory, and then slid from the roof to the ground. A strange part of the sad occurrence is that no alarm seems to have been raised until the place was a wreck, and the servant girl was found in a deplorable condition after she had been wandering about for two hours without clothing. She can give no account at present as to how the fire arose. Mr. Mappin gave a large sum of money for the estate, which he had pre- viously occupied on approval. The Press Association, telegraphing later, states that the premises and contents, which were very valu- able, were insured only a few days ago. It is now believed impossible to trace the origin of the fire. jounced of Miss Eltzabkth Walket bo remembered congratulation was sent to ^ b —j occasion of h er 102*1 aS °’ With natami jhbui 9 n‘ ^ f ° r Confirmed 1 itvr lujrd year. It ffl gracious message of c — I his Majesty the King on the c-~ Jy on May 8 last. About thre'e tenacity. of constitution, she Pneumonia, to which she at it left her much y pays'cal power. Miss I Shields, the daughter of n manufacturer of that tor huis Alice Balleny. She h Ur U9 WaS a PP ar ©ntly attention she received , nvahds, Aubort-park, Hig ve^ A 7 VlCT0ErA Mar yesterday atherres , deDc s t the age of 62. Lady daughter of the 17th Ear] t ^j^rAsbridesmaid,. 1 morning ao AT *!* 1 If- Ti* Sr *«'»“• * seveuth d Tester- s one of The marriage of Lord Ludlow, of Heywood, with Lady Howard de Walden was solemnized in St. Peter's Church, Baton-square, yesterday afternoon, when there was a large congregation. The bride was conducted up the church by her brother-in-law. Sir Kildare Borrowes, who gave her away, and was followed by four children. Master Ben and Miss Ursula Bathurst, and Master George and Miss Heather Powles. The Hon. Francis Curzon was best man. The bridegroom’s troop i of the Royal Wilts Imperial Yeomanry lined the aisle | during the service. The Rev. S. Dugdale, vicar of West- 1 bury, performed the ceremony, assisted by the Rev. E. I Powles, vicar of Snarlwell, Newmarket ; and Canon Fleming gave the address. Dr. Sheppard, Sub-Dean of the Chapels Royai, was prevented from officiating owing to his recent Severe illness. The reception was held at Seaford-house, Bel grave-square , where Lord Howard da Walden welcomed the following among other guests; — The j United States Ambassador and Mrs. Choate, the Duke ! and Duchess of Somerset, Viscount Doneraile, Eugenia Viscountess Esher, Lord E. Fitzmanxice, ALP., Lady Edward Churchill, Lord and Lady Inchiquin, Lord and Lady Robertson, Lord and Lady Barnard, Lord Wands- I worth. Lady Carson, the Hon. Lady Neeld, Lady Dickson- Poynder, General Sir Bevnn and Lady Edwards, Sir Joseph and Lady Wilkinson, Sir Massev and Lady Lopes, Mr. Evelyn Cecal, M.P., and the Hon. "Mrs. Evelyn Cecil, j and Mr. William Gillett. Later in the afternoon Lordjana I Lady Ludlow left for Paris. The Wiltshire Sessions Bar | Mess presented Lord Ludlow with a silver tankard with the inhabitants of Westbury, a silver bowl ; the -STONE.LO! t -nekton, JL, SXSSE? «aasa $$03 iSiSlof Chnr .Eric tin; ■rna'd, OxY E t died 1.99,3. • a natj Q-roarl Tr^ry, The Earl of Suffolk: and Berkshire died suddenly j yesterday after a few days’ illness, aged 65. Henry! Charles Howard, ISth Earl of Suffolk, Viscount Andover, 1 and Baron Howard of Charlton , and 11th Earl of Berk- I shire, was the eldest son of tha 17th Earl of Suffolk by Isabella, second daughter of the late Lord Henry Howard and niece of the 12th Duke of Norfolk. He was born on | Septem'>er 10, 1833, was educated at Harrow, and married in 1868 Mary Eleanor Lauderdale, fourth daughter of the late Hon. Henry Amelius Coventry. As Viscount Andover he sat in the Liberal interest for the old boroueh of Malmesbury, now disfranchised, the rank of Militia. He cover , „ , , non-commissioned officers and troopers of the Warminster ! Troop, Royal Wilts Imperial Yeomanry, a gold- mounted stick ; and the Westbury recruits, a* gold match- box. ~ i ' \ THHR LEY.— On t' ° 7th M i ch. a f Langnard Manor, Sbanklln, l . c Atherlby, of a daughter. Vi/ H W BEALB —On tbnSfcb March Inst.. at 59. TollingtoO-road, HoPo- Lend on. N.. the wife of THOMAS Hendlkson Beale, of a rom LONNOK.— On the 4th March, of Tillingbonme, Barnwood, Tnacester. the wife of George R. Bon*jOR, of a son. BUXTON.— On the 8th inst., at Ewell, the wife of CHARLES C. UXTOK. of a son. r’AIt FW.— On Monday, the 7!h Inst., at Aligarh, India, the wife 1 A . J. Carew, D.S.P., of a daughter. CRATG.— On the 6th March, a* Fort will! am Park, Belfast, the in numerous selling platers which ' Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 with funding from Getty Research Institute https://archive.org/details/somerecordsofashOOpage * S SZZ '^/&rs+s si Ss ^ sr / 1 ^/y^SSzSZ- s; ,Z C- ^ S //^- Z^L. \ss *£c <* 7&£*£ *S- ^ yy ^ ' Zr^ v^/t-/;/jt/ , it -.. ? .* >^4_ y^y zz*+ <^^t y^^y ** ±s yy£~~r' / &%s_ zzLy y^s'ss/y *y /Sn+syZst ,z c%y'z2-*7^ y^yzZ-^-^-i. ^zZzzj, y& 4z*^^z~- yj^yz y^^£ Z* / / /?^z y£* 7^^ ^ y^/Z ^'-c' _ /jv<£ SOME RECORDS OF ®{h ©state, AND OF ITS HOWARD POSSESSORS: WITH NOTICES (fclfovb, Castle Rising, Jefrens, stab Cjarltmt. “So SOON PASSETH IT AWAY, AND WE ARE GONE.” — PSALM XC. 9. NOT PUBLISHED. LICHFIELD : ALFRED CHARLES LOMAX, “THE JOHNSON’S HEAD.” 1873. LICHFIELD : PRINTED (i BY ALFRED CHARLES LOMAX, the Johnson’s head.” TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE ISABELLA CATHERINE MARY, COUNTESS OF SUFFOLK AND BERKSHIRE. Dear Lady Suffolk, If there be anything attractive in the ensuing pages, it is, in great measure, owing to the assistance and information which, in one shape or other, have been afforded me, through your instrumentality, from Charlton. To you, therefore, who are by lineage a Howard, and who, by marriage, as Countess of Suffolk and Berkshire, share the honours of those united Houses, it is due, on all grounds, that this compilation should be inscribed. Still, scarcely could I have ventured to ask you to grant me this much-desired privilege, had not the suggestion emanated from Her, — the last of the elder branch of the Berkshire race, — of whose respect and affection for yourself you cannot be in ignorance,' — to whom, under God, I owe all save birth ; to whom I am indebted for every advantage I have had in this world, and for more than a mother’s anxiety that I should live for the next. In token of Her deep regard for you, and in grateful acknowledgment of my own sense of your multiplied kindnesses, I dedicate such a Record as I have been enabled to prepare, of an Estate, the interest of whose history began, as it will end, with the race of Howard, — a race, which I earnestly pray, may be as illustrious in the future, as it has been famous in the past ; and abide in ever-growing worth and honours, prosperity, and peace, for ages after Ashtead shall recognise the long- established tie, no more. Believe me, dear Lady Suffolk, Your very sincerely obliged and faithful Servant, The Compiler. Elford Rectory, May the Ninth, 1873. NOTE. FF1HIS Volume, imperfect and deficient as it is, in many respects, could I never have been brought even into its present state, had the information been withheld from the compiler, which could only be obtained by the inspection of family papers, or the help which he sought from persons more skilled than himself in archaeological and genealogical science, been refused. He can only hope that no mistakes, ignorance, or carelessness, may have prevented him from making the most of the advantages, which great kindness and confidence have afforded to an unknown and inexperienced explorer of family history. To the Earl and Countess of Suffolk, and (through them, to the Reverend W. H. E. McKnight, of Lydiard Manour), the compiler is indebted for a knowledge of Charlton, its early history, and its former owners, which otherwise would have been unattainable. The Charlton Papers have proved a key to the mass of documents preserved at Elford and Levens. To the Marquis of Bath, and Lord Charles Thynne, and (through the kindness of the latter,) to the Reverend Canon Jackson, he desires to make very grateful acknowledgments, for the light reflected from Longleat, on the Jacobite Letters at Levens, and the correspondence between Lord Weymouth and Colonel Gralnne. By the frequent loan of valuable works on genealogy, and family history, from the Library at Blithfield, he has been helped by Lord Baciot to thread his way, through the bewildering difficulties and intricacies of the Howard Pedigree. And this has been a great addition to never-failing kindness. The Honourable and Reverend George Bridgeman, — himself, no mean genealogist, — has aided him much in his inquiries with reference to the race of Newport. He is greatly obliged to the Reverend the President of Magdalen College, Oxford, Dr. Bulley, for solving questions with respect to the residence of Henry Earl of Suffolk in that venerable House. VI NOTE. And, be desires especially to acknowledge the valuable aid afforded him by the laborious investigations of the Reverend G. J. Chester, at the British Museum, the Bodleian, and other kindred institutions. Mrs. Mundy, of Markeaton, has shown singular courtesy to an entire stranger, by supplying him with an elaborate Pedigree of, and valuable information with respect to, her Burdett ancestors, for which he had sought in vain among such County Histories as were within his reach. For these favours he begs to offer his respectful and cordial thanks. To another lady, — to whom, likewise, he was personally unknown, — Miss Childe, of Kinlet, he is under similar obligations. Her genealogical knowledge not only enabled her to supply him with Notes and Pedigrees connected with the Howards of Clun, and Blounts of Soddington, but she was good enough to point out, before it was too late, an error which, if uncorrected, would have made some pages of this book untrustworthy. To the Reverend G. F. Weston, Vicar of Crosby Ravensworth, his thanks are due both for information connected with Colonel Gralnne, and the Westmoreland Estates, and for permission, (of which he has gladly availed himself,) to copy so much as was necessary, of his exhaustive Paper on the History and Antiquities of Levens. To the courtesy of Charles H. Inge, Esq., he owes his acquaintance with the Pedigree of the Giffards of Chillington, which was indispensable in investigating the descent of the Howards of Hoar Cross. Finally, he desires to record here his obligations to some who are now beyond the reach of the poor expressions of human gratitude. From the “ Memorials of the Howard Family,” by the late Henry Howard, Esq., of Corby Castle, he has not only obtained a large amount of matter for which he was in search, — but has learned lessons, which have been of great service to him in the preparation of this Work, and which he hopes never to forget. There are not infrequent misprints among the dates of that very valuable work, and a few among the names, which, to some extent, mar its excellence ; yet Mr. Howard’s statements of fact will be found reliable always , and where lie does not enter into details, he points to the direction in which they may be lound. NOTE. Vll But what the writer desires to record here, is this, — (and he hopes that lie shall not he thought presumptuous, for venturing to say it,) — that having followed Mr. Howard, step by step, through great part of “the Memorials,” his admiration of the man has continued to increase, as he has gone along the difficult road trodden by him : and he can imagine no more perfect pattern to be followed in similar investigations, than is to be seen in the patient industry and painstaking, the entire truthfulness, the strict impartiality, the amiable forbearance, and the most thoroughly Christian and ever-present charity, of that chivalrous, high-minded gentleman, Mr. Henry Howard, of Corby. Again, affection and life-long esteem intensify the compiler’s desire to record his obligations to the late Reverend William Legge, the last, and worthily beloved Rector of Asiitead, for intelligence conveyed with respect to that place, most readily and unselfishly given, even after his painful and fatal illness had set in. And lastly, the compiler avails himself of the present opportunity to declare how much this Volume owes to the late Mr. Lomax, of Lichfield, — the kind friend of half a century, who united all the high honour and uprightness of the past age, to the energy, and professional skill of the present. With respect to that portion of this book, which passed under his eye, the venerable man, on the verge of fourscore and ten, bestowed as much care on the printing, and was as eager to make its appearance a credit to his establishment, as if he were still in all the vigour of early and enterprising manhood. The remainder of it does equal credit to his son and successor. To all, who, from first to last, have aided the compiler, by word or deed ; wdio have smoothed his difficulties ; and turned dry and weary toil into a labour of love, he tenders this expression of humble, but most hearty and abiding gratitude. TO THE FRIENDS TO WHOM THIS BOOK IS GIVEN. iie ensuing pages are an attempt to preserve, before changes, and the breaking asunder of old ties, shall have made such a record impossible, some History of a Place, where those, for whose use this book has been put forth, have spent happy days ; but which, inevitably, and before very long, will be to them but saddened memories of a cherished past, to which no future can bring compensating alleviations. The compiler proposes to give such an account of the Manor, Park, and Mansion of Asiitead, and of the Church lying within the Park, as he has been able to collect. And if what follows should prove meagre and unsatisfying, where a good deal of interesting matter might be fairly expected to appear, the excuse must be pleaded, that these pages have, of necessity, been written far away from the place which forms the main subject of them ; that the advancing years, and steadily increasing infirmities of the writer have admonished him that time is so pressing that there must be no delay ; that no abler hand could be found willing to undertake the work ; that the task was imposed on him by one to whom he could refuse nothing ; and that he believes that to those to whom the Ashtead of the past and present must, for the remainder of their days, be full of pleasant and affectionate associations, even a poor and imperfect memorial will be better than none. To them, as knowing the circumstances under which this Volume was written, he submits it very humbly, wishing with all his heart, that it were more worthy of. their perusal, and of the places and persons recorded in it; and desiring to adopt as his own, the words of one of old ; “ If I have done well, and as is fitting the story, it is that which I desired ; but if slenderly and meanly, it is that which I could attain unto.” ASIITEAD IN PRE-HISTORIC TIMES. ASHTEAD. It is of Ashtead in its connexion with the race of Howard that it is proposed to speak ; but some little notice of its antecedent history, and of the district in which it lies, will not, perhaps, be thought altogether out of place. Of the Surrey of pre-historic ages the remains are unusually scanty, — a circum- stance, in part attributable to the destruction of such things in the vicinity of a metropolis like London, but chiefly, to the fact, that, while the adjoining county, Hampshire, abounds in such vestiges of the past, Surrey, so far as is known, never possessed any remarkable remains of primeval times. Some of the higher hills, indeed, are crested with camps, which were, probably, the strongholds, in turn, of the successive occupiers of the district ; but there is no reason to believe that its open heaths, commons, or the ridge of the chalk-downs ever maintained a large population. Old Fuller’s often-quoted description of the soil as “very hungry, and barren” was probably more true in earlier days than even in his own time : at any rate, Surrey never found so much favour in the eyes of the Roman Conquerors of Britain as was the case with the neighbouring counties. It is true that when Julius Caesar was pursuing Cassivelaunus, he crossed the Thames within the limits of the county, — whether the disputed ford was at Fowey Stakes, or at Kingston: and, in later times, the name of Runnymede, and the circumstances which there befel, have connected Surrey with events of world-wide interest ; but these were the accidents of the hour, and how important soever their ultimate consequences, they left no visible memorials on the spot : the only monument of an extensive character, traces of which are still discernible for many miles, — a Roman road, — is one which connects itself with the subject of these pages, — Ashtead. b 2 ASHTEAD IN PRE-HISTORIC TIMES. And when we recall how mercilessly the most interesting relics of the past have been dealt with, — (even of late years, since Archaeology has become a science, and the public voice has been raised again and again in protest against the mutilation or destruction of National antiquities) ; — when we remember that, almost in the present century, the stone coffin of the greatest Monarch that ever sat upon the throne of England, — Alfred, — the Saint, — the Scholar, — the Hero, — the Law-giver, — a saint without superstition, — a scholar without ostentation, — a hero who thought only of duty, and not of glory, — a law-giver, whose only care was for the benefit of his people, — the most perfect character in all the range of history, — that the sepulchral remains of Alfred, with those of his Queen Alswitha, and his son Edward the Elder, were broken up to mend the roads, and their contents tossed into a pit in the garden of the County Bridewell* at Winchester, it would seem to be a happy accident, rather than anything else, that the remains, even of so late a date as the Roman occupation of Britain, are still preserved to us.f A quern, and a few celts have been, so far as is known to the writer, the only evidences yet discovered of pre-Roman occupancy of the Ashtead district. It has been already stated that Surrey has few Roman remains. The whole county, however, was intersected by the Roman road which led from London to Chichester (Regnum). The Ermine Street, commencing at the Milliare, in what are now called S. George’s Fields, passed through Clapham, Tooting, Merton, Ewell, and Epsom, to Ashtead. Thence proceeding, in a nearly southerly direction across Mickleham Down, (its course being still plainly visible) it passed to Dorking, and so towards Guildford and Farnham. The “ Stane Street ” (or Stone Street) “ Causeway,” — a name frequently, but incorrectly, given to the ancient road 'which passes the outskirts of Ashtead Park, — * It was built on the site of' the Abbey of Hyde, — the second of that name, — to which, in the time of Henry I., the royal tombs of Alfred, and many of his successors were transferred. The slab, bearing the name of Alfred, is now preserved at Corby Castle. Almost the only instance that can be quoted of reverence shewn by English excavators to the memory of departed greatness occurred at Lewes. When the railway was made which passes directly over the site of the Church of the Priory, founded at the instigation of Archbishop Lanffanc, by William de Warrene, the first Norman Earl of Surrey, and Gundrada his wife (the Conqueror’s daughter), the remains of the Earl and Countess were discovered ; and the cists in which they were contained were translated to the neighbouring Church of Southover, where a small Norman Mortuary Chapel was built by subscription in 1847 to contain them. The tomb- stone of Gundrada, with its remarkable inscription, was, after strange vicissitudes, when nearly 300 years had come and gone, re-united to the relics which once slept beneath it. The cists mentioned above were not the original recipients of the bodies. t “ The devastation of the Sixteenth Century, and the brutal indifference of the Eighteenth, have swept over Hyde, and Glastonbury, and Waltham, and Crowland, and Evesham, and in their destroyed and ruined choirs no memory is left of Alfred, and Edgar, and Harold, and Waltheof, and Simon of Montfort,” Freeman’s Norman Conquest. — Yol. iii. p. 520. ASHTEAD IN ROMAN TIMES. 3 really commences at Dorking, and passing through the Churchyard there, may he traced through the Parish of Ockley, till it enters Sussex, in its southward progress to Chichester. Of the Celtic tribes, which, in primeval times, are supposed to have occupied the southern districts of England, we know nothing. The Belgae, who were later invaders, possessed themselves generally of what are now Sussex and Hampshire and the adjoining districts, hut were themselves mastered hy the Romans, under Vespasian. Probably, most of the intrenchments and encampments and lines of antient fortifi- cation, which are still traceable in the Southern counties (especially the Wansdyke) may be referred to these earliest occupiers of the soil. But the Romans, here, as elsewhere, turned the earthworks which they found, to good account, whenever their position rendered them a convenience. And such was certainly the case with regard to Asiitead. About half a mile from that portion of the Roman road which runs outside of, and close to, the western side of Ashtead Park, there was an entrenchment, which is thought to have been occupied by a Roman villa, or such-like building, and which, at a much later period, became the site of Ashtead Church and Churchyard. In shape, a parallelogram, it was surrounded by a ditch or fosse, which is still visible on two sides ; and persons yet (1872) living can remember a third well-marked portion of the inclosure. Some years ago, and again recently, in digging a grave in the south-eastern corner of the burial-ground, those employed in the work came upon a mass of concrete ; upon another of charcoal ; and also to a passage dug in the solid chalk, leading to the back of the Roman fosse, and, apparently, the entrance to a hypocaust. Roman tiles and bricks are found intermingled with flint in all parts of the Church-walls, — the tiles being frequently ornamented with rectangular markings. These tiles are especially conspicuous in the construction of a small window on the north side of the Church, (now walled up), the round head of which is turned with them. Some of a larger size than common have been noticed projecting on the north and south sides of the Church, suggesting the idea that they may have been originally used as ties to some portion of the edifice which is now removed. Fragments of tile were discovered while the Church was under repair, some time since, stamped with a representation of a deer-hunt, or it may be, of wolves attacking a stag.* A four-sided * A woodcut of this tile is given (Vol. iv. p. 396), in Brayley’s History of Surrey. It represents a fragment only, with a few letters of a hopelessly imperfect inscription. Apparently, this tile, before being placed in the kiln, should have been cut through lengthways ; for it is divided into two parallel portions 4 ASHTEAD IN ROMANO-BRITISH TIMES. hollow tile of Roman make, (such as is not unfrequently found in hypocausts), was, for many years, used in the Church as a depository for the Prayer Books of a family. Further; at a distance of a mile and a half from the Church, and in that portion of the estate called Ashtead Forest, another earthwork is traceable ; — in shape, a very irregular square, — (three sides being not far from equal, but the fourth much contracted), — which, having served its purpose to one race of occupants, as a place of defence, served their successors, in more recent times, as the site of a kiln for pottery. The clay found here is so well suited for the purpose, as still to be used for making tiles, flower pots, and the like. At a distance of 300 yards from the earthwork, and close to what is called the “ flag pond,” and again, in that part of the Forest, known as “Newton Wood,” (some 250 yards to the right of the pond), are places where fragments of Roman pottery are frequently found. Moreover, silver coins, — apparently struck at some Romano-British mint, — and therefore at no very early epoch of the Roman occupation of Britain, have been meet with, from time to time, in this locality.* * We arrive, then, at the conclusion that, in pre-historic, Roman, and Romano-British times, Ashtead was no desolate heath, or uncleared forest, but that, in close proximity to a great military road, there were earthworks ; and that within the limits of one, at any rate, of these intrenched places, some human dwellings existed. The place, it may be, was too insignificant to have a name of its own, or even to have been known beyond the immediate neighbourhood ; yet, as time went on, it would be recognized as a locality where there were human dwellings. It was a place of abode, and, as such, would be designated by our Saxon forefathers as “ Styd,” “ Sted,” or “ Stede.” “ Stead,” as a termination, is not, comparatively speaking, common, like “ham,” or “ton.” Of the many thousand parishes in England, the writer finds but about seventy, the names of which have “ stead ” for their final syllable. Where it occurs, the presumption is that an aggregation of huts of the “ bordarii,” or the lowest class of husbandmen, grew up, in course of time, around the original “ homestead,” as we by a double line of cord, the animals being 1 so arranged as that while, in the upper part, they are in their natural position, in the lower, the same groups are repeated with their heads downwards, — the feet in each relief approximating the divisional line. So strange an arrangement could hardly have been intended to be permanent : if intersected, each half tile might have formed a narrow moulding for a cornice, or similar kind of ornament. * Those described to the writer, (for he has not seen them) are represented as bearing a coarsely executed head, with the word roma in the exergue for the obverse: on the reverse a quadriga, with, as it should seem, the common type of Victory, for its occupant. ASHTEAD IN TEUTON TIMES. should still call it; and so the name was retained for the hamlet, village, or town, which was originally bestowed on a single dwelling. Perhaps, however, it may be well to remind the reader that the term “ stead ” gives, by its very existence, its testimony to a series of sweeping revolutions. When the Roman had done the work for Britain which Providence had allotted him, he was superseded by other invaders. No authentic record remains of the slow and gradual progress by which the various bodies of Teuton immigrants, took possession of Britain. Traces are still recognizable of powerful struggles between the invaders and the invaded, at various places and times, but the definite facts which emerge from the darkness of the past are rare and fragmentary. One most observable feature, which resulted from the migrations of the tribes of North Germany, — Angles, Saxons, and Frisians, — to the shores of Britain, was this, that they formed settlements, of a very peculiar character, all over England ; but chiefly, of course, in the Eastern and Southern districts. More than a thousand of these settlements retain, to the present hour, the name of the first settler. Such settlement, consisting of a portion of arable and pasture land, usually bounded by forest, was called a “Mark.” It was a plot of land, on which a greater or smaller number of Freemen settled, for purposes of joint cultivation, and for the sake of mutual profit aud protection. Such Marks were made inviolable by the sanctions of Religion ; it was Sacrilege to remove a land -mark. The head of each Mark was the chief of a tribe, — the head of a family, — the hero of a fight, — as the case might be ; and from him the Mark took its name. Like the Saints of Cornwall and Wales, whose only record is now to be found in the names of the Churches dedicated to their honour, (S. Clether, S. Edren, S. Kew, S. Teath, and the like), so of the greater part of these once well-known leaders no memorial is left, save in the designation of some little country village ; — though, here and there, some name occurs of celebrated men whose memory still keeps green. Thus, as Mr. Kemble has shewn in his admirable work on the Anglo-Saxons, the Harlings and Wselsings, names of note among the German and Scandinavian races, and Billing, the progenitor of the royal house of Saxony, have given a permanent designation to more than one locality in England. The Harlings, for instance, (in Anglo-Saxon Harlingas) to Harling in Norfolk and Kent, and Harlington in Bedfordshire and Middlesex : the Wadsings are recognizable at Walsingham, M olsingham, and Woolsingham : the Billings, at Billinge, Billingbear, Billingham, Billinghoe, Billinghurst, Billingden, Billington, Billingsgate, &c. Ordinarily, to the name of the first Head of the Mark or settlement, a termination is added defining the character of the locality, — “hurst,” — “ham,” — “wick,” — 6 ASHTEAD IN SAXON TIMES. “ ton,” — “ stead,” and so forth ; but occasionally, the name stands alone, as (among the instances quoted above), Harling, and Billinge. So likewise, Tooting was the Mark of the Totingas, and Woking of the Wocingas; and many similar cases might be produced. It would seem that Ashtead was, originally known as “ Stede,” that is the home- stead. — Whence came the prefix ? Most probably, as it seems to the writer, it took its name, (as Esher undoubtedly did), from the character of the timber-trees which predominated in its neighbourhood, — for, in Domesday, it is called “ Aissele,” that is the Ash-wood. But, possibly, it may be that, as Eashing (near Peper-Harow, in the same county) was the Mark of the (Esc-ingas, who had settlements in Essex, Somerset, and Sussex, as well as Surrey, (some of which have “ Ash ” for their first syllable), so Ash-stead, may have been the stede of some of the same tribe ; for it occasionally happened that, — ns in the cases of Finsbury, Walsham, and others, the adjunct of place is substituted for that of tribe, — “ing,” f.e., ingas ” denoting descendants. But such matters as these must be left in the obscurity in which they are found ; — “ urgentur. . .longa nocte ” ; — and it is seldom that any sufficient gleam of light falls on the dimness of departed ages to dispel the shadows which have over-spread them, or to make things clear which have once passed into oblivion. All we can say with certainty as respects Ashtead is this, — that before the Norman Invasion, it was among the vast possessions of Earl Harold, of whom it was held by the Saxon Turgis. At that period, — so the Domesday record states, — it was assessed at nine hides, — (a measure of land, varying largely at different periods and places, but usually reckoned as being as much as would maintain a family, — some rating it at sixty, some at eighty, some at one hundred acres) : an unspecified amount of arable land : in demesne (f.e., woodland) two carucates, — probably some fifteen hundred or two thousand acres. Three and thirty villans, and eleven bordars held fourteen hundred acres.* Of meadow land there were four acres. — It further appears that, in the Reign of the Conqueror, it was worth (according to modern estimate), some seven hundred pounds of yearly value. * In Domesday, the Arable land is estimated in Carucates: Pasture in Hides: Meadow in Acres. The Carueate varied like the Hide. In the time of Richard I. it was as low as 60 acres : in the time of Edward I. as high as 180 acres. In the twenty- third year of Edward III., a Carueate in Burcester contained 112 acres, — at Middleton 150 acres. — The “ villani ” were farmers, paying 1 rent, and having stock of their own. — The “ bordarii,” — (distinct from “ villani,” and “ servi,” i.e. slaves), had a hord, or cottage, for their own uses, with a small allotment of land, for which they paid in poultry, eggs, and “ such small deer.” ASHTEAD IN NORMAN TIMES. 7 It is to be presumed that Ashtead shared the fate of all the other possessions of the unfortunate son of Earl Godwin, and, indeed, of all the other great Saxon land-owners. The rules of William’s Government were oppression, exaction, confiscation, by the bondao;e or the death, of the noblest in the land. When Harold fell, his many manors and lordships were retained by the Crown, or divided among the followers of the Conqueror. As Croydon was allotted to Lanfranc, so Ashtead fell to the share of the man who gained for himself a deadlier measure of hatred from the English nation than even the stern, relentless, William himself, — his cruel half-brother, Odo. William, as we all know, was the base-born son of Arlette, (or rather Iderleva), the tanner’s daughter of Falaise, who, upon the death of her paramour, Duke Robert, became, by another connexion, the mother of two sons. One of these was Odo, Bishop of Baycux. It is a strange thing that William, who appointed to the See of Canterbury, three Archbishops, two of whom may be fearlessly pronounced the two greatest in the long list of illustrious men who have filled the Patriarchal Throne of S. Augustine,— namely, Lanfranc and S. Anselm, — (all three, by the way, drawn from the same nursery of Saints, the world-famous Abbey of Bee), — should have nominated Odo, a mere child of twelve years of age, to the Bishopric of Bayeux, which he held for fifty years, — with a name, for the greater part of that time, at once famous and infamous, on both sides of the Channel, — famous as the re-builder of the Cathedral of Bayeux, — (where portions of his work are still to be seen) ; and as a bountiful encourager of learning, and of piety in all, save himself: and yet so infamous, as an oppressor of the conquered English, (when he followed William to rule as an Earl , in England), that his career of wrong was at last cut short by his royal brother, himself, who, harsh, and unscrupulous as he was, took no pleasure in wanton and gratuitous cruelty. Odo, when gorged to the full, as one should have thought, with honours and emoluments, (for he was Governor of Dover, and Earl of Kent,* Chief Justice, and Lord Treasurer), had actually seized five and twenty manors belonging to Archbishop Lanfranc, when, hearing a prediction that the next Pope would be named Odo,f set * 1st of William I. See Banks’s Baronage. — Vol. iii. p. 411. t There are not many subjects, more inexplicable and mysterious, connected with the superstitions of the past, than the frequent fulfilment of predictions, traceable to no one source, but well authenticated to have universal possession of the popular mind, long before their accomplishment. Commonly, (like the vaticinations of Macbeth’s witches) they have led to such hideous crimes, as to create the feeling that they must have come from beneath, not from above. They have proved irresistible snares to some evil-doer, — “ Ut lapsu graviore ruat.” But what was the actual origin of each ? Perhaps of all the remarkable 8 ASHTEAD IN NORMAN TIMES. to work at once to try and bring about its fulfilment in bis own person. He was so wealthy that he believed himself able to purchase the Papacy, and, as the first step thereto, bought himself a stately palace at Rome, to which he designed to carry all his treasures. Having provided ships, and collected a body of troops, (which he put under the command of Hugh Lupus, Earl of Chester), for the protection of himself and his money, he set sail. But he had reckoned, as the saying is, without his host. William was in Normandy, but the oppressive measures of Odo and of the Regency of which he was a member, created a state of things in England which compelled the Conqueror, in no bland humour, to make a hasty return. Odo had set sail, and put out to sea, when William, in his passage from Normandy, met him in mid-channel, and inquired what he was doing there ; and forthwith made short work with his brother’s visions. He took possession of the vessels and cargo, and setting Odo ashore in the Isle of Wight,- — (seizing him with his own hands) — summoned a council to determine what should be done with him. But that assembly, agitated alike with terror at the dire wrath of the King, and with anticipations of future revenge on the part of the Bishop, would pronounce no judgment. William however, was not to be impeded in his will by an obstacle of that kind. He at once condemned Odo to perpetual imprisonment in the Castle of Rouen, and confiscated his effects. The Bishop declared that no one but the Pope had a right to judge him. “Be it so,” quoth William, — “ I do not judge you as Bishop of Bayeux, but as Earl of Kent.” And so virulent was he against him, — (it was a family which carefully nursed its animosities), that he swore never to set him at liberty ; and held to his vow so stiffly, that, even when he knew his own end to be at hand, it was with difficulty he was prevailed upon to release his brother. Among all the awful restitutions exacted by the terrors of that most awful death-bed, this was the most unwilling, and the most justifiably so, — for the clear judgment of the dying man told him, that to release Odo, (the very type of rapacity and lust, the oppressor of the people, and the robber of God), would be to bring misery and ruin upon thousands. He yielded, however, at last, and re-instated him in his possessions, of which he was again deprived in the days occasions, on which these so-called prophecies came into play, none are more remarkable than those two which were connected with the filling up of the vacant Papacy. In each case the prediction was verified, but against the hopes of the persons who rested on them. The expectation of the Bishop of Bayeux was grounded on the rumour that Odo, (Otho, or Otto) would be the name of Hildebrand’s Gregory VII. successor. One of that name did succeed him ; but it was Otto of Ostia, — the well-known Urban II. (1088 — 1099.) So, at a later period, the prediction spread far and wide that the successor of Leo X., would be a Hadrian ; and the end was that Hadrian of Castello sought the life of Leo, while Hadrian of Utrecht became his ultimate successor: — but see Freeman, N. C., Vol. iv. p. 081. ASHTEAD IN NORMAN TIMES. 9 of the Red King, for espousing the cause of Robert Duke of Normandy, instead of that of Rufus, as heir to the British throne. The fact is, that, throughout his turbulent career, Odo shewed himself far more fitted to hold a warrior’s mace, than a Bishop’s staff; and the end was that, upon his release, he joined the Crusade, and found a grave at Palermo, A.D. 1099. The Domesday Book records that Ashtead was held by the Canons of Bayeux of Bishop Odo, — just as the same volume shews that three of his Norman retainers, (whose names are saved from utter obscurity, by their appearance on the Bayeux tapestry, as having landed with him and his brother at Hastings, — Turold, Vital, and Wadard, “ homo episcopi ”) held lands of him elsewhere. This system of sub-letting (so to call it) saved the Norman intruders an infinite amount of trouble. They could well afford to let their lands at an easy rate, and the “middlemen,” as they would now be called, took care to wring the last farthing out of the unhappy Saxons. Few things in the history of the Norman Conquest are more remarkable than the smallness of the number of persons to whom the forfeited lands throughout the whole of England were allotted. It will be remembered that Sussex, Kent, and Surrey, were the first districts thoroughly subjugated by the invaders. And, as these Counties comprise many estates that belonged to Harold, his family, and adherents, they suffered more in proportion, by William’s merciless confiscations, than the rest of England. The whole of Surrey was the allotted territory of forty-one owners, of whom only six were Saxons. In the whole of Domesday, (which does not include four northern Counties), there are only six hundred named proprietors. To his son-in-law, William, Earl of Warenne, the Conqueror gave no fewer than two hundred and ninety-eight Manors. As regards the fortunes of two Manors, of which frequent mention will be made in the following pages, Ashtead and Castle Rising, it is interesting to note that having been both held by Bishop Odo, and then passed into the hands of separate possessors for six centuries, are now (1872) held again by one individual. The connexion of Ashtead with Bayeux was a civil, not an ecclesiastical arrange- ment, — that is to say, it was never in the condition of other manors in this country which were permanently attached to Alien Priories abroad,* — (as Tooting, for instance, long known as Tooting-Bec, was held by the Norman Abbey of that name, to which it was given by Richard Fitz-Gilbert.) * There were lands in Ashtead attached to a conventual establishment at home. “ Prior’s Farm, in Little,” (i.e. lower) “ Ashtead,” belonged to Merton Abbey. C 10 ASHTEAD, UNDER WARENNES, AND DE MONTFORTS. Upon the disgrace and dispossession of Odo, the Crown granted the Manor of Aslitead to William de Warenne, Earl of Guarine or Warenne,* in Normandy, the husband of Gundrad or Gundrada, mentioned above, the Conqueror’s daughter. This Norman noble was created Earl of Surrey by William Rufus ; and died A.D. 1088, possessed of more than 200 lordships in different Counties. Through his son, the Earldom passed- to his grandson, the last heir male : but his daughter, Isabel, married, first, William de Blois, (a natural son of King Stephen) ; and secondly, Hameline Plantagenet, (a natural son of Geoffry, Earl of Anjou, — half-brother to King Henry II.) William de Blois succeeded to the Earldom of Surrey and Warenne, in right of his wife Isabel, and bore the titles, in addition, of Earl of Boulogne and Morteyn ; he was also Lord of Norwich, and of Pevensey. On his decease, without issue, in 1160, the King for some time retained the dignities and estates in his own hands, but on the marriage of the Earl’s widow, Countess Isabel, with Hameline Plantagenetf the Earldom of Surrey was revived in his person. Three Plantagenets followed, in their respective generations, before all passed in the female line to Richard Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel, son of Alice, sister and heir of the second John Plantagenet. In the time of the second of these generations, the first John Plantagenet, (who married Alice, sister of Almeric, or Aymer de Valence), we are brought to the days of Edward I., who succeeded to the throne in 1272. Seven years afterwards, — among the “ Quo Warranto” trials at Guildford, was one which shewed that Ashtead then belonged to the family of He Montfort, — John de Montfort claiming free-warren there, and the right being admitted. Nevertheless, a fresh grant was obtained in 1293 by John de Montfort, who, dying three years after, the “ Inquisitio post mortem ” shewed that the Manor had been held of the Earl of Warenne in soccage, and that there was then a dwelling-house there, with all necessary appurtenances. * Mr. Freeman, quoting an article in the Archaeological Journal, by Mr. Stapleton (Yol. iii. p. 6) says that “ William de Warenne took his name from a fortress by the Northern Varenne, which has since changed its name for that of Bellencombre.” t This Hameline is said to have contrived the murder of his nephew, Drogo, Earl of Brittany, in order to succeed to that dignity. In atonement for this crime his confessor sent him to Jerusalem, attended only by two servants ; one of whom was to lead him with a halter round his neck to the Holy Sepulchre ; the other to strip and whip him there, like a common malefactor. Broom, “genet,” — (genista), says Brooke in his Catalogue of Honour, “ being the only good shrub for whipping, in Palestine, he was smartly disciplined with it, and from the instrument of his chastisement, got the nickname (then so common an adjunct) of Plantagenet.” — See Banks’s Ext. Baronage. — Yol. iii. p. G90. DE MONTFORTS. 11 The name of De Montfort is familiar to every reader of English Mediaeval History.* Robert I., King of France, who died A.D. 1030, was the father of an illegitimate son called Almeric, or Amaury, to whom he gave the town of Montfort, (which still bears the name “ Montfort- Amaury.”) From this place Almeric assumed, and * The race of De Montfort was so illustrious in its alliances, and so intimately connected with English History, that the reader will not he sorry to have the genealogical memoranda which will be found below set before him. They are almost wholly taken from the tabular view, which will be found at p. 45, of Mr. Blaauw’s very valuable record of “ the Barons’ Wars.” I. The children of Simon, Eighth Count, (grandson of Simon the Bald, by the heiress of Fitzparnel, Earl of Leicester, — High Steward of England) were, 1. Almeric, Count d’ Evreux. Died about 1224. 2. Simon, Ninth Count de Montfort. Earl of Leicester, 1206. Banished rebel, 1208. In command against the Albigenses, 1209. Killed at Toulouse, 1218. — Married Alice, daughter of the Sire de Montmorency, Constable of France. 3. Guy, a Crusader. 4. Robert, killed, with his brother, at Toulouse, 1218. 5. Bertrada, married to Hugh, Earl of Chester. Mother of Earl Ranulph, who died in 1231, having had a grant of the forfeited estates of the rebel Earl of Leicester. II. The children of the above Simon (Earl of Leicester, and Ninth Count de Montfort) were, 1. Almeric (Atmer) Tenth Count de Montfort, knighted 1213; Constable of France, in succession to his grandfather de Montmorency, 1231. Crusader, 1238. Prisoner in Palestine 1241. Died at Otranto, 1241. Married, 1222, Beatrice, daughter of Count de Vienne. Their son, John, renounced all English claims, 1248. 2. Guy, (a Crusader) Count de Bigorre, by his marriage with Petronilla, heiress of that house, in 1216. He was slain at Castelnauderi in 1220. His widow lived till 1251, surviving four other husbands. 3. Robert, died unmarried, 1226. 4. Simon Montfort, (born about 1200) became Earl of Leicester, on the cession of his brother Almeric, 1232. Commanded the Barons’ Army at Lewes, 1264; killed at Evesham, and his body mutilated with shameful indig’nities, 1265. Married, January 7th, 1238, the Princess Eleanor, daughter of King John (born 1212.) — She was widow of William, Earl of Pembroke. 5. A daughter, in treaty of marriage to a son of the King of Arragon, 1210. 6. A daughter, married 1217, to Ademar Poictou. III. The children of Simon Montfort, the great Earl of Leicester, and Princess Eleanor, were, 1. Henry, named after his sponsor, King Henry III. ; killed at Evesham, 1265. Buried at Evesham. 2. Simon, prisoner at Northampton, 1264; defeated at Kenilworth, 1265. Banished. 3. Guy, wounded at Evesham, 1265. Entered the service of Count d’ Anjou, in Italy, — having escaped from his prison at Dover. Six years after the Battle of Evesham, these two brothers, Simon and Guy de Montfort, — (it was in Lent, 1271) — being then at Viterbo, murdered their cousin Prince Henry of England, as he knelt before the altar, in the Cathedral there, in revenge for the slaughters, and indignities of Evesham : “ Tu n’eus pas pitie de mon pere et de mes freres,” were the words which accompanied Guy’s last, of the innumerable stabs, with which every part of the Prince’s body was disfigured. 12 DE MONTFORTS. transmitted to liis posterity, the name “ De Montfort.”* * It was a son of this Almeric, Hug'll by name, who accompanied the Conqueror to England, and fought by his side at Hastings. He was commonly known as “ Hugh with the heard,” the Normans, at that time being usually shaved. He was afterwards appointed, with Fitz-Osborne, Earl of Hereford, and Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, to administer justice throughout the kingdom : and his services were not ill recompensed, seeing that he was put into possession of no fewer than one hundred and fourteen forfeited manors, in Kent, Essex, Norfolk, and Suffolk. His life came to an end in a duel with Walkeline de Ferrers : but he left behind him a son of his own name, Hugh, who became a Monk in the Abbey of Bee, — not, however, before he had been twice married. By his first wife, he had two sons, both of whom died without issue. By his second, he had two daughters ; — the eldest, Alice, married Gilbert de Gaunt, Earl of Lincoln, (nephew to Queen Matilda, the wife of the Conqueror) to whom she bore a son, Hugh, who, as heir to his mother’s vast possessions, assumed her maiden name. The second daughter^ was the wife of Simon de S. Lyz, Earl of Huntingdon. This Hugh, (known as Hugh de Montfort the fourth) married Adeline, daughter of Robert de Bellomont, Earl of Mellent and Leicester, by his second wife Elizabeth, daughter of Hugh, the great Earl of Vermandois, (third son of Henry I., King of France, — great grandson of Hugh Capet.) He left two sons, Robert, who is believed to have died without issue, and Thurstan, who built Beldesert Castle, (near Henley, County of Warwick), the chief seat of the family for a long period. Thurstan de Montfort was succeeded by his son Henry : and Henry by another Thurstan, who died in the last year of King John’s reign (1216) leaving his son Peter then a child. 4. Almeric, a Priest ; Treasurer of York, 1265 ; taken prisoner by Edward I., 1273 ; kept in custody at Corfe and elsewhere, for many years. (He was suspected of privity to the Viterbo murder.) Ultimately, set free and banished, 1283 ; he renounced the Priesthood, at Rome ; became a Knight, and died soon after. 5. Richard, of him little is known. He seems to have died abroad, young- and unmarried. 6. Eleanor, shared her mother’s banishment, at Montarg-is : married in 1279, Llewellyn, Prince of Wales. See also Dugd: Bar: and Nichols’ Leicestershire. * The authorities for this abstract of De Montfort history, are Dug-dale, Banks, Blaauw, and Clifford’s History of Tixall. f Heylyn (Help to Eng. His.) calls this lady, Alice, and makes her the only daughter ; but then he ignores the second Gilbert de Gaunt (Ghent) altogether, and is uncertain whether the third Earl of that name was married or not. The writer here follows Banks in preference to Dugdale : but he has not found the second daughter’s name. DE MONTFORTS. 13 But this child became that famous Peter de Montfort, who, for some years was in high favour with Henry III., and was employed by him in many offices of high trust, and emolument, both in peace and war, — attending the Sovereign into France, — • marching with Prince Edward into Wales, — made Warden of the Marches, and Governor of Castles not a few. In after years, however, upon the breaking out of the Barons’ Wars, he fell (and not unjustly) under suspicion, and in 1262 was prohibited by the king from embattling his Castle at Beldesert. It will be in the reader’s memory that when the Barons met at Oxford (1258) they obliged the king to agree to a treaty by which twenty-four of their body, had authority given them to reform all abuses. Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester,* had taken the lead in the Rebellion, and now placed his kinsman Peter among the twenty-four. I The Battle of Evesham (May 4th, 1265) put an end to the confederacy of the Barons; j: but they achieved a work, the results of which we feel beneficially, to the present hour. Peter de Montfort was among those who fell in the battle. By a very merciful decree, known as the “ Dictum de Kenilworth,” the property of the De Montforts, forfeited by their treason, was restored to some of them (though others were specially excluded, by the decree) ; and the greatest part of it, as will be seen * Earl Simon, Lord High Steward, was husband of King- John’s daughter Eleanor, sister of Henry III. f The writer does not feel any certainty as to the degree of relationship between Peter and Simon de Montfort (the Earl) ; hut they seem to have been near kinsmen, though Mr. Blaauw speaks of the families as distinct. His statement with respect to Peter, — (apparently drawn from Dugdale) — is as follows : “Hugh de Bastenburgh, a Norman, had grants of 28 lordships in Kent, 10 in Essex, 51 in Suffolk, and 19 in Norfolk. His gTandson took the name of De Montfort. Peter’s father, Thurstan, held 12ijr knights’ fees (including Whitchurch, Wellesborne, and Beldesert), and built the Castle of Henley-in- Arden. Peter had been ward to Peter de Cantilupe, and married, in 1229, Alice daughter of Henry de Alditheley, by whom he had : — I. Peter, who recovered the estates, by the Kenilworth decree, from forfeiture. Died 1287. His son John was with Edward I. in his wars, but this branch was extinct in the next generation. II. William, married Agnes Bertram de Mitfort. Killed 1265. III. Robert, married a daughter of the Earl of Warwick.” t Simon de Montfort, and his eldest son Henry, fell gallantly fighting, and, together with them, many men of mark, — Peter de Montfort, Hugh Despenser (then Chief Justice of England) Ralph Basset, of Drayton, Thomas de Astley, William de Mandeville, John de Beauchamp, Guy Baliol, Roger de S. John, Robert Tregoz, and many others. — Of the Montforts, Robert of Gloucester thus writes : “ Ther was first Simon de Montfort aslawe” (slain), “alas! And Sir Henry his son, that so gentil knight was, And Sir Pers ” (Peter), “ de Montfort that strong were and wise.” The atrocious treatment of the corpse of the Earl of Leicester, will be found recorded in Mr. Blaauw’s Vol. pp. 284, 285. Matthew Paris records an incident which illustrates King Henry’s fear of the Earl. That Monarch, caught in a thunder-storm on the Thames, insisted on being put on shore. There, — so it chanced, — he was met by Simon Montfort. “ W T hy do you fear now, Sire ? the storm is over.” Says the King in reply, still trembling, “ I dread thunder and iightning much ; but I am more afraid of you, than of all the thunder in heaven.” 14 DE MONTFOETS, AND FEEVILLES. hereafter, passed to Elizabeth, great grand-dangher of Peter de Montfort, who became the wife of Baldwyn de Freville. For Peter, marrying Alice, daughter of Henry de Audley, had issue by her, three sons, Peter, William, and Robert. This last Peter had a son John, who is the John de Montfort, spoken of in a former page, as holding the Manor of Ashtead of Earl Warenne. By his wife, Alice, daughter of William de la Plaunche, of Haversham, this John de Montfort had issue, — first, a son, John, who died unmarried, falling in fight, in the disastrous* Battle of Bannockburn, (“at Striveling,” says Manning, the Surrey historian, that is, at Stirling , which lies near to Bannockburn) on Midsummer day, 1314. — Secondly, Peter. This Peter was in holy orders at the time of his brother’s death ; but upon the occurrence of that event, succeeding to the inheritance, “ his sacred function was dispensed with,” — whatever that may mean : he returned to the world ; was knighted ; had summons to Parliament from the first to the twenty-third of Edward III. inclusive (1327 to 1350) ; and married Margaret, daughter of the Lord Furnival, by whom he had an only son, — Guy. In 1358 Guy married Margaret one of the ten daughters of Thomas Beauchamp, third Earl of Warwick. “ Soon afterwards,” says Manning,* “ there was an estate tail made of the Castle and Manor of Beldesert, and other lands in the Counties of Warwick, Nottingham, Rutland, and Surrey, whereby, for want of issue of the said marriage, they were, after the decease of Peter, to remain to the said Earl, and Catherine his wife, and the heirs of the Earl.” Guy died without issue; whereupon the Earl of Warwick, in 13G2, settled his estate in reversion on his own sons, — Thomas, (who became the fourth Earl) ; and William, created by writ, Lord Bergavenny, in 1390. Peter de Montfort, surviving his son Guy, lived on till 1370, in which year he deceased without any legitimate issue. Under these circumstances, the Earl of Warwick took possession of the Surrey estates. But Death was busy likewise in taking possession. The Earl himself was called out of this world a few months afterwards (November 13th), and the usual inquisition being taken at his decease, he was declared to be seised of the Manors of “ Nywegate” (Newdegate) “and Aslited.”f * Manning’s History of Surrey. S. V. “ Newdegate.” Vol. ii. p. 170. t By a deed dated at Warwick, 15th July, 1363, he had conveyed Ashtead and Newdegate to John Beckingham, Bishop of Lincoln, and others; which, by another deed inrolled in Chancery in 1370, he further released to them. The manors were held of the Earl of Arundel, by the service of one marc per annum, and were valued at fifty pounds. — See Manning’s Surrey, S. V. Newdegate. FREVILLES, LORDS OF TAMWORTH. 15 Thomas, fourth Earl of Warwick succeeded ; and there is evidence that he presented to the Church of Ashtead in 1376, and again in 1382; but in the latter year, Sir Baldwyn Freville claimed and recovered the Manor of Ashtead, and probably that of Newdegate also. Before proceeding further, it seems necessary (for reasons which will be seen presently) to speak of this race of Freville. According to Dugdale, it first rises into notice in Cambridgeshire, and the name seems rather to imply a Norman than a Saxon origin. In that district it became a family of great eminence for several generations, though only one of its members, — (we are following the same authority), received summons to Parliament, as a Baron. The first of the race, of whom anything certain is known, was one Baldwyn de Freville, who in the reign of Henry III. (1230) obtained the wardship of Lucia, daughter of Richard de Scalers, — (those were days in which even widows were often compelled to pay a heavy price for the privilege of fixing their own time for a second marriage), — and soon afterwards made her his wife. It was the grandson of this Baldwyn, who, (in consequence of the perpetual recurrence of that Christian name in the family, through several generations), may, for convenience sake, be called Baldw r yn I. Alexander Freville, who had summons to Parliament in 1327, — the first year of Edward III., — as a Peer of the Realm, he having been engaged in all the Scottish Wars, during the reigns of the two preceding Edwards. His wife Joan was a great heiress, being daughter of Ralph, Lord Cromwell,* * * § and Mazera, one of the heiresses of Sir Philip Marmyon, | as also of Isabel, daughter and co-heiress of Hugh de Ivilpeck.§ Through her, Alexander Freville obtained, besides other large estates, Tamworth Castle, the ancient seat of the Mannions. It is probable that two of the much-mutilated tombs, with superincumbent effigies, still remaining in Tamworth Castle, are memorials of Frevilles. In Dugdale’s time (1640) one of these tombs, (that with two effigies upon it) was in a far more perfect * Haldoenus was Lord of Cromwell, County of Notts, at the Conquest. Prom him descended, a Ralph Cromwell, a warrior, who lived in the days of Edward I. His second wife was Mazera Marmyon, whose only child Joan, above-mentioned, became the wife of Alexander, Baron de Freville. f Robert Marmyon, Lord of Fontenay in Normandy, came over with William I., who made him a grant of the Castle of Tamworth, and the adjacent territory. This transaction was recorded in stained glass, in a window in Tamworth Church, and still existed in the time of Dugdale, who gives an engraving of it at p. 823, of his Antiquities of Warwickshire, where also, pp. 820 and 822, will be found the Marmion and Freville pedigree, and the tombs as then existing. § Of Ivilpeck Castle, County of Hereford. 16 FREVILLES, AND ASIITEAD. state than it is at present, and he gives an engraving of it (p. 822) in his History of Warwickshire. It hears no inscription, but Leland, the Antiquary, in his Itinerary (Vol. iv. p. 189) observes, “there be divers fayre Tombs of Noblemen and Women, in the Este Parte of this Collegiate Churche, whereof one is of the Frevilles ; and his Christen Name, as some say, was Balduinus; he was Lorde of Tamworth Castle.” — If this be so, the persons represented may be the first Sir Baldwyn, who was Lord of the Castle, (born in 1292 ; died in 1343) ; and his wife Elizabeth. To Joan, the Marmion heiress, wife of Alexander Freville, (he died in 1328, his widow surviving till 1340), another much-mutilated tomb, uninscribed, is thought to refer.* Be this as it may, Frevilles were Lords of Tamworth Castle for six generations, and certainly were commemorated both in the windows, and on the floor of its Church. Alexander, Baron de Freville, Lord of Tamworth Castle, died in 1328, leaving an only son, the second Baldwyn, (born in 1292, and died in 1343), of whom we know no more than that by his wife Elizabeth (her surname has not been ascertained), he had an only son, — born in 1317, whom he named after himself. This Baldwyn Freville, the third of the name, — (Lord of Tamworth Castle, made a Knight in 1352, and dying in 1375), — was thrice married; and it is through his first marriage that the Frevilles became possessors of the Manor of Ashtead. It has been seen that the first John de Montfort had two sons, John, and Peter. But he had also two daughters, Elizabeth ; and Maud who married Bartholomew de Sudley. Elizabeth de Montfort was the first wife of Sir Baldwyn Freville. His second (1361) was Ida Clinton, — probably of the Clintons of Maxtoke Castle,— a Lady of Honour to Queen Philippa. His third (1372) was Joan, daughter of Lord Strange of Ivnockyn. A distinguished warrior, and high in favour with the Black Prince, whom he accompanied to France, Sir Baldwyn was “for his approved fidelity, and service,” made by him, in 1364, Seneschal of Saintongef and Gascony for life. In 1367 he was of the expedition with the Black Prince into Spain, in behalf of Peter the Cruel, and at the Battle of Naiara, fought in the Prince’s battalion.^ After * Palmer’s History of Tamworth, p. 301. f Saintogne, according to modern spelling, was till 1780, a Province lying between Poitou and Guyenne. I His name occurs in almost all the skirmishes and battles which took place in France, especially on> the occasion when Sir John Chandos was so unfortunately slain. — See Barnes’s History of Edward ILL, B, 4, pp. 72 3, 703, 704, 770, 784, 804, 815, 818, 832; and Clifford’s Tixall, p. 200. FREVILLES. 17 the withdrawal of the Black Prince to England, in consequence of his declining health, Sir Baldwyn continued to reside on the Continent, and it is to he presumed, saw little or nothing of Ashtead. By Elizabeth de Montfort he had a son and heir, — another Baldwyn, who, at the time of his father’s death, in 1375, was a man of four and twenty, and a Knight. This Baldwyn, the fourth , however, two and twenty years before, and being then in the third year of his age, — (whether he was overhead and ears in love the Chroniclers have not deposed), was espoused to Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Botetourt, of Weorley Castle, in the County of Worcester. Dugdale intimates that the lady was as young as the gentleman, and that she died in her childhood ; * whereupon, the family arrangement which devised the first union, being intolerant of disappointment, was not allowed to fall through, (Sir John had six daughters), and in due time, Sir John Baldwyn was not only espoused, but wedded to Joyce (Jocosa) the younger sister of Elizabeth, “who brought,” says Dugdale, “a fail- estate to the family;” for, upon the death of her only brother, she is alleged to have been her father’s heir.f It was this Baldwyn de Freville who exhibited his claim to be the King’s Champion on the day of the Coronation of Richard II., 1377, as being Lord of Tamworth Castle. But Sir John Dymoke, who disputed the claim, carried it by judgment of the Constable and Earl Marshal of England, as being Lord of the Manor of Scrivelsby, which appeared to be held by that service ; and that the Marmyons enjoyed that office as owners of Scrivelsby, and not of Tamworth Castle. There is no need to revive this dead controversy. This much is quite clear, that the Marmyons, — to use the words of Camden, in his Britannia, “had been the hereditary Champions of Normandy, and performed that service at the Coronation of the Dukes.” The Castle of Tamworth w-as undoubtedly held by this service. There are plenty of existing records to prove that. But in the judgment of the very able historian of Tamworth, (Dr. Palmer, 1815) the Scrivelsby estate was held by the same service.— At the Coronation of Henry IV., (October 13th, 1399) the privilege was again conceded to the Dymokes “ for that time,” — not impossibly in consequence of the Frevilles having been involved in a charge of treason. It is true that the * He, however, supposes her to have been espoused five or six years later, not. in 1349, but 1354. t The Botetourt pedigree will he found in Banks’s Baronage, Vol. ii. p. 54. The only son, and 1m son died in Sir John’s lifetime. Of the daughters, one was Abbess of Poles worth, and another a Nun at Elstow : but there was an Alice, who came before Joyce, and was a married woman, and Catherine (married also), who was the youngest of the family. D 18 FREVILLES. Sir Baldwyn of that day had received a free pardon from the King, in a Patent,, dated from Clifton Campville, in the preceding year ; but the fact remains that the Championship has remained in the Dymoke family ever since. Sir Baldwyn Freville {the fourth ) was the father, by Joyce Botetourt, of one son, another Baldwyn, and of three daughters. He died in 1387.* His widow found another husband, Sir Adam de Peshall, but by him she had no family. And she died in 1420, surviving her only son. He, the fifth Sir Baldwyn, was nineteen years of age when his father departed this life; and in the year following, (1388) he married Joan, the daughter of Sir Thomas Greene.f He only lived to the age of twenty-three, and dying in 1401, left an infant son, the last, and sixth Baldwyn Freville. He too, was short-lived, for he deceased at the early age of nineteen, “ upon the Thursday, of the third week in Lent, 1418,” and being unmarried, his three sisters, (who were older than himself), became his heirs. These ladies were, I. Elizabeth, who became the wife of Thomas, second son of William, Lord Ferrers of Groby : II. Joyce, the wife of Sir Roger Aston, to whom, at her death in 1447, she bequeathed her reversions : and III. Margaret, married first to Sir Hugh Willoughby of Wollaston, in Nottingham- shire ; and, secondly, to Sir Richard Bingham, one of the Justices of the Court of King’s Bench. * It is stated by Duo-dale (Hist. War. 804) that in 1377, Thomas, Earl of Warwick, conveyed certain estates to Sir Baldwyn Freville, and Sir Thomas Boteler, “the right heirs to Montfort’s lands.” — Never- theless, it would appear, that five years after this conveyance, the Earl presented to Ashtead. Yet Sir Baldwyn dispossessed the Earl’s clerk, and presented another, who kept possession, which looks as if there were some circumstance connected with the passage of the Surrey estates, which has not come down to us : else it w’ould seem that each party attempted to retain an Advowson which did not belong to him. So much as this, however, is already ascertained, that the Manor of Ashtead passed in direct succession from father to son, through three generations of Frevilles. “ On the partition of the lands of Sir John de Montfort in 1385, to which Sir Baldwyn Freville was heir in his mother’s right, jointly with Sir Thomas Boteler, Knight, he had assigned to him the Manor of Ashtead in Surrey; Gunthorpe and Lowdham, in the County of Nottingham; and the reversion of the Manors of Henley, (in Arden) Beldesert, and Hazelholt, in Warwickshire.” — Palmer’s History of Tamworth, p. 359. | Sir Henry Greene of Norton, near Towcester, (County of Northampton) was Chief Justice of England. — (See Brydges’ Northampton, Vol. ii. p. 246.) ilis grand-daughter was the wife of Sir Baldwyn Freville. The eldest branch of the family ended in Sir Thomas Greene, who died 1506, (twenty-second of Henry YU.,) leaving two daughters, Anne, married to Lord Vaax of Harrowden ; and Maud, wife of Sir Thomas Parr, and mother of Queen Katharine Parr. ASHTEAD, CASTLE RISING, ELFORD. 19 Upon the partition, in 1423, of the estates of which the last Sir Baldwyn Freville died seized, the Castle and Manor of Tamworth, with other property, fell to Thomas Ferrers. A fourth part of the Manor of Ashtead, and other estates, to Hugh Willoughby. And the Manors of Ashtead (except as above) and Newdegate, in Surrey: Bichnor, County of Worcester: Yatesbury, County of Wilts : Pinley, within the Liberties of Coventry, and the Moiety of the Manor of Henley-in-Arden, with the Manor and Castle of Beldesert, County of Warwick, and Advowson of the Church of Preston, near Henley-in-Arden, to Sir Roger Aston, husband of Joyce de Freville. The reader’s notice has already been called to the curious coincidence that Ashtead and Castle Rising, having been for a while in the hands of one owner, — then having separate possessors for many centuries, — were again re-united, and have now (1872) the same owner. It is, therefore, not unworthy of remark, in connexion with the history of the succession of property in the Manor of Ashtead, that, but for the division which separated Ashtead from the Tamworth Estates, as mentioned above, the Manor of Elford might, — four hundred and fifty years ago, as now, have been in the hands of one individual, — the present possessor of all three estates; for the grandson of Elizabeth Ferrers, (see the pedigree) heiress of Ashtead and Tamworth, was the husband of Maud, daughter and heiress of Sir John Stanley of Elford. Dry and wearisome these details of the births, marriages, and deaths, of forgotten De Montforts and Frevilles! Very troublesome to work out, and, when worked out, of no interest to any one but a mere genealogist! For, as successive Lords of the Manor of Ashtead, they have left no mark behind them, — not the barest outline of what they were, and did, which the imagination of a reader, conversant with the history of the eventful times in which they lived, might try to fill in with colours not altogether inappropriate or unnatural. They whose privilege it has been to spend happy days at modern Ashtead long to know something of the domestic life of those who passed their days in the old Manorial “ dwelling-house,” amid woodland glades, and breezy downs. Life is the same from generation to generation, — • has its appointed destinies of joy and sorrow, its experience of tender mercies, and purifying discipline. That Llomestead, under all phases and possessors, has had its Providential allotment of the changes and chances of this mortal life. Mirth has gladdened ; Death has saddened it. And because its in-dwellers, each in his day, had the same chequered existence as ourselves, — light and darkness, gleams of sunshine, and passing storm, — a brief or a protracted lifetime ; because they looked out, through all the varying seasons, on the same ranges of hill and valley as we do now, — the same summer haze upon the forest ; the same glorious sunsets 20 ASHTEAD IN OTHER DAYS. amid those western paths ; the same heads of autumn dew stringing the gossamer with pearls ; the same fringes of copse glittering with rime upon a clear, bright winter’s morn ; — because the same horizon which bounds our view to-day confined their’s ; because, within the same limits, both have had the same feelings of Home ; because, in short, Nature, Place, and Circumstance, to them and to us, have had many a parallel, and much in common, we feel that if we are to know anything about them we should like to know more. The lives of some, at any rate, may have been examples which it would have been good for us to contemplate. Somewhere among them we should have found noble qualities, and generous, and brave, and devoted hearts. Wisdom, and Strength, and Justice, and Truth, and Purity ; Loveableness, and Tenderness, and Gentleness; Endurance, and Unselfishness, and Sweet Content- ment, would have been, perhaps, more common, — more easy to find in those simple, uni usurious ages, than in our own; and thus the light shining on us from afar, might, as we think, have benefited us. But this is not all. It would have been pleasant to re-people the Ashtead of the past with its former occupants. What were its inmates in their daily lives, in their families and friendships, in their goings out and their comings in, among kinsfolk and acquaintance ? There, no doubt, there would be from time to time, bright happy races of innocent children ; there the tranquil devotedness of wedded love, — there the gentle decline of happy, sanctified old age. And, now and then, there would be loss and cross, calamity and distress, — some flower of the flock, some light of the household would be called away by sudden accident, or lingering sickness, — manhood in his glorious prime, or girlhood in her first, fresh beauty. So, by degrees, families were broken up, and the grave and oblivion took possession of those “***** who play’d Beneath the same green tree ; Whose voices mingled as they pray’d Around one parent knee ! They that with smiles lit up the hall, And cheer’d with song the hearth — Alas ! for love, if thou wert all, And nought beyond, 0 Earth ! It is hopeless to attempt to regain the history of the individuals whose names are recorded in the genealogy of the race ; and the most that can be done to ASHTEAD IN OTHER DAYS. 21 reproduce the general aspects of private life ends, for the most part, in a vision of men, with “ Long beards, thriftless, Painted hoods, witless, Gay coats, graceless : ” and of ladies with horned head-dresses, and robes which must have encumbered them at every step. And the result is hardly more encouraging, when we try to ascertain to what extent the owners and heads of the considerable estates, of whom we have to speak, were affected by, — and to learn what part they bore in, — the events which stamped so marked a character on the ages in which they lived. Those lands at Ashtead, for instance, which John de Montfort held of the Earl of Warenne, — was it his title to them , which the stout Earl was (in common with the other Barons), required by Edward I. (then newly seated on his throne) to exhibit, on pain of fine, or forfeiture? Was it, on their behalf, that he drew a rusty sword from its scabbard, and gave the King’s officials the answer which { aught the King the hazard of the act he was attempting, “ By this it w 7 as that my forefathers won their lands, and this is the title by which I mean to keep them ? ” When Earl Warenne was Governor of Scotland, and Wallace was fighting for the liberties of his Country, which of the De Montfort race of Ashtead were among the English Warriors, and how 7 did they comport themselves? Edward II. and Gaveston, — his Queen,* and Mortimer, — Blacklow Hill, and Berkeley Castle, — Edward III., and Philippa of Hainault, — Cre§§y and Poictiers, and the Black Prince, — Wat Tyler and John Wyclyff, — Owen Glendower and Harry Hotspur, — the fights at Shrewsbury, and Agincourt, what visions do not such names call up? — News, in those days, was long even in passing from city to city; when tidings of such events as those enumerated above, reached the manor house at * It will he remembered in connexion with a place, of which not unfrequent mention will be made hereafter, that after the ignominious death of Mortimer, and Isabella’s deposition from all authority, this abandoned Frenchwoman (she was daughter of Philip the fair) was a nominal prisoner at Castle Rising for about 30 years, — (nominal, for she certainly resided, when she pleased, at Hertford Castle, and frequently received Edward III., and Philippa, as her guests.) Rising, however, was her chief residence; and there she died in 1358, and was buried at the Grey Friar’s Church in London. Upon her death, Castle Rising was inherited by her grandson the Black Prince, who, dying 18 years afterwards, it fell to Richard II., and ultimately, after passing through many hands, was granted by Henry VIII. to Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk. 22 THE ASTONS. Ashtead, how were its inmates affected by them? Were there those there who had a personal interest in them? Were there those whom wars bereaved, — whom civil strifes compromised or imperilled, — whom religious controversies perplexed? — If of things like these we possessed any such records, as would enable us to put life into the dry bones of a genealogical tree, or to resuscitate the old dead past, we should not fear but that we should carry the reader with us. But it may not be. — It is the eternal Law of Providence, that a state of things which has once passed away, shall never be reproduced. And not this only, but that no attempt to picture it, — however minute and elaborate the collected details may be, shall be really successful ; — the view, as you look at it, breaks up into fragments, and dissolves away into something totally different. History, — even its most vivid word-painting by a master-hand, — never so much as attains the dignity of a galvanized corpse ; at best, it is but the cleverly articulated bones of a ghastly skeleton. Sir Robert Walpole’s estimate of history, (and especially of those popular histories which are written with a strong bias for political purposes) was a very tolerably fair one. We have now to follow the fortunes of Ashtead Manor as possessed by the Staffordshire Family of Aston for the century between 1453 and 1543. But this will' not detain us long, for there is no evidence to show that they ever resided at Ashtead, or had more connexion with it than drawing their rents therefrom. They were holding a high place among the gentry of their native country, and had various public duties to discharge there, which might excuse them from even making frequently such long, weary, and perilous journeys, as, in those days, the passage from Staffordshire to Surrey, — from Heywood, or Leigh, to Ashtead, would involve.* Sir Roger Aston, the husband of Joyce Freville, was High Sheriff of Staffordshire in 142G, and again in 1431. By his marriage he had a daughter, Joan, married to Sir Roger Draycot, Knight of the Holy Sepulchre : and an only son, Robert. Sir Roger Aston died in 1447. * At the time of his marriage to Joyce Freville, Sir Roger Aston held lands in Heywood, Hixon, Longdon, Brocton, Ilandsacre, and King’s Bromley ; at Hints also, and Leigh, in which latter place Park Hall was the family residence, till they became possessors of Tixall. The old mansion no longer exists; hut the farm-house erected on its site is surrounded by a moat, crossed by a bridge of stone, and approached through a handsome iron gate-way. In the windows are preserved a few relics of stained glass, — armorial bearings of the Astons, with their early quarterings. At least, unless the writer’s memory fails him, such was the state of things not a great many years ago. But, in the interval, there is interposed, to cloud his reminiscences of Leigh, an irreparable bereavement there, and a never-absent sorrow. THE ASTONS OF LEIGH. BAGOTS. 23 His son, Sir Roger, was High Sheriff of Staffordshire in 1452. He married Isabella, daughter of Sir William Brereton, of Brereton in Cheshire. She bore him one son, who succeeded him, and two daughters. The eldest of these daughters, Isabella, became the wife of Richard Bagot of Blithfield, the ancestor of another Richard Bagot, (of whom hereafter), the father of the Honourable Mary Howard, the present (1872) possessor the of Ashtead Estate, after its many changes of owners. The second daughter, Petronilla, married Richard Biddulph of Biddulph, County of Stafford. Sir Robert Aston died in the seventh year of Edward IV., 14G7. His only son, John Aston, Esq., Sheriff of the Counties of Stafford and Warwick in 1476, and 1483, married Elizabeth, daughter of John Delves, of Doddington, Countv of Chester, Esq. He deceased in 1483, — the father of a large family, two sons, and ten daughters. The daughters were all married, — chiefly among the gentry of Staffordshire, — into the families of Okeover, Kinnersley, Wolseley, Basset, Blount, Colwich, and the like. Of the two sons, Richard, the younger, died without issue : the elder, John, succeeded his father, in the first year of Richard III. Sir John Aston was made a Knight of the Bath (1501), at the Marriage of Prince Arthur, eldest son of King Henry VII. He accompanied King Henry VIII. in his expedition into Brittany, and was at the Sieges of Terouenne and Tournay in 1513. For his conduct and bravery at the “Battle of the Spurs,” (when the Duke de Longueville w T as defeated, and the French Cavalry made so speedy a flight as to win that designation of the fight, from their victors), he was made a Knight Banneret, by the King, on the field (1513.) He was Sheriff of Staffordshire in 1500 ; and again in 1508, and 1513 ; of Leicestershire, and Warwickshire also, in 1510. His wife ■was Joan, grand-daughter of Chief Justice Littleton, — daughter of Sir William Littleton, from wdiom she inherited Tixall, as from her mother, Wanlip, and other property in Leicestershire. Sir John Aston departed this life in 1523,* and was succeeded by his son, Sir Edward, the builder of the grand mansion at Tixall, * Sir John Aston lies buried with his wife, in the Church at Leigh, where a tomb of alabaster, once enriched with gilding and colours, was erected to their memory. The effigies on the top, in the usual recumbent attitude, represent Sir John in complete armour, — the lady in the costume of the time. The south side of the tomb is attached to the wall of the Church : on the north side are six niches, with two figures in each. At the head are three niches, with two figures in each. At the foot three also, each occupied by an angel supporting a shield with armorial bearings. Round the verge, runs this inscription : Hie jacent corpora Domini Johannis Aston Militis, et Dominse Johannse, uxoris ejus, qui quidem Dominus Johannes obiit decimo octavo die Mensis Maii, Anno Domini 1523. Et prsedicta Domina Johanna obiit — die Mensis — Anno Dom. 15 — . The stone is so worn that it is uncertain whether the word given above as “Maii,” is not “ Martii.” 24 ASHTEAD, THE RACE OF HOWARD. of which the beautiful gate-house is now the only relic. This, however, was erected by Sir Walter Aston, the son of Edward, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth.* With Sir Edward Aston ended the connexion of that race with the Manor of Ashtead. He is known to have leased it in 1526, and to have presented twice in subsequent years to the Advowson ; but on the 2nd of November, 1543, he exchanged, or, as one writ erf alleges, (who, perhaps, though cognizant of the circumstances, would not be altogether without a very excusable bias in the matter), “ he was forced, on the dissolution of the Religious Houses, by King Henry VIII., to take Matherfield, or Mayfield, belonging to the Priory of Tutbury ; the Abbey of Hilton, Bradnop, and divers other Abbey Lands,” in the Counties of Stafford and Derby, “in exchange for estates at Ashtead in Surrey, and other places, which he possessed by descent from his ancestors.”! Sir Edward, moreover, had to part with the Advowson of Ashtead, and to make, in addition, a money-payment to the King, amounting to five hundred pounds. Leases of the Manor of Ashtead were granted by Henry VIII., and Queen Mary : and in 1563 Queen Elizabeth, by Letters Patent, gave the fee-simple of the Manor and demesnes of Ashtead to Henry Fitz-Alan, Earl of Arundel. The fortunes and misfortunes of the House of HOWARD, whether the result of their own errors, or of the iniquity and furious passions of Henry VIII., or of the wretched intrigues which perpetually surrounded the Throne of Elizabeth, belong to the History of England, and have been told so often and so ably, that they need not be recounted here, except in reference to a simple locality. Their effect upon Ashtead was, that, between 1563, and 1603, — a period of only forty years, there was a constant change of possessor, through one disastrous cause after another, as the following brief outline of events will show. Thomas, third Duke of Norfolk, who only escaped execution by the death of Henry VIII. on the night preceding the day (January 29th, 1547) on which the sentence was to have been carried out against him, was succeeded by his grandson Thomas, the son of the judicially-murdered Henry, Earl of Surrey. T1 i is Thomas married for his first wife, Mary, one of the daughters of the above- * A full and interesting account of the Astons, from which most of the circumstances stated above have been drawn, will be found in Clifford’s History of Tixall, pp. 145, 280: et seq. t Sir Thomas Clifford. I The statement as to other places besides Ashtead is confirmed by a note in Harwood’s Erdeswick, j). 16. These lands had come down from William de Maer, who lived soon after the Conquest, and had them by gift from “ Radulfus filius Willielmi Camerarii.” — Hilton Abbey now belongs to the Iveele estate. THE HOWARDS AND THE TUDORS. 25 named Henry Fitz-Alan, Earl of Arundel ; and by her had a son Philip, — (so named after his godfather, Philip II. , of Spain.) This lady died before her husband, who, in 1570, settled the Ashtead property on himself, — with divers remainders, — and ultimately to the Duke of Norfolk, and his heirs. This Duke was also beheaded (June 2nd, 1572) and Earl Philip was likely to have shared his fate, having been attainted in 1586. But he was spared to end his days (November 9th, 1695) in the Tower, after a long imprisonment, — leaving behind him a son, — by name Thomas. The Tudors, however, had, by this time nearly run their race, and England was to be delivered from their tyrannies. In March (24th) 1603, Elizabeth ended her days in the deep misery which she had prepared for herself, and James I., immediately on his accession, caused this Thomas (seventh in descent from John Howard, first Duke of Norfolk of that name), who was only called Lord Maltravers, (and that, by courtesy), during the reign of Elizabeth, to be restored in blood, and to the Earldoms of Arundel and Surrey : and, in the year following, granted him, (together with Arundel Castle, and other family estates which had been forfeited), the Manor of Ashtead. Moreover, he was made a Privy Councillor in 1607 ; and elected Knight of the Garter in 1611. Thus, at length, we are brought into modern times, — at any rate to an epoch when, comparatively speaking, it seems possible to restore to our knowledge, with some of the freshness of real life, those whose histories we are endeavouring to trace ; — to realize something of their daily existence in its joys and sorrows, — both of which they probably outlived, before they themselves were called away. And after wading through dull genealogical details for centuries, remembered for the most part, for the deeds of violence and wrong which characterized them, we begin to come upon men whose refinement, and loveable qualities call up the feeling so well expressed by the Author of the Christian Year : “ 0 who can tell how calm and sweet, Meek Walton ! shews thy green retreat, When wearied with the tale thy times disclose, The eye first finds thee out in thy secure repose.”* * Advent Sunday. The Earl of Arundel and Izaak Walton were so far cotemporaries, that they were born within a year of each other, — the former coming into the world in 1592, and the latter in 1593 : hut Izaak, happy in “ -the gallant fisher’s life .... Full of pleasures, void of strife,” survived the Earl by seven and thirty years, living on till 1683. E 26 THOMAS, EARL OF ARUNDEL AND SURREY. The Earl of Arundel, indeed, from the necessities of rank and office, was forced to take a more prominent position than fell to Walton’s lot, and for many years was engaged in duties at Court and elsewhere, which must have ill suited his quiet tastes. The lines addressed by Charles Cotton to his friend exhibit a state of feeling which the Earl would have reciprocated. “ Farewell thou busy world ! and may We never meet again : Here I can eat, and sleep, and pray, And do more good in one short day, Than he, who his whole age out wears Upon the most conspicuous theatres, Where nought but vanity and vice appears.... Lord! would men let me alone; What an over-happy one Shoidd I think myself to he, Might I, in this desert place, Which most men in discourse disgrace, Live but undisturb’d and free ! Here in this despis’d recess, Would I, maugre Winter’s cold, And the Summer’s worst excess, Try to live out, to sixty full years old ? And all the while, Without an envious eye On any thriving under Fortune’s smile, Contented live, and then, — contented die ! ” It is pleasant to turn from the contemplation of the Earl of Arundel sitting as High Steward at the Trial of Strafford, as the dark days of rebellion and civil strife drew on, and to look at him as a noble patron of Literature and Art, — the accomplished scholar,— the clever linguist, — the friend of Camden and Sodden, of Sir Robert Cotton, and Sir Henry Spelman, — the connoisseur, of sound judgment and unquestioned taste, in Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture. It was Jus Library, which, in after times, Evelyn secured for the Royal Society ; * Jus Collection of Ancient Inscriptions * On the 9th of January, 1GG7, Evelyn makes this entry in his diary: “To the Royal Society, which since ye sad conflagration were invited by Mr. Howard to sit at Arundel House in the Strand, who, at my instigation, likewise bestowed on the Society that noble Library which his grandfather especially, and THOMAS, EARL OF ARUNDEL. ARUNDELIAN MARBLES. 27 and the like, which, as the “ Arundelian Marbles,” were obtained for, and are still cherished in, the University of Oxford.* * Such a man, with his princely tastes and expenditure, but of modest, peace-loving ways, was little fitted for the turbulent days of sour Puritanism, and regicidal anarchy : and as the signs of coming confusion and revolution began to multiply, he was glad to surrender his offices at Court, and to avail himself of the opportunity of escorting to a safer home, first, Mary of Medicis, the Queen Mother of France, who had been a visitor in England ; and then Henrietta Maria, and her daughter the Princess Mary. So employed, he had a fair excuse for “ quitting his native Country before he saw it ruined.” Henceforth, his own home, and that of his family was to be elsewhere. He quitted England in 1G4| never to see it more. Parting with his Countess at Antwerp, and taking two grandsons as companions, he started for Spa, in the hope of recruiting there his failing health. But sore troubles fell on him : one of his grandsons became lunatic ; the other became a Dominican Friar. In his bereavement, ho was joined by a third grandson, in whom he found much comfort ; but, after wandering about in the restlessness of sorrow, his ancestors had collected. This gentleman had so little inclination to bookes, that it was the preservation of them from embezzlement.” — again, years afterwards, August 29th, 1678, he thus writes : “ I was called to London, to wait upon the Duke of Norfolk, who having, at my sole request, bestowed the Arundelian Library on the Royal Society, sent to me to take charge of the bookes, and remove them, onely stipulating that I would suffer the Herauld’s Chief Officer, Sir William Dugdale, to have such of them as concern’d Herauldry, and the Marshall’s Office, Bookes of Armorie, and Genealogies, the Duke being Earl Marshall of England. I procur’d for our Society, besides printed bookes, neere 100 MSS., some in Greeke, of greate concernment. The printed bookes, being of the oldest impressions are not the lesse valuable ; I esteem them almost equal to MSS. — Amongst them are most of the Fathers printed at Basil, before the Jesuits abus’d them with their Expurgatory Indexes : there is a noble MS. of 1 iti’uvius. Many of these bookes had been presented by Popes, Cardinals, and greate persons, to the Earls of Arundel, and Dukes of Norfolk; and the late magnificent Earl of Arundel bought a noble Librarie in Germanie, which is in this Collection. I shoulde not, for the honoure I bear the family, have persuaded the Duke to part with them, had I not seene how negligent he was of them, suffering the Priests, and everybody to carry away, and dispose of what they pleas’d, so that abundance of rare things are irrecoverably gone.” * “September 7th, 1667. To London, with Mr. Henry Howard of Norfolk, of whom I obtained the gifte of his Arundelian Marbles, those celebrated and famous inscriptions, Greeke and Latine, gather’d with so much cost and industrie from Greece, by his illustrious grandfather, the magnificent Earle of Arundel, my noble friend whilst he liv’d. When I saw these precious monuments miserably neglected, and scatter’d up and downe about the garden, and other parts of Arundel House, and how exceedingly the corrosive aire of London impair’d them, I procur’d him to hestow them on the University of Oxford. This he was pleas’d to grant me, and now gave me the key of the gallery, with leave to mark all these stones, urns, altars, &c., and whatever I found had inscriptions on them, that were not statues. This I did, and getting them removed, and pil’d together, with those which were incrusted in the garden walls, I sent immediately letters to the Vice-Chancellor of what I had procur’d, and if they esteem’d it a service to the University (of which I had been a member) they would like order for their transportation.” Further entries connected with the Arundelian Marbles will be found under the dates of October 8, 17, and 25; and July 13, 1669. 28 THOMAS, EARL OF ARUNDEL AND SURREY. for a while, he determined to set his face towards England. And he commenced his journey ; but it was that from which there is no return : he died, suddenly, at last, at, or near Padua, on the fourth of October, 1646, in the fifty-fifth year of his age. It does not appear to be known for how long a time he made Ashtead his residence. It is only an odd circumstance which directly connects him with it as having lived there. In the letter of John Evelyn, prefixed to Aubrey’s Natural History and Antiquities of the County of Surrey, (February 8th, 167§) the following passage occurs : “ At Ashtead near Ebisham,” (Epsom) “belonging to the Right Honourable the Earl Marshal, are found a certain huge and fleshy Snail, which the Italians call Bavoli, or Drivelers, brought out of Italy, propagated here, and had in deliciis by his grand-father, Thomas Earl of Arundel, &c.” This snail, the Helix pomatia, is still found plentifully at Ashtead, and in the immediate neighbourhood ; but seldom or never, except upon the chalk, or oolithic formations. At Ashtead it was, no doubt, introduced as Evelyn says, as a dainty, and not, as popular tradition has it, as a cure for consumption.* We know, for certain, that about the year 1626, the Earl and Countess of Arundel had a residence, upon compulsion, at East Horsley, which * This large fawn-coloured shell, encircled with two or three faint, reddish-brown bands, and commonly known as the “ apple,” “ edible,” or “ vine ” snail, cannot be mistaken for any of our indigenous species. It is not uncommon in France, Switzerland, Germany, and Italy. — The Romans seem to have been the discoverers of its culinary merits. They fattened these mollusca in sties, and dressed them in a variety of ways. Nero, (just the man for such a repast ! ) had them first fried, and then g-rilled on a silver gridiron. (Gray’s Edition of Turton’s Manual of British Testacea, pp. 136, and 137.) Mr. Lovell Reeve (British Mollusks, p. 01, &c.) says that the Parisian dealers in comestibles commonly exhibit bowls of them in their shop-windows ; and in our own Country, the Earl of Arundel was not their only admirer. Ben Jonson (“ Every Man in his Humour”) alludes to a dish of them as a delicacy. Lister (Ilis : Anim : Angl : p. Ill) gives a receipt for cooking them. “They are boiled in spring-water, and when seasoned with oil, salt, and pepper, make a dainty dish.” This edible snail is believed to have been introduced into the neighbourhood of Newport Pagnel, Bucks, by Sir Kenelm Digby about 1630, and about the same time by Lord Stratton, at Kirby, Northampton- shire. Whether it still is found in those localities, is unknown to the writer. It appears, however, to be rather more fastidious as to soil, than as to climate. Chalk or limestone seems essential to it. Some years ago the writer tried, but failed, to get this Helix to live on a gravelly soil ; and several other instances of like attempts, and failures, are recorded. Mr. Reeve mentions (with reference to its efficacy in Phthisis), that a gentleman with whose circumstances he was well acquainted, being then, as was supposed, far g - one in decline, was removed from a manufactory, to a house near Box Hill, and there fed (unconsciously) on the mucilaginous juice of this snail, introduced into jellies, gravies, and every conceivable form of nourishing food. That is to say, they gave him pure air, and a highly nutritious diet. The man recovered, but whether through the medicinal qualities of the Helix pomatia is another question. Dr. Turton states, and perhaps thereby introduces us to the most valuable quality connected with this snail, that, “after the animal has been extracted, there remains at the bottom of the shell, a glairy, transparent matter, which affords one of the best, and most durable cements in nature, resisting every degree of heat and moisture.” THE MARRIAGE OF LORD MOWBRAY. 20 was afterwards exchanged for closer quarters in the Tower of London. The imprison- ment, however, was of no long duration. Shortly afterwards, the Earl was received again at Court, and by degrees was re-admitted to the King’s favour. The circumstances were these, his second son, Henry Frederic, Lord Mowbray and Maltravers, having barely arrived at manhood, had married the Lady Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Esme Stuart, Duke of Lennox. It is intimated by Collins, (s. v. Norfolk), that the Duchess of Lennox, and the Countess of Arundel, (born Lady Alethea Talbot) were the schemers of this union. Be this as it may, the wedding took place without the knowledge or consent of the King, who, — (the lady being his own ward, and kinswoman), had designed her for Archibald, Lord Lome, the future Marquis of Argyle. Upon this marriage becoming known, the King, by an exercise of prerogative which, now a days, would be sufficiently startling, restricted the parents of Lord Maltravers to their seat at East Horsley, and then committed them to the Tower, confining the newly-married couple to Lambeth Palace, and the custody of Archbishop Abbot, which, considering the temper of the man, must have made about as unpleasant a honey-moon as could have been hit upon. However, what was done could not be undone, and the King adopted at last, the sentiment, to which he had better betaken himself at first, — “ What must be, wo cannot change, and will not fear.” The result has been already stated; and some years afterwards, (1639) the husband of Elizabeth Stuart, was called up by writ to the House of Peers, and took his seat there, as Lord Mowbray. On the death of his father in October, 1646, he succeeded to the Earldom and Estates, but of these the rebel crew who then predominated had taken possession ; and it was only at the end of two years, and upon payment of a fine of six thousand pounds by way of composition, that he was allowed to re-enter on his own property. How Ashtead fared in this dreary interval is unknown, but the Earl is believed to have remained in London, living in such a manner as to attract no notice from the Usurper, and those who were then in power. Four years afterwards, April 7th, 1652, he departed this life at Arundel House, in the Strand. His eldest son Thomas, who, (on the petition of the Earls of Suffolk, Berkshire, and the other lineal descendants of the last attainted Duke of Norfolk, together with that of nearly a hundred other Peers) was, in 1664, restored to the ancient honours of his family, but died unmarried in 1677, at Padua. He was succeeded by his next brother, Henry, sixth Duke of Norfolk. And he was the last of that branch of the Howard race which possessed the Manor of Ashtead. 30 SALE OF ASHTEAD TO SIR ROBERT HOWARD. In the year 1680, — that Manor of Ashtead again changed owners, passing by sale from Duke Henry to his distant kinsman, Sir Robert Howard, who, as the reader will remember, held a somewhat conspicuous position both in Literature and Politics in the latter years of Charles II., but who is now more remembered for the scurrilous attacks to which the tenor of his public life exposed him, and for the persistent efforts made to depreciate whatever he did or wrote, than for any great services to the State, or for any high qualities of head or heart. Sir Robert Howard, the sixth son of Thomas, first Earl of Berkshire, by Lady Elizabeth Cecil, was born in 1626, and received a University Education at Magdalen College, Oxford, “under Dr. Edward Drope,” — according to Wood’s Athense; — at Magdalen College, Cambridge, according to Hugh James Rose. — As he was six years older than Samuel Pepys, the Diarist, and as his future brother-in-law, John Dryden, was five years his junior, it is not likely that, — if at Cambridge, he was a Fellow-Collegian with either of them. And neither from them, nor from any other source, has any information been obtained with respect to his University career. All we know is that his place was early in the great world, where he fought his way to notoriety, if not to fame. Unlike Dryden, who was equally eager to eulogize the memory of Oliver Cromwell, and to welcome the Restoration of Charles II., Sir Robert shared in the stanch, unvarying loyalty of his family. He had distinguished himself as a Royalist, while his father was a prisoner in the Tower, — especially at the Battle of Cropredy Bridge, (June 29th, 1644), where, for his gallant rescue of Lord Wilmot, Lieutenant-General of the King’s Forces, then wounded, and taken prisoner, he was knighted. And, during the usurpation, he had suffered a long imprisonment in Windsor Castle ; — so that he had personal merits to plead, when “the King enjoyed his own again,” and could wait hopefully for the inevitable return of brighter days than those of the Protectorate afforded him. On the re-establishment of the Monarchy and Religion, by the return of the King, he was not allowed to remain in the shade. He was returned as Member for Stockbridge (Hants) to serve in the Parliament which met in May, 1661. In the preceding month, the Earl of Berkshire had been rewarded for his loyalty to Charles I., and II., by a grant to himself and his son Robert, for forty-eight years, — ( i.e . till 1708) — of “the farm of the revenue of post fines.” Sir Robert was next created a Knight of the Bath ; and afterwards, first, Secretary to the Commissioners of the Treasury, and then, within a few years, he obtained the lucrative office of Auditor of the Exchequer, which he retained till his death in 1698, According to the allegation of his enemies, he owed his advancement to his subserviency THE MORALS OF THE TIME. 31 to tlie King, and to his adroit management in securing grants from the Parliament in the Royal favour. And probably the charge was not without grounds. Never- theless, if it be a hard measure to judge a public man, at any time, on the sole evidence of political opponents, it would be quite unjustifiable to accept the harsh verdicts of an age at once so thoroughly worthless and merciless as that in which Sir Robert’s lot was cast. He lived at a period when the reputation of neither man nor woman was safe, who emerged, in any way, out of profound obscurity. To be known was to be defamed. Never were political enmities more bitter ; never was the general tone of society, in the upper ranks, more shockingly demoralized ; never were those who wrote for the Press more envious of one another, more ungenerous, more unscrupulous. Religion was at its lowest ebb ; the duties of life were ignored ; the decencies of life could hardly be said to exist ; the profligacy of the Sovereign and Court was horrible ; Poetry and the Drama were beyond all precedent vile and licentious ; brutal godlessness was received as wit, and the coarsest obscenity of language was not only tolerated in the highest society, but encouraged. It is alleged in one of his sermons,* by South, that he had encountered those who said openly, “ That they hoped to live to see the day, in which an honest woman, or a virtuous man, should be ashamed to show their head in company.” — “ This,” he declares, “ is the guise of our free-thinking, and freer-practising age, that, in it, people are ashamed of nothing, but to be virtuous, and to be thought old,” No one can acquit South of fulsome adulation to the restored Kiug, and therefore such a description as he gives in the sermon just quoted, of the vice which was “ in full swing,” as he expresses it, on every side, may be received as an unexaggerated description of the condition of the upper classes. It may be granted that Sir Robert Howard was but a second-rate poet and play- wright, and that as a courtier, he was neither better nor worse than the rest of his class, in the reigns of the two last Stuarts, and of William the Dutchman; and this is no light measure of censure and dispraise. Still, his enemies undoubtedly made the worst of him. It is impossible, however, to avoid the conclusion that Sir Robert brought upon himself much of what fell upon him. He must have been more or less arrogant and consequential, with but few of the elements of an amiable man. “ Shamelessness in Sin . the certain Forerunner of Destruction.” A discourse upon Jeremiah vi. 15. 32 SIR ROBERT HOWARD, SIR POSITIVE ATALL. It was not every one, even in those days of detraction, who was so bespattered with mud on all sides.* It is well known that Shadwell, the dramatist, — (at whose hands no one would look for fair dealing, but who would not have thought it worth his while to draw a character for the stage, where the portrait would not be generally recognized), satirized him with much humour in his Play of the “ Sullen Lovers,” as Sir Positive Atall, — a foolish knight, who pretends to know every thing in the world, and will suffer no one else to understand any thing. In confirmation of this view of his character, as a proud, pretentious, over-bearing kind of person, his own brother-in-law speaks of him ironically, as “ master of more than twenty legions of arts and sciences.”! And, — which is far more reliable evidence, — his neighbour, good John Evelyn (1683, Vol. i. p. 255) speaks of him as “that universal pretender;” and again (1685, Vol. ii. p. 587) as “ a gentleman, pretending to all manner of arts, and sciences, for which he had been made the subject of Comedy, under the name of Sir Positive ; not ill-natured, but, insufferably boasting.”! Further, it has been usually supposed that Bilbao, the * “ He was,” writes one antagonist, (Biog- : Dram : ) “ a man of a very obstinate, and positive temper, supercilious, haughty, and over-bearing to the greatest degree in his behaviour to others, and possessed of an insufferable share of vanity, and self-sufficiency, in regard to his own abilities — but he adds, “ it is not improbable that these qualities might create him an enmity among his cotemporary wits, who would, perhaps, have readily subscribed to the merits he already possessed, had he not seemed to aim at a superiority to which he had no claim.” t See Defence of the Essay of Dramatic Poesy, prefixed to the second edition of the Indian Emperor. 1688. t The “Sullen Lovers seems to have been better known as the “ Impertinents.” (See Pepys, Vol. ii. p. 225, &c., and Index. Also Langbaine.) It is commonly said that the “ Sullen Lovers ” was taken from “ Les Facheux” of Moliere. Certainly the speech of Eraste in the opening scene may have suggested the capability of such a character as Sir Positive Atall for representation on the stage; and Lysander, (one of the Impertinents), with his “ J’ai le bien, la naissance, et quelque emploi passable, Et fais figure en France assez considerable,” may have talked after Sir Robert’s fashion. But Moliere’s plotless Play, with its wonderful delineations of character, and touches of exquisite cleverness, was in no other respect suited to Shadwell’s purpose. What he wanted was intricacy and coarseness. Moliere was too good for his use. Les Facheux was first acted in August, 1661, at Vaux, in the house of M. Fouquet, Superintendent of the Finances, before the King and Court; and again, at Paris, in the Theatre of the Palais Royal, in the same year. The scene of the Hunter, Doran tes, is said to have been suggested by the King, before it was acted at S. Germains. “La scene de la chasse ne se trouvoit pas dans la piece a la premiere representation ; mais Louis XIV., montrant du doigt a Moliere, M. de Soyecourt, grand-veneur, lui dit : Voila un original que vous n’avez pas encore copie ? Le lendemain, la scene du ebasseur etoit faite et executee.” (Sainte Beuve. Vie de Moliere, p. 24.) Langbaine (p. 451) says that Shadwell wrote the greater part of his Play from a report of Les Facheux, before he had read that Comedy. The Sullen Lovers was first published (in 4to.) in 1670, and dedicated to the Duke of Newcastle. In the spring of the year but one before, (May 8th, 1668) Pepys writes of it thus characteristically : “ Lord ! to see how that Play of Sir Positive CHARACTER OF SIR ROBERT HOWARD. 33 principal character, as originally sketched, in the witty farce of the “ Rehearsal,” — - the ostensible author of which (though it was the child of several parents) was George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, — the stony-hearted profligate, the unprincipled statesman, — the unsteady friend, the steady enemy, — “ the bankrupt, the outcast, the proverb,”* * — was intended for Sir Robert Howard, though Dryden, as Bayes, was ultimately substituted for Bilbao.! Such a combination of circumstances could have hardly occurred without some occasion afforded for their production. Sir Robert must have given his antagonists advantages over him through some defect of character by which he made himself offensive. He had evidently his full share of conceit, and probably, (for the two qualities are not seldom conjoined), the obstinacy which grows out of weakness, made him obnoxious. Weak-minded people are frequently spoken of as if they had no decision of character. Usually they have a good deal, — only they exhibit it, by fits and starts, and always at the wrong moment : their energy is reserved for unsuitable occasions, and unfitting objects. When they ought to be firm, they yield ; when they ought to yield, their stubbornness is immoveable, and unconquerable. Hence, when they are most resolute, they are most sure to be in the wrong. This appears to be the clue to much that seems to have been unattractive in Sir Robert’s character ; but still, his enemies being witnesses, there is evidence to show that he was an upright, honourable, and (in spite of hastiness and want of forbearance), a very forgiving man. His connexion with the poet Dryden was disastrous in many ways, but his reconciliation with him in his latter days tells well for his placability and kindness of heart. We have wandered far from Sir Robert’s position in the political world, but, even for a right understanding of the line pursued by him there, the above remarks were necessary. He has been spoken of as a mere time-server, who curried favour Atall, in abuse of Sir Robert Howard do take, — all the Duke’s, and everybody’s talk being- of that, and telling more stories of him of that like nature, that it is now the town and country talk, and they say is most exactly true. The Duke of York himself said that of his playing trap-ball is true, and told several other stories of him.” * “ As to his personal character, it is impossible to say any thing in his vindication, for though his severest enemies acknowledge his quickness of wit, yet his warmest advocates have never attributed to him a single virtue. His generosity was extravagance, his wit malevolence, his very talents caprice, his existence selfishness. As he lived a profligate, he died a beggar; and as he had raised no friend in his life, he found none to lament him in his death.” — “ Zimri ” was the sketch of an enemy : but it is hardly more severe than this picture which was drawn by no inimical hand. f See “ Key to the Rehearsal” (p. 88, Edition 1735.) Malone believes that Sir William Davenant was the original of Bilbao, but the preponderance of evidence seems to the writer to be against it, though Bayes “with a paper on his nose,” Act iii. Scene 1, looks like an allusion to Davenant’s disfigurement. F 34 SIR ROBERT HOWARD, THE PURCHASER OF ASHTEAD. with the Court, and was ready to do its dirty work, (of which there was no small amount to be done), in order to serve his own interests. But his circumstances were such that Court favour was not essential to him. If he sought it, the probable motive was simply the gratification of his vanity. But some independence of spirit he must have shown, for Pepys speaks of him (December 8th, 1666) as being the originator of a measure just carried against the Court, — the Proviso to the Poll Bill, — a circumstance which greatly irritated the King, as it put certain monies which he was wont to control, into the hands of commissioners, and induced the worthy Secretary of the Admiralty to speak of Sir Robert indignantly, as “ one of the King’s servants, — at least one who hath a great office, and hath got, they say, £20,000 since the King came in.”* Elsewhere, (February 20th, 1667) Pepys speaks of Sir Robert’s Play, the “ Duke of Lerma,” as having been so evidently designed to reproach the King for his profligacy, that he (Pepys) expected that, the King being then present, it would have been interrupted. In the same year (July 17th) the Diarist speaks of him as one of “ the discontented Parliament.” And though, on February 1st, 1668, he writes of “Lord Vaughan, Sir Robert Howard, and others,” as being “ brought over to the Court,” and “ undertaking to get the King money,” and that, in consecpience “they despise, and will not hear them in the House,” — yet notwithstanding, “ Sir Robert Howard and his party,” are spoken of two months afterwards, April 16th, 1668, as though he was a person of influence ; and on the 27th of April, Pepys intimates his expectation that Sir Robert would induce Parliament to have Lord Sandwich recalled, on account of the complaints against him, in connexion with the Dutch War. It may be as well to mention here all that remains to be* said in connexion with Sir Robert’s career as a politician. In 1679 he was elected one of the Members of Parliament for Castle Rising, a Borough in Norfolk, long connected with the Dukes of that name, and afterwards, as already intimated, with the Earls of Arundel. The following year, Sir Robert became the purchaser of the Ashtead Estate. In 1688, (the year of James the Second’s Abdication), he was re-elected for Castle Rising, and made a Privy Councillor by William III. In his place in Parliament he strongly advocated what were then called “the principles of the Revolution,” and * “ On dit ” is a very unsafe witness to rely upon : but assuming 1 the truth of the statement, Sir Robert’s Offices had brought him in somewhat less than three thousand a year, for the time he held them. SIR ROBERT HOWARD, AND THE DRAMA. 35 was a zealous opponent of the Non-jurors. He lived ten years longer, but is no more heard of in the arena of Politics. We have now to record the history of Sir Robert Howard as a Dramatist ; and in approaching the subject, it is better to make the admission at once, that, as was only to be expected, the man himself was no purer than his writings. It is to be feared that Sir Robert did not escape the depravation of morals, then all but universal, or remain untainted with the loose principles of the age. His Plays, — as a matter of course, — are disfigured by the all-prevailing coarseness and licentiousness of the Stage of that epoch : and, worse than this, there is a melancholy passage in Evelyn’s diary,* which throws light upon a disreputable connexion known to have been formed by him, and which the “Lady Vaine,” in Shadwell’s Play, was intended to publish to the world. There is no reason for reviving scandals which have passed into oblivion, nor for calling up long-forgotten “ frailties, from their dread abode : ” but the necessity of this allusion will be seen presently ; and having made it, we pass on to another subject, Sir Robert Howard’s connexion with Literature, and more especially, to his merits as Author of some of the multitudinous Plays which, week by week, were produced in never-ending succession in the revived Theatres. The Drama was as hateful in the eyes of the Puritans as Kings and Bishops. | That it had been patronized by Elizabeth, and James, and the first Charles, would have been sufficient to cause its condemnation, even if it had no sins of its own to answer for. No sooner had the rebels got the upper hand, than the Theatres were closed, the dramatic poets silenced, and the actors reduced to beggary, if they escaped harsher treatment. And, so long as the rule of Religious and Military fanaticism lasted, every thing connected with the amusements, refinements, and elegancies of life, was a stumbling-block and rock of offence. “No department of Poetry,” — to use the words of Sir Walter Scott, — -“ was accounted lawful ; but the October 18th, 1666; where “the Earl of Oxford, Sir Robert Howard, Prince Rupert, the Earl of Dorset, and another greater person than any of them,” are spoken of as having- taken to very profligate courses, and some of them (Sir Robert was one) as having- married actresses of most abandoned character, “ to the reproach of their noble families, and mine of both body and soule.” — It was just six weeks after the Fire of London, that a Play enacted before their Majesties at Court, at which Evelyn, ag-ainst his will, was present, called forth his protest “ against such a pastime, in a season of such judgments and calamities.” t It must be remembered that Prynne, in his “ Histrio-Mastix, or Player’s Scourge,” put Plays and Common Prayer very much on a level. Church Music lie calls the “ Bleating of brute Beasts ; ” and says that “ the Choristers bellow the Tenor, as if they were Oxen ; bark a Counter-point, like a Ivennel of Hounds; roar a Treble as if they were Bulls; and grunt out a Bass, like a parcel of Hogs.” 36 THE DBAMA IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. Drama, being altogether unhallowed and abominable, its professors were persecuted, scourged, imprisoned, and stripped of their goods, at the pleasure of the soldiery.* With the return of the King, the same violent re-action began in matter of taste, as in all else. And if that re-action was accompanied with enormous evils, they had themselves to thank for it, who had made him an exile through the trying time of youth and early manhood, and had exposed him to the corrupting influences, and loose morals, of Foreign Courts. When Charles, however, was first re-established at Whitehall, the Stage was not, what it was very quickly made, — an iniquity. To frequent the Theatres was, indeed, looked upon as an evidence of Loyalty, and a disavowal of Puritanism ; but, so far as the Government was concerned, there seems to have been an honest desire not to give needless offence. The Houses set apart for the use of the Drama were restricted to two, — the reason alleged being the desire to control all licentiousness in the representations. Had this principle been strictly maintained, a fearful amount of wickedness would have been prevented, and Shakspeare, and Massinger, and Fletcher might have resumed their place on the English stage in such guise as that which now enables us to tolerate them, — their coarseness expurgated, and their inimitable beauties retained. But unhappily, the King, in his exile, had contracted tastes which made a pure and decent Dramatic Literature insipid to him ; and it was at his instigation, and for the gratification of himself and the vile creatures by whom he was surrounded, that French and Spanish Plays were produced in an English garb ; and, as though they were not already bad enough, they were carefully seasoned by the translators and adapters with a double measure of gross indelicacy. The earlier Dramatic Literature of our own Country was any thing but faultless, — yet it simply spoke the habitual language of a half-barbarous, and wholly-unrefined condition of society.' Under Charles II., the license of a rude age was intensified by a corrupted one. No doubt, as has been already intimated, the depravity of the * By the Ordinance of Parliament, February 11th, 1047, all Stage-players were declared to be rogues, and punishable accordingly : all Play-bouses were to be pulled down : persons convicted of acting, to be publicly whipped : persons present at a Play to be fined five shillings each : money received at the doors to be forfeited to the poor. In 1648 some actors suffered accordingly. Gradually, in Country Houses, and such like places, acting was connived at; and in 1656, Sir William Davenant, beginning- with “ declamations and music, after the manner of the ancients,” at Rutland House, got in the small end of the wedge, — removed two years afterwards to the Cock-Pit, and acted there undisturbed, till the usurpation came to an end. THE DRAMAS OF THE RESTORATION EPOCH. 37 revived Theatres was mainly the re-action from Puritanism : the torrent, long dammed up, — when at length it suddenly found free passage, carried forth in its first impetuous rush the mass of filth which had accumulated during its repression. But if the King had been a man of different mould, he could have kept the evil under control by steadily discountenancing what was objectionable : it was owing to his miserable habits, and connexions, that the Dramatic Literature of the Restoration became as immeasurably infamous as it is. When the Theatres, newly-opened, after some fifteen years of suppression, were an exciting novelty to all classes, and resorted to accordingly, — and when, as yet, there were no Plays of a character to suit the fashionable taste, it was obvious that an opportunity had arisen which seemed to promise remuneration to such persons as believed themselves to possess a talent for Dramatic composition. Accordingly, for many years, the number of new Plays brought out every season, was incredible, and with the quantity, the quality rapidly deteriorated. When one man bound himself to produce three Plays yearly, the material could not but soon sink below mediocrity, and though there are libraries in which shelf after shelf is filled with collections of these Caroline Plays, it would be hard to find a dozen which have any real merit of language or plot. As compositions, they are intolerably "wearisome and unreadable to the modern reader, irrespectively of their loathsome coarseness, and profane witticisms ; and, for the most part, — as representations of nature, — they are a mass of falsehood in its worst form, — false in their principles, false in their, delineation of the passions and motives, both of men and women, false in sentiment, false in whatever morality they affect, — false in every particular in which a Drama ought to be true. And though they are true to nothing else, it is much to be feared that these wretched Plays only too faithfully represented the minds of the writers, and that Dr. Johnson’s never-to-be-forgotten censure simply expressed a fact : “ The wits of Charles found easier ways to fame, Nor wish’d for Jonson’s art, or Shakspeare’s flame. Themselves they studied, — as they felt they writ ; Intrigue was plot, obscenity was wit. Vice always found a sympathetic friend ; They pleas’d their age, and did not aim to mend.”* * Prologue spoken by Garrick, at the opening of Drury Lane Theatre, 1747. 38 SIR ROBERT, EDWARD, AND JAMES HOWARD, DRAMATISTS. Into tliis dreary phalanx of Play-wrights, Sir Robert Howard, with his two brothers, Edward, — his senior (born 1624), and James, a younger brother, enlisted. With respect to Edward, the Biographical Dictionaries copy one from another, the same sentence, that “ he exposed himself to the severity of our satirists, by writing some bad Plays.” What constituted a bad Play in the eyes of the originator of the passage, it is now hard to say ; but it is not impossible that Mr. Howard laid himself open to adverse criticism by the adoption of a plot which Avas not immoral, and of language which Avas free from indecency, for Plays which Avere innocent of these offences met with little mercy. Mr. Edward Howard, however, and his Plays have passed into such complete oblivion, that the writer is by no means sure that he has been successful in making out a complete list of his productions. The note beloAv gives all the information which he has been able to obtain in a search through contemporary publications.* He has not himself seen any one of the Plays which are there mentioned. * The earliest Play of Mr. E. Howard’s composition was probably not printed, for it is not mentioned in any printed list of his Plays, such as is given by Langbaine, (p. 274) and in the very scarce “ Compleat List of all the Plays ever printed in the English Language to the present year 1747,” (a work with no name attached, either of author or publisher, but written by Thomas Whincop, and usually attached to his Drama, called “ Scanderbeg.”) This Play, which bore the title of the “ Change of Crowns,” produced a considerable commotion in the Courtly, and Theatrical, world. The following extract from the Diary of Pepys tells the tale : — “ April 15th, 1667. To the King’s House, by chance, where a new Play : so full as I never saw it : I forced to stand all the while, close to the very door. . . .The King, Queen, and Duke of York, and Duchess there, and all the Court. The Play called the “ Change of Crowns a Play of Ned Howard’s, the best that ever I saw at that House, being - a great Play and serious; only Lacy did act the Country Gentleman come up to Court, tvho do abuse that Court with all imaginable wit and plainness, about selling of places, and doing every thing for money ”. . . . “16th. Ivnipp” (the actress) “tells me the King was so angry at the liberty taken by Lacy’s part, to abuse him to his face, that he commanded they should act no more, till Moone (“ Michael Mohun, a famous actor of the day”) went, and got leave for them to act again, but not this Play. The King mighty angry. And it was bitter indeed, but very fine and witty ”. . . . “20th. Met Mr. Rolt, who tells me the reason of no Play to-day at the King’s House. That Lacy had been committed to the Porter’s Lodge, for his acting his part in the new Play, and being then released, to come to the King’s House, he there met with Ned Howard, the poet of the Play, who congratulated his release ; upon which Lacy cursed him as that it was the fault of his nonsensical Play that was the cause of his ill usage. Mr. Howard did give him some reply, to which Lacy answered him that he was more a fool than a poet: upon which Howard did give him a blow on his face with his glove; on which, Lacy, having a cane in his hand, did give him a blow over the pate. Here Rolt and others that discoursed of it in the pit this afternoon, did wonder that Howard did not run him through, he being too mean a fellow to fight with. But Howard did not do any thing but complain to the King of it; so the whole House is silenced ; and the gentry seem to rejoice much at it, the House being become too insolent.” The “ Change of Crowns” does not seem to have been acted a second time. There was another Play of Edward Howard’s, which caused a commotion, — the “Usurper,” referred to by Walter Scott in his Life of Dryden, and of which play-loving Pepys thus writes. “ 1688, December 2. To the King’s Play House, and there saw the “ Usurper,” a pretty good Play in all, but what is designed to resemble Cromwell, and Hugh Peters, which is mighty silly.” In this Tragedy, according to Langbaine, EDWARD AND JAMES HOWARD. 39 James Howard, the younger brother, (he was the Earl of Berkshire’s eighth, or, perhaps, ninth son, — for there is some uncertainty on the subject), seems to have been more successful* * than Edward ; but Sir Robert was the Play-wright of the family. Of greater natural ability than his brothers, his prudence or his the character of Damocles is designed for the Protector. The following- notice of it is to be found in the “ Key to the Rehearsal.” — “ It was acted in the Cock-Pit in Drury-Lane, soon after the Restoration, but miscarrying- on the stage, the author had the modesty not to print it.” This is an error : it was printed in 4to., 1668. It is then stated that while the first performance was going on, many friends of the author, seeing the Duke of Buckingham (George Yilliers) “very active in damning the Play, by hissing- and laughing immoderately, there were persons who laid wait for him as he came out, and his life was like to have been brought into danger. But there being a great tumult and uproar in the House, and passages near it, he escaped, hut he was threatened hard.” Two or three passages in the “ Rehearsal ” are stated to be Burlesques of Edward Howard’s usual language of self-laudation, as when Mr. Bayes is made to say of his new piece, “ It shall read, and write, and act, and plot, and show, and Pit, Box, and Gallery it, with any Play in Europe.” In 1671, he produced a Comedy, acted at the Duke of York’s Theatre, — “ Six days Adventure, or the New Utopia,” — “ which,” reports one of his Chroniclers, “ miscarried in the action,” — “ which,” writes a more blunt Historian, “ was damned ; ” — a fact which the author himself acknowledges in his preface to the published Play. Lord Rochester made an epigram upon it, — Mrs. Aphra Behn an eulog’ium $ in return for which, Mr. Howard addressed her in “ a grateful Pindarick,” which the lady, finding encomia g-rowing scarce, herself published fourteen years afterwards. Then, in 1677, was produced (for the Duke’s House likewise), a Tragic Comedy, intitled “ A Woman’s Conquest,” — which was considered the author’s best Play: and lastly, in 1678, “The Man of New- market,” a Comedy, acted at the Theatre Royal. — He also wrote another Comedy, called “ The London Gentleman,” hut nothing is known of its date, or measure of success. — It was never published, though entered at Stationers’ Hall in 1667. Besides these Plays, Mr. Howard wrote an Epic (published in 8vo.) called by Langbaine “ The British Princess,” hut which Malone, on the authority of a pedigree preserved at Burghley, (Mr. Howard’s mother was Lady Elizabeth Cecil), wherein he is called “ the incomparable author of the British Princess,” designates by a slightly different title. — But whether the subject of the Epic was male or female, Lord Rochester fell foul of it, and it is no more remembered any better than Lord Rochester’s own Poems. — Mr. Howard is mentioned as having printed a volume of Essays in prose and verse, and a “ Tract upon Friendship,” which seems to have been a sort of paraphrase of Cicero’s “ Lcelius.” * Mr. James Howard was employed in writing for the Stage at the same time as his brothers. The names of two Comedies of which he was the author, and which had a fair reputation in their day, have come down to us. — “ All Mistaken, or the Mad Couple,” was acted at the Theatre Royal in 1672. It was originally published in 4to., but has been reprinted, and will be found in the 12th Volume of Dodsley’s Collection ol Old Plays: — and if all Mr. James Howard’s literary efforts resemble it, no man’s works, in the writer’s judgment, ever passed into more thoroughly deserved oblivion. In 1674, appeared the other Comedy, “ The English Monsieur,” as a quarto : but it had been acted ■ some years before at the Theatre Royal. Pepys (December 8th, 1666) thus writes of it ; “a mighty pretty Play, very witty and pleasant : and the women do all very well : but above all, Little Nelly.” And two years afterwards, April 7th, 1668, he says, “the Play hath much, mirth in it, as to that particular humour.” — It is supposed that the interview between Comely and Elsbeth in this Play suggested the absurd Scene in the “ Rehearsal,” where Prince Volscius falls in love with Parthenope, as he his pulling on his hoots to go out of town, and “ Exit hopping, with one boot on, and the other off.” — Mr. Howard was bold enough to turn “ Romeo and Juliet,” into a Tragi-Comedy, preserving the lives of the hero and heroine, so that when the Play was revived in Sir. W. Davenant’s Company, the Tragedy and Tragi- Comedy were played alternately ! The latter was never printed. 40 SIR ROBERT HOWARD, AND JOHN DRYDEN. discrimination induced him to take as liis associate or assistant in writing for the Stage, one who was destined in future years to occupy no inconspicuous place in the eyes of the world, — John Dryden.* * In a literary point of view the connexion was advantageous ; — in all others, most unfortunate. Dryden, born of a good family in straitened circumstances, was some thirty years old when this joint-authorship began. If we are to believe his lampooners, he successively adopted the tenets of the Baptists and Independents;! yet his language in “ The Hind and the Panther,” after he had become a Roman Catholic, (a change of opinions which, now a days, does not seem to produce kindly feelings towards the Church of England), appears inconsistent with any thing but such a disposition towards her as would be felt by one who had loved her while yet in her communion. For whereas the prevailing sects of the day are denounced as foxes, boars, wolves, bears, and such like, the Panther (the Church of England) is “ - -sure, the noblest, next the Hind, And fairest offspring of the spotted kind. 0 could her in-born stains be wash’d away, She were too good to be a beast of prey ! There is no doubt, however, that several of his kinsmen were very extreme in their opinions, and notorious members of the Puritan faction. Sir John Dryden, his father’s elder brother, is spoken of, in Walker’s “ Sufferings of the Clergy,” as having been the profane desecrator of the Church of Canons Ashby (the seat of the Drydens), and as a person of bitterly fanatical opinions ; while another near relative (both on his father’s and mother’s side), was Sir Gilbert Pickering, — a member of Cromwell’s Council after the murder of the King, Lord Chamberlain of his Mock Court, and High Steward of Westminster. In one of the innumerable attacks made upon him, in after years, it is said of the future Laureate : * There was a Dramatic writer, by name James Shirley, — the author of no fewer than nine and thirty Plays, not one of which, however, has survived, — who is said in the Collection of “ State Poems ” (Yol. i. • p. 206) to have written some of Edward Howard’s Dramas for him : but, so far as the writer knows, the allegation has never been confirmed. t See the “Laureate” (1687) cpioted by Malone. “ What sort of Christians is’t thou hast known, And at one time or other, made thine own ? A bristled Baptist bred.... Next thy dull muse, an Independent jade, On sacred tyranny fine stanzas made,”