O u. &3 O 'Or a "T 1 s n J 'J' ^p^iuJ niiuiLtj^* AjS^" V^ILIIWO/^ /CS^ 1 tru -" u 1/K(' S 2/Or-^ CLjC\o iX/dNi 'Y$ I YS i r- i-u V I , 111-^ ^ ANCESTRAL STORIES TRADITIONS OF GREAT FAMILIES. WORKS BY JOHN TIMES. LADY BOUNTIFUL'S LEGACY TO HER FAMILY AND FRIENDS: A BOOK OF PRACTICAL INSTRUCTIONS AND DUTIES, COUNSELS, AND EXPERIENCES, HINTS, AND RECIPES IN HOUSEKEEPING, AND DOMESTIC MANAGEMENT, CALCULATED TO INCREASE THE COM- FORTS OF HOUSE AND HOME. Post 8vo, price 6s. cloth elegant ; 75. bevelled boards, gilt edges. ' There is something to be found in this volume about everything which concerns the household. As a valuable compendium of useful knowledge, in an agreeable shape, we can strongly recommend Lady Bountifuts Legacy to the attention of all who keep house. Many may be beguiled into reading it, who would shrink from drier and less attractive-looking volumes.' Churchman. ' Mr. Timbs seems to go beyond most other recent manuals in the very complete way in which he goes over the surface of domestic management.' Saturday Review. 'When it is remembered the sum total of our worldly happiness rests with the comforts and amenities of home life, the true value of the teaching of Lady Bountiful cannot fail of being fully appreciated.' Morning Post. 'Any lady once having tasted the book, would desire to possess it." Art Journal. NOOKS AND CORNERS OF ENGLISH LIFE, PAST AND PRESENT. With Illustrations, Second Edition, Post 8vo, price 6s. extra cloth; 6s. 6d. gilt edges. ' Fresh and racy is the matter brought together.' Athenaum. 'There is not a chapter in the whole work in which instructive matter is not found." London Review. 'A book which ought to find a place in one of the " nooks and corners" of every library.' The Reliquary. STRANGE STORIES OF THE ANIMAL WORLD: A BOOK OF CURIOUS CONTRIBUTIONS TO NATURAL HISTORY. With Seven Illustrations by ZWECKER, etc. Second Edition, Post 8vo, price 6s. extra cloth ; 6s. 6d. gilt edges. ' Among all the books of the season that will be studied with profit and pleasure there is not one more meritorious in aim or more successful in execution.' Athe- nceum. GRIFFITH & FARRAN, ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD. ANCESTRAL STORIES TRADITIONS OF GREAT FAMILIES iin of BY JOHN TIMES, F.S.A., AUTHOR OK ' NOOKS AND CORNERS OF ENGLISH LIFE,' ETC. LONDON: GRIFFITH AND FARRAN, SUCCESSORS TO NEWBERY AND HARRIS, CORNER OF ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD. MDCCCLXIX. MURRAY AND GIBB, EDINBURGH. PRINTERS TO HER MAJESTY'S STATIONERY OFFICE. PREFACE. 7^1 nt^"^ Ancestral Histories of the Great Families of England are rich beyond compare in Episodes of Thought and Action, such as are the master- springs by which the world is moved. The gravity of History has been estimated as ' Philo- sophy teaching by example.' In this long lesson, how in- tricate is the chequer-work of success and defeat, of light and shade; yet how interesting to those who delight to seek out the motives of human action in the lives of master- minds, their rise and fall I In the Histories of Great Families, which are the nooks and byeways of History proper, are to be found garnered many records of change, which sometimes make men giddy by looking too long upon their wheels. In the present volume an attempt is made to focus some of these Scenes and Stories from English History, and the parts which the leaders of Great Families have played in the grand drama of our country's fame : in its Monastic and Castle 2000094 vi PREFACE. Life ; its Traditions and Legends ; its Domestic Tragedies ; its Battles and Sieges ; as well as its ' trivial fond records ' of Private Life, and its abode of quiet contentment. The inner life of the people, as well as of their rulers, has been here glanced at, with their habits and modes of living, as well as the great changes by which they have been influenced. In the preparation of this volume the general aim has been "to present such a book as, by seizing salient points in our History, should supplement narratives of striking events of domestic interest, which are already popular, and thus add to their attractiveness as well as complete- ness. Localities and love of country have not been over- looked, but studied for the charm with which they invest scenes and circumstances, and people the historic page with actual life. It is now the Author's grateful duty to acknowledge how much he has, in preparing the present volume, availed him- self of the valuable historical, genealogical, and heraldic works of Sir Bernard Burke, Ulster King-at-Arms, who has devoted a lifetime to studies in these classes of literature ; and although the Author's quotations are in most instances specially indicated, he feels it due to Sir Bernard Burke here to refer to the extent of the obligation in the spirit as well as the letter. He should further state that his extracts can nowise, and are not at all intended to interfere with the necessary perusal of Sir Bernard's popular books, and especially of his charming series, The Vicissitudes of Families. CONTENTS. LACOCK ABBEY, AND ELA COUNTESS OF SALISBURY. Village of Lacock, I ; Nunnery of Lacock, 2 ; William Longspe, Earl of Sarum, 2 ; Childhood of Ela, 2 ; Annals of Lacock, 3 ; Pilgrimage of William Talbot, 3, 4 ; Marriage of Ela, 4 ; Salisbury Cathedral founded, 5 ; Death of the Earl of Salisbury, 6 ; Ela Sheriff of Wiltshire, 7 ; Lacock Abbey founded, 7 ; Ela's Abbacy, 8 ; Death of Ela, 9 ; Lacock preserved, 1 1 ; A Love Adventure, 12 ; Mr. Fox Talbot and Photography, 13 ; Lacock Abbey described, 14, 15 ; Mrs. Crawford's account of Lacock, 15 ; Lady Shrewsbury and Miss Dormer, 16 ; Legend of Spye Park and the Bayntons, 17, 18. THE LUMLEY PORTRAITS. Lumley Castle, Durham, 19 ; Liulph the Saxon, 19 ; Series of Family Portraits, 20; Surtees' and Planche's accounts of the Pictures, 20-22. FOTHERINGHAY AND ITS MEMORIES. Village of Fotheringhay, 23 ; Fotheringhay Castle built, 23 ; Mary of Valence, her good works, 24 ; Fetterlock plan of the Castle, 25 ; College and Church of Fotheringhay, 25-27 ; Cicely Duchess of York, 26 ; History of the Castle, 28 ; Henry v. buried, 29 ; Richard III. born, 29 ; State Funeral, 30 ; The Duchess Cicely, death of, 32 ; Catharine of Aragon at Fotheringhay, 33 ; Ampthill Park, 33 ; Fotheringhay a Prison of State, 34 ; Mary Queen of Scots impri- soned here, 34 ; Mary's Trial, 35 ; Sentence, 36 ; Elizabeth and Mary, 37 ; Souvenirs of Mary, 37, 38 ; Execution of Mary, 42 ; Conduct of Elizabeth, 42 ; Portraits of Mary, 43 ; Ruins of Fother- inghay Castle, 44, 45 ; Case of Mary Queen of Scots and Mr. Froude's Views, 46, 47. viii CONTENTS. TRADITIONS OF WALLINGTON AND THE CALVERLEYS. Wallington Border Tower, 48 ; Sir John Fenwick's Hospitality, 48 ; his Execution, 49 ; Walter Calverley's Adventures, 50 ; the Vava- sours of Weston, 51 ; Yorkshire Tragedy, 51 ; Headless Horse Superstition, 52 ; Calverley Wood, 52. FORTUNES OF THREE EARLS OF KILDARE. The Irish Geraldines, 54; The Earl of Kildare saved from fire in Woodstock Castle, 54 ; The Vescis and the Geraldines, 55 ; The Baron of Offaly, 56 ; Gerald the Great Earl of Kildare, 57 ; Lam- bert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck, 57, 58 ; The Lord of Clanricarde, 58, 59 ; Death of Kildare, 59 ; Gerald Oge, ninth Earl, 60, 61 ; Strange Story, 61 ; ' Silken Thomas,' 62 ; His Rebellion, 63 ; Lord Edward Fitzgerald, 64. SIR ANTHONY BROWNE AND HIS DESCENDANTS. Sir Anthony Browne's family connection with Royalty, 66, 67 ; Huns- don House and the Earl of Surrey, 66 ; The Fair Geraldine's Story, 67 ; Mabel Browne, 67 ; Gerald eleventh Earl on his Travels, 68, 69 ; Cardinals Pole and Farnese, 69 ; Battle Abbey and Sir Anthony Browne, 71 ; Schaffhausen Catastrophe, 71, 72 ; Cowdray Castle and Viscount Montague, 72 ; The Family of Browne, 72, 73. THE OSBORNE AND LEEDS FAMILIES. Edward Osbome, the Gallant Apprentice of London Bridge, and Sir William Hewet, Cloth-worker, 76 ; Hewet's Daughter saved, 76 ; Family of Osborne, 77; Prints and Pictures of Osbome, 78, 79. LOSELEY MANOR AND MANUSCRIPTS, AND THE MORE FAMILY. Loseley, near Guildford, 80 ; Battle of Hastings, and Roger de Mont- gomery, 80 : Manor held of the House of Gloucester, 81 ; Pur- chased by Christopher More, Sheriff of Surrey and Sussex, 81 ; Loseley House founded by William More, 82 ; Sir William More a favourite of Queen Elizabeth, 82 ; Elizabeth's Visits to Loseley, CONTENTS. ix 83 ; Sir Christopher Hatton, the Queen's Chamberlain, 83 ; Visits of James I., 84 ; Sir George More and the Trial of Overbury, 85 ; Dr. Donne and Mrs. Donne, 85 ; Loseley Manuscripts, 86 ; Loseley described, 87 ; Lines upon a Clock at Loseley, 89 ; Rebus of the More Family, 90 ; Drawing-room at Loseley, 91 ; Memorials of the Mores and Molyneux, 92 ; Sir William More, Master of the Swans, 93. GOD'S PROVIDENCE IS MAN'S INHERITANCE. Inscription at Chester, 94 ; Motto of the Earl of Cork, 95 ; Dr. South on ' the Providence of God,' 95. SUSSEX AND ITS WORTHIES. Sussex, or the Land of the South Saxons, 97 ; Saxon Times, 98 ; Godwin, Harold, and Pevensey, 98 ; Arundel, Lewes, Petworth, Cowdray, and Stanstead, 99 ; Great Names in Church and State, 99 ; Archbishops of Canterbury, 99 ; Bodiam Castle, 99 ; Selden, Gibbon, Leighton, Shelley, St. Leonards, Erskine, three Shirleys, 100 ; Howards and the Sackvilles, Fienneses, Pelhams, Ashburn- hams, Percys, and the Montagues, 101 ; Historians of Sussex, 101 ; Burrell MSS., ioi ; Lower's Battle of Hastings, 101. ' A WORTHY COMMANDER IN THE WARRES.' From the Miscellaneous Works of Sir Thomas Overbury. Now first collected and edited by E. F. Rimbault, LL.D., 102. THE HUNGERFORD FAMILY. The Hungerfords of Somerset and Wilts, 104 ; Sir Richard Colt Hoare's ffungerfordiana, 104 ; Farleigh Castle, History of, 104, 105 ; An Episode of Bosworth Field, 106 ; Lady Hungerford Executed at Tybourn, 106 ; Hungerfords, 107 ; Lord Hungerford of Heytes- bury, 108 ; Inventory of Lady Hungerford's Goods, 108 ; The Hungerford Badge and Crest, 113, 114 ; Heytesbury Manor-house, 116 ; Bottreaux Shield in the Hungerford Arms, 117 ; Hungerford House, Strand, 117 ; A Five Hundred Guinea Wig, 118 ; Aubrey and Britton's Accounts of the Hungerford Family, 119, 120. x CONTENTS. THE HOUSE OF FERRERS. The Family of Shirley, 121 ; Lordship of Etington, 121 ; Sir Thomas Shirley, 122 ; Chartley Estate, 123 ; Staunton Harold Church, 123 ; Sir Robert Shirley, 123, 124; Laurence Earl Ferrers murders his Steward, 124; Trial of Lord Ferrers, 127; Execution of Lord Ferrers, 129-132 ; Chartley Tradition, 133. THE HOUSE OF TALBOT. The Earl of Shrewsbury, 135 ; Gooderich Castle, 136 ; John Talbot, 136; Wars of Henry v., 137; Monument at Whitchurch, 138; Sir Gilbert Talbot at Bosworth, 138 ; George Earl of Shrewsbury and Mary Queen of Scots, 139 ; The Duke of Shrewsbury and Addison, 140 ; The Great Shrewsbury Will Case, 140, 141 ; In- scription in Bromsgrove Church, 142. GEORGE VILLIERS, DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM, ASSASSI- NATED BY JOHN FELTON. Buckingham the Favourite of James I. and Charles I. , 143 ; ' Sweet Steenie,' 144; Death of Dr. Lambe, 'the Duke's Devil,' 145; Attempts upon Buckingham's Life, 146 ; Assassination by Felton at Portsmouth, 146, 147 ; Paper found in Felton's Hat, 148 ; Charles I. at Southwick, 149 ; Account of Felton, 149 ; Purchase of the Knife, 150; Execution of Felton, 151 ; Funeral of Bucking- ham, 151 ; D 'Israeli on the Assassination, 152 ; Poems and Songs printed by the Percy Society, 153 ; Mutiny at Portsmouth, 154 ; - Forster's Life of Sir John Eliot, 154. DRAGON LEGENDS. Wolves exterminated, 156; Serpent, Dragon, and Crocodile Stories, 157; Lindwurm or Dragon in Moravia, 158; The Dragon of Want - l y 159-161 ; St. Leonard's Forest Serpent or Dragon, 161-163 ! Geological Lights, 163, 164 ; Sir John Conyers, the Dragon-slayer, 165; Worm of Lambton Hall, 166, 167; The Lambton Family, 168 ; Gigantic Snail and Laidly Worm, 169 ; ' Serpent hi the Sea,' 170. CONTENTS. xi LEGENDS OF 'THE RED HAND.' Heraldry, its uses, 171 ; ' The Red Hand of Ulster,' 171 ; Hatchment at Hagley, 172; Holt Tradition and Aston Church, 172, 173; Red Hand at Wateringbury and Gray's Inn, 175, 176; Legend of Sir Richard Baker, 176-178; Stoke D'Abernon Church, 178; Legend of the Bodach Glass, 179-182; Oxenham Family and white- breasted Bird, 182. DONINGTON CASTLE AND CHAUCER. Castles near Newbury and Leicestershire, 183 ; Castle Doningtons, the two, 185 ; Chaucer's Residence question, 185 ; ' Chaucer's Oak,' 1 86; Death of Chaucer, 188 ; The Stauntons and the Shirleys, 190. THE HOUSE OF HOWARD. Sir John Howard, the eminent Yorkist, 191 ; Creation of Earl Marshal, 192 ; Catherine Howard, 193 ; The Earl of Surrey, statesman, poet, and warrior, 193 ; Thomas Duke of Norfolk, 194 ; Lines by Queen Elizabeth, 195 ; Philip Earl of Arundel, ' the Renowned Confessor,' 196-199 ; The Earls of Arundel and Charles I., 199 ; The Howards and the Deepdene, 200. THE TRAGEDY OF SIR JOHN ELAND. Eland Hall and the Family of Eland, 201 ; Fray and Feud in York- shire, 202 ; Eland, Beaumont, Lockwood, and Quarmby, 202 ; Attack on Crossland Hall, 202 ; Sir John Eland slain, 204-207 ; Search for his Murderers, 207 ; Revenge at Eland Mill and Hall, 208-211 ; Quarmby's Fate, 211 ; The Lockwoods extirpated, 212 ; Old Ballad quoted, 213. PONTEFRACT CASTLE AND ITS ECHOES. Pontefract Town and its Castle, 214; Three Sieges, 215 ; Towers of the Castle, 216; Magnificence of Thomas Earl of Lancaster, 216; The Earl tried in Pontefract Castle, and beheaded, 218, 219 ; Remorse of Edward II., 220; Deposing of Richard II., 221; Richard in Flint Castle, 221, 222 ; Richard II. in the Tower, 222, 223 ; Tradi- xii CONTENTS. tion of the King's Death, 223 ; Murdered by Sir Piers of Exton, 224 ; Execution of Rivers, Grey, and Vaughan, 225 ; Tragedies at Pontefract, 226 ; Three Sieges of the Castle, 226-228 ; Views from the Heights, 228, 229 ; Pontefract and Pomfrete, 229 ; Pontefract Cakes, 230. THE RADCLIFFES OF DERWENTWATER. The Derwentwater Family, 231 ; Charles Radcliffe and his Support of the Chevalier, 232, 233 ; Rebellion of 1 745, Walpole's account, 233, 234 ; Dilston or Devilstone Hall, 235 ; Lord Derwent water's ' Corpse Lights,' 236 ; Derwentwater Estates and Greenwich Hos- pital, 237 ; Relics of the Derwentwaters, 237, 238 ; Genealogical details, 238. THE BRAVE EARL OF LEVEN. The House of Lesley or Leslie, 239 ; General Lesley's Brave Services, 239, 240 ; Imprisoned in the Tower, and liberated by the media- tion of the Queen of Sweden, 241. FYNDERN AND THE FYNDERNES. Village of Fyndern, County Derby, 242 ; Family of the Fyndernes, 242, 243 ; Mary Queen of Scots in Tutbury Castle, 244 ; ' The Fynderne Flowers,' 244; Sir Bernard Burke's Vicissitudes of Families, 245, 246. THE GOLDSMITH OF LEEDS : A TRAGIC TALE. Mace of the Corporation, its Maker hanged for High Treason, 247 ; Clipping Case, 248 ; The Mystery cleared up, 249, 250. A COUNTRY GENTLEMAN OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. Mr. Henry Hastings, Son, Brother, and Uncle to the Earl of Hunting- don, his Park and Mansion, and love of Hunting ; A foundling Knight, 251-254. CONTENTS. xiii THREE EARLS OF STANHOPE. The First Earl, Soldier and independent Statesman, 255 ; Earl Philip, Patron of learned Men, and honest Statesman, 256 ; Earl Charles, universal Genius (Improver of the Printing-press), 257. HORSE-SHOES AT OAKHAM CASTLE. Drayton's Lines on Rutland, 258; Oakham Hall, 259; Walkeline de Ferrers, 259; Horse-shoes nailed upon the Castle Gate, origin of the custom, 260 ; Possession of the Castle and Manor, 262 ; Castle in the last century, 263 ; List of Shoes on the Castle Walls, 265-267; The 'Golden Shoe,' 267. CHRISTMAS MUMMERS IN THE OLDEN TIME. Origin of Mumming, 268, 269; Christmas in Guildford Castle in 1348, 269; Mummers in 1377, 270; Cornish Miracle-plays, 271; Mumming in Worcestershire and Northamptonshire, 272 ; Had- don Hall and its Festivities, 273; Possessors of Haddon, 274; Stanzas, 275. LOVE PASSAGE FROM THE DIARY OF LADY COWPER. Lady Cowper's Diary, 276; Lady Harriet Vere and Lord Cowper, 277-280 ; History of the Diary, 280, 281. THE SIEGE OF LATHOM HOUSE. Lathom House and its Possessors, 282 ; The Earls of Derby and their Magnificence, 284; Siege of Lathom in 1644, and its Defence by the heroic Countess of Derby, 284, 285 ; Sir Thomas Fairfax at Lathom, 286 ; Capture of Bolton, 287 ; Fall of Lathom, 288 ; The Earl of Derby defeated in 1651, 288; Lathom and Knowsley Proverbs, 290, 291 ; Legend of the Eagle and Child, 291-293 ; 'The Great Stanley,' his career, 293, 294; His Execution at Bolton, 295 ; The Rev. Mr. Cumming's Narrative, 295, 296. xiv CONTENTS. THE MANOR OF WAKEFIELD AND SANDAL CASTLE. Wakefield Manor, 297 ; William first Earl of Warren, 297 ; Discovery of the Remains of Gundreda at Lewes, 298, 299 ; Sandal Castle and the Battle of Wakefield, 300, 301 ; The Battle-field, 301 ; The Battle of Towton, 302; Towton and Waterloo compared, 302; Wakefield in olden times, 303; Pindar's Fields and Robin Hood, 303, 304; Sandal Castle, its history, 304, 305; The Civil Wars, 306 ; Wakefield Park, 306. MIDDLEHAM CASTLE AND RICHARD III. Middleham Castle, History of, 308; Character of Richard III., 309- 312 ; His love of Music, 313 ; Richard and Richmond at Bosworth, 315; Richard's personal appearance, 315. THE VALE OF WHITE HORSE. Umngton Castle and White Horse Hill, 316; Battle of Ashdown, 316; The White Horse and Scouring, 317 ; Saxon Standard of the White Horse, 319; Dragon Hill and Wayland Smith, 320; Wayland Smith Cave described, 321; Blowing-stone described, 322; Vale of White Horse, a retrospect, 323, 324. THE DUKE OF MONMOUTH'S LAST DAYS. Monmouth's Progress in Somerset and Dorset, 325, 326 ; White Lack- ington House and Norton St. Philip's, 326 ; Capture of Monmouth, 327-329 ; The Ash-tree, 329 ; Monmouth-close, 330 ; Monmouth's Attainder, 331 ; Execution of Monmouth, 333, 334 ; Burial of Monmouth, 334-336; Monmouth House, Soho, 336; Memorials of the Duke, 337; Pocket-book, 337; Verses and Prayers, 340; Diary, 341; Charles II., 341; Interesting Documents, 342. THE LADY ALICE LISLE. Miles Court, 343; 'The Merciful Assize,' 344; Trial of Lady Alice Lisle, 344-347 ; ' Kirke's Lambs,' 346 ; Chief Justice Jeffreys, 347 ; The Sentence and Execution, 347 ; The Last of Jeffreys, 348, 349. CONTENTS. xv WEST HORSLEY PLACE AND THE WESTONS. West Horsley Place and its Possessors, 350, 351 ; The Berners Family, 351; Lord Berners and the Chronicles ofFroissart, 352-354; West Horsley Manor, Sir Anthony Browne, and the Fair Geraldine, 355 ; The Career of Beddington and Carew Raleigh, 355 ; Sir Walter Raleigh and Sherborne Castle, 355, 356 ; The Head of Sir Walter Raleigh, 358, 359; Owners of West Horsley, 359; Great Storm of 1703, 360; The Weston Family, 360, 361 ; Historical Portraits, 361 ; The Westons of Sutton, 362; Sutton Place described, 363; Armorial Cognizances, 364 ; Curious Devices, 365 ; Old Portraits, 366 ; Chapel, 367. THE CLIFFORDS OF CRAVEN. Scenery of Craven, 368 ; The Cliffords, and Skipton Castle, 369 ; The Shepherd Lord Craven, 369, 370 ; The Profligate Earl of Cumber- land, 371 ; Ballad of ' The Nut-Brown Mayde,' 372 ; Earls of Cumberland, second and third, 373 ; The Countess of Pembroke and Montgomery, 373 ; Town Mansion of the Cliffords in Clerken- well, 374. SCRIVELSBY AND THE QUEEN'S CHAMPIONSHIP. Office of the Champion, the Dymokes and Scrivelsby, 375 ; The Mar- myons, 376 ; The Champions at the Coronations, Henry iv. to George iv., 377, 378; Scrivelsby Court, 379; Anglo-Norman Ballad on the Lands of Scrivelsby, 379-381. BRADGATE AND LADY JANE GREY. Memoir of the Greys of Groby, 382 ; Bradgate described, 383 ; Fami- lies of Ferrers and Grey, 384, 385 ; Birthplace of Lady Jane Grey, 386 ; Ruins of Bradgate, 386, 387 ; Aylmer, Lady Jane's Master, 388 ; Education and Character of Lady Jane, 388 ; Ascham's Visit to Bradgate, 389 ; Scholarship of Lady Jane, 390, 391 ; The Greys of Groby, 391 ; The Countess of Stamford, 392, 393 ; Mar- riage of Lord Dudley and Lady Jane, 394 ; Committed to the Tower, 395 ; Wyat's Insurrection, 395 ; Execution of Lord Dudley xvi CONTENTS. and Lady Jane, 396-401 ; Lines by Lady Jane, 401, 402 ; Burial of Lady Jane, 401, note; Prison in the Tower, 404 ; Lines on Brad- gate, 405. ASSASSINATION OF THE HARTGILLS BY LORD STOURTON. Stourton, in Wiltshire, 407 ; The Hartgills of Kilmington, 407 ; Lady Elizabeth Stourton, 407 ; Affray in Kilmington Church, 408, 409 ; Lord Stourton committed to the Fleet, 409 ; The Hartgills at- tacked by Lord Stourton's Men, 410 ; Star Chamber business, 411 ; Affray in the Church, 412 ; The Murder, 413, 414; Trial of Lord Stourton and four of his Servants, 415 ; Execution at Salis- bury, 416 ; The Stourton Family, 416. THE RED AND WHITE ROSES. Dispute in the Temple Garden, 418 ; Badges of York, 418 ; Rose Tenure, 419 ; Clifford Castle, 419, 420. APPENDIX. Peerages per saltum, 421 ; ' Bell the Cat,' 423. ANCESTRAL STORIES. LACOCK ABBEY, AND ELA COUNTESS OF SALISBURY. >BOUT thirteen miles east of Bath, and nearly half-way between the towns of Chippenham and Melksham, in a spacious and level meadow, surrounded by elms, and watered by the Avon, rise the walls and tall spiral chimneys, and arches hung with ivy, of the ancient Nunnery of Lacock. The site, it may be supposed, was originally a solitary glade, adjoining the village or town of Lacock. The name is derived from Lea and Lay, a meadow, and Oche, water; and here, in the Avon, Aubrey found large round pebbles, ' the like of which he had not seen elsewhere.' Lacock was, in the Saxon times, of greater importance than at present; for in an ancient record, quoted by Leland, we read that Dunvallo founded three cities, with three castles, Malmes- bury, Tetronberg (? Troubridge), and Lacock. We need scarcely remark, that what might have been then called 2 LACOCK ABBEY, AND cities or castles, would not be much in accordance with our ideas of such places in the present age. The Nunnery of Lacock is far more interesting than the Castle of Dunvallo. In the year 1232, Ela, only child of William Earl of Salisbury, and sole heiress of all her father's vast landed possessions in Wiltshire, laid the foundation of this religious house in her widowhood, in pious and affec- tionate remembrance of her husband William Longspe (in her right Earl of Sarum), who had then been dead six years. This brave man was the eldest natural son of Henry n., by the lady whose transcendent beauty has become proverbial under the name of Fair Rosamond. He assisted in found- ing the magnificent Cathedral of New Sarum in the year 1220 : six years afterwards he died of poison at the Castle of Old Sarum, and was the first person buried within the walls of New Sarum Cathedral, where his tomb now remains. The earliest ancestor of Ela, whose existence rests on credible record, was Edward of Salisbury, Sheriff of Wilts, whose name occurs in Domesday book, and attesting several charters of the Conqueror. The childhood and early life of the pious Ela are fraught with romantic interest. She was born at Amesbury in 1188. Until her father's death in 1196, Ela was reared in princely state. Earl William, her father, was one of the distinguished subjects of the chivalric lion king, Richard, and took a prominent part at both his coronations. He also kept the king's charter for licensing tournaments throughout the country. One of the five steads or fields ELA COUNTESS OF SALISBURY. 3 then appointed for tournaments in England was situated between Salisbury and Wilton ; and on that spot, when a child, the future Abbess of Lacock may have first wit- nessed the perilous gaiety of knightly enterprise, and its proud exhibitions of personal courage and external splen- dour and gallantry. The situation is well known on the downs in front of the site of Sarum Castle. Such was the scene on which Ela in her childhood might have gazed when animated with the glitter of arms and banners ; but from which, on the death of her father, this richly-portioned heiress was suddenly snatched and sub- jected to seclusion in a foreign country. All that is said in the transcript of the annals of the Abbey of Lacock the original perished in the fire at the Cotton Library is that Ela was secretly taken into Normandy by her relations, and there brought up in close and secret custody. These relations, it is conjectured, were her mother and her mother's family, whose estates were either in Normandy or Champagne. Immediately upon the inquisition held after her father's death, Ela's land would, in due course, be taken into the possession of the king, as she had become a royal ward : but- such was not the case. The event which arose from these circumstances is highly characteristic of the court of the minstrel monarch. An English knight, named William Talbot, undertook to discover the place of the youthful heiress' concealment ; the idea having been suggested, if the fact be admitted, by King Richard's own dis- covery, a few years before, by aid of the minstrel Blondel. 4 LACOCK ABBEY, AND Assuming the garb of a pilgrim, the gallant Talbot passed over into Normandy, and there continued his search, wan- dering to and fro for the space of two years. When at length he had found the Lady Ela of Salisbury, he ex- changed his pilgrim's dress for that of a harper or travel- ling troubadour, and in that guise entered the court in which the maid was detained. As he sustained to per- fection his character of a gleeman, and was excellently versed in the jests or historical lays recounting the deeds of former times, the stranger was kindly entertained, and soon received as one of the household. At last his . i chivalric undertaking was fully accomplished; when, hav- ing found a convenient opportunity for returning, he carried with him the heiress, and presented her to King Richard. Immediately after, the hand of Ela was given in marriage to William Longspe by his brother King Richard, Ela being then only ten years old, and William twenty-three. After the marriage of Ela, we have little to recount of her for several years, unless it were to enumerate the names of her flourishing family of four sons and as many daughters. The Earl was in frequent attendance upon King John ; but the Countess Ela appears to have passed most of her life in provincial sovereignty at Salisbury, or in the quiet retirement of some country manor, most frequently, perhaps, in the peaceful shades of her native Amesbury. 1 1 Aubrey tells us that ' the last Lady Abbess of Amesbury was a Kirton, who, after the Dissolution, married to Appleton of Hampshire. She had during her life a pension from King Henry vin. ELA COUNTESS OF SALISBURY. 5 We pass over the career of the Earl ; his assumption of Ela's hereditary office of the Shrievalty of Wiltshire ; his attendance at the coronation of John, and upon the king in Normandy ; his progresses with John in England, and his appointment to military command and as Warder of the Marches ; his ruinous campaign in Flanders ; and his pre- sence at the signing of Magna Charta. After the death of John, the Earl returned to his Castle of Salisbury, and to that most interesting scene in which the pious Ela was an active partaker with him. This was no less than the cere- mony of founding the present beautiful Cathedral of Salis- bury, the fourth stone of which was laid by the Earl, and the fifth by the Countess Ela. We next pass the Earl's visit to Gascony in the spring of 1224, and his disastrous return, when, according to Matthew Paris, he was ' for almost three months at sea' before he landed in England. Dur- ing the interval all his friends had despaired of his life, except his faithful wife, who, though now a matron, became an object of pursuit to the fortune-hunters of the Court. The Justice Hubert de Burgh, with most indecent haste, now put forward a nephew of his own as a suitor to the Lady of Salisbury. It is related by Matthew Paris, that whilst King Henry was deeply grieved at the supposed loss of the Earl of Salisbury, Hubert came and required him to bestow Earl William's wife (to whom the dignity of that She was 140 years old (?) when she dyed. She was great-great-aunt to Mr. Child, rector of Yatton Keynell, from whom I had this infor- mation. Mr. Child, the eminent banker in Fleet Street, is Parson Child's cousin-german.' Natural History of Wiltshire, 4to, p. 7- 6 LACOCK ABBEY, AND earldom belonged by hereditary right) on his own nephew Reimund, that he might marry her. The king having yielded to his petition, provided the Countess would con- sent, the Justice sent Reimund to her, in a noble, knightly array, to endeavour to incline the lady's heart to his suit. But Ela rejected him with majestic scorn, and replied that she had lately received letters and messengers which assured her that the Earl, her husband, was in health and safety ; adding, that if her lord the Earl had indeed been dead, she would in no case have received him for a husband, because their unequal rank forbade such a union. ' Where- fore,' said she, ' you must seek a marriage elsewhere, be- cause you find you have come hither in vain.' Upon the Earl's return, he claimed reparation from the Justiciary, who confessed his fault, made his peace with the Earl by some valuable horses and other large presents, and invited him to his table. Here, it is said, the Earl was poisoned (probably with repletion). He returned to his castle at Salisbury, took to his bed, and died March 7, 1226; and, as already mentioned, was buried in Salisbury Cathedral. Ela, now a widow, continued firm in her resolution to remain faithful to the memory of her first lord, and to maintain her independence in what was then termed, in legal phrase, 'a free widowhood.' Her choice, however, was singular ; for ladies of large estate, at that period, were seldom permitted to remain either as virgins or widows without a lord and protector, unless they had arrived at an advanced age. Her case is deemed extraordinary in the ELA COUNTESS OF SALISBURY. 7 chronicles. Her son, when he became of age, claimed the inheritance of the earldom ; but the king refused it, by the advice of his judges, and according to the principles of feudal law. The objection probably was, that the earl- dom was then vested in his mother. Thus Ela's entrance into the profession of a recluse may possibly have partaken of a worldly motive, as being likely to facilitate her son's admission to his hereditary dignity ; but if so, it was still unsuccessful. In consequence of her protracted life, the earldom of Salisbury continued dormant ; and as she sur- vived both her son and grandson, it was never revived in the house of Longspd. Ela was permitted to exercise in person the office of Sheriff of Wiltshire, and Castellane of Old Sarum. Her great seal, an elegant work of art, is extant, and represents her noble and dignified deportment, and her gracefully simple costume : ' her right hand is on her breast ; on her left stands a hawk, the usual symbol of nobility ; on her head is a singularly small cap, probably the precursor of the coronet ; her long hair flows negligently upon her neck on each side ; and the royal lions of Salisbury appear to gaze upon her like the lion in Spenser on the desolate Una ! ' We at length reach the time of the foundation of Lacock Abbey. ' When,' says the Book of Lacock, ' Ela had sur- vived her husband for seven (six ?) years in widowhood, and had frequently promised to found monasteries pleasing to God, for the salvation of her soul and that of her huakyid, and those of all their ancestors, she was directed in visions 8 LACOCK ABBEY, AND (per revelationes) that she should build a monastery in honour of St. Mary and St. Bernard in the meadow called Snail's Mead, near Lacock.' This she did on April 16, 1232, although the requisite charters bear prior dates. Among the earliest coadjutors with the pious Ela was Constance de Legh, who assisted by giving ' her whole manor.' Ela had' likewise founded a monastery of Carthu- sian monks at Hinton, in Gloucestershire, in which, as also at Lacock, she is supposed to have fulfilled the inten- tions of her husband ; indeed, the profits of his wardship of the heiress of Richard de Camville were assigned to the foundation at Hinton by the Earl's last will. The first canoness veiled at Lacock was Alicia Garinges, from a small nunnery in Oxfordshire, which was governed under the Augustine rule, the discipline to be adopted at Lacock. In the transcripts from the Book of Lacock another person is mentioned, either as abbess or canoness, during the eight years which elapsed after the foundation, and before Ela herself took the veil as abbess of her own establishment, in the year 1238, in the fifty-first year of her age ; she ' having, in all her actions and doings, been con- stantly dependent on the counsel and aid of St. Edmund, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and other discreet men.' The records of Ela's abbacy are neither copious nor numerous. Among them is a charter, dated 1237, in which the king grants to the Prioress of Lacock, and ' the nuns thered restored by Edward IV. after the battle of Wakefield, 1400, who dedicated the chapel to the memory of his father the Duke of York. It was defaced by unseemly repairs in 1794. In 1847 the ancient portion was purchased by the Hon. George Chappie Norton, and re- erected by him at Kettlethorpe. The so-called restoration on Wakefield Bridge is reclaimed to an ecclesiastical purpose, a weekly service being performed in it every Thursday evening. See a paper in the above- quoted Journal by F. R. Wilson, Esq. MIDDLEHAM CASTLE AND RICHARD III. iN a rocky eminence near the small market town of Middleham, in the North Riding of York- shire, are the ruins of the ancient castle, built about 1190 by Robert Fitz-Ranulph. In the reign of Henry vi. it belonged to the Earl of Salisbury, who marched hence with 4000 men towards London to demand redress for his son's grievances. Here, also, according to Stow, the bastard Falconbridge was beheaded in 1471. Edward' iv. was confined for a time in Middleham Castle by Richard Nevill, Earl of Warwick, after he had been taken prisoner at Wolvey, but he subsequently escaped while hunting in the park. After defeating the Earl of Warwick at Barnet, Edward rv. gave Middleham Castle to his brother, the Duke of Gloucester, afterwards Richard in., who took a great liking to the place, and who was preparing to found a college in Frodingham Field when he died. The church of St. Mary and St. Alkeld, at Middleham, had been made col- legiate by Richard when Duke of Gloucester. His only son Edward was born here j but since that time MlDDLEHAM CASTLE AND RICHARD III. 309 hardly anything is known of the history of the castle, except that it was inhabited in 1609 by Sir Henry Linley. Tradition says that it was reduced to ruins by Cromwell ; but there is no historical evidence to prove it. The character of Richard the Third has been so vili- fied by party historians, that only of late years has the general reader given the short-lived monarch credit for' any qualities likely to render him popular. In seeking to clear him of great crimes, however, he is proved to have possessed patriotism and integrity. After the victory of Towton, the title of Duke of Gloucester, with an ample appanage in the shape of lordships and manors, were at once conferred on Richard, who, at an unusually early age, was also appointed to three or four offices of the highest trust and dignity; and he amply justified the confidence reposed in him. That he was brave we are assured. The chief glory of the well-fought field of Barnet belonged to Richard ; but unluckily it was the scene of a tragedy in which the part of the first villain has been popularly assigned to him. Richard's superiority to all sordid considerations was strikingly displayed during the invasion of France in 1475, when Edward, at the head of one of the finest armies that ever left the English coast, was cajoled and out-manoeuvred by Louis xi. into doing worse than nothing. The expedi- tion ended in a disgraceful treaty, by which Edward was to receive certain sums of money which he wanted for his personal pleasures. Richard alone refused to barter Eng- 310 MlDDLEHAM CASTLE AND RICHARD TIL lish honour for French gold. ' Only the Duke of Gloucester, who stood aloof on the other side for honour, frowned at this accord, and expressed much sorrow, as compassionating the glory of his nation blemished in it.' Habington, from whom we quote, suggests that the Duke had a further and more dangerous aim : ' As who, by the dishonour of his brothers, thought his credit received increase ; and by how much the king sank in opinion, he should rise.' Bacon adopts the same method of depreciation : ' And that out of this deep root of ambition it sprang that, as well as the treaty of peace, as upon all other occasions, Richard, then Duke of Gloucester, stood ever upon the side of honour, raising his own reputation to the disadvantage of the king his brother, and drawing the eyes of all (especially of the nobles and soldiers) upon himself.' We have here, from his worst calumniators, the admitted fact that, down to 1475, hi s means were noble, be his end and motives what they may. Richard was for several years Lord Warden, or Keeper of the Northern Marches ; and while residing in a sort of royal capacity at York, he so ingratiated himself with the people of that city and neighbourhood, that they stood by him to the last. On the death of his brother he was in the fulness of his fame as a soldier and statesman. He was also the first prince of the blood ; and he must have been endowed with an amount of stoical indifference and self-denial, seldom found in high places at any time, if no ambitious hopes dawned upon him. MlDDLEHAM CASTLE AND RICHARD III. $11 The received accounts of Richard's mode of ascending the throne are contradictory ; and it is difficult to believe that he laid much stress on the voices of the rabble in Guildhall, although here again Shakspeare is supported by More. Richard must have been sure of a powerful party, or he never would have ventured to present himself as king before the very Parliament which he had summoned in the name of the nephew he deposed. This important fact is made clear by Mr. Gairdner, who, admitting that this Parliament was not formally called together, asserts that it did meet, and that the petition to Richard to assume the crown was presented by a deputation of the lords and commons of England, accompanied by another from the city of London, on the very day that had been originally appointed for its meeting. From this mock election in June, says More, Richard commenced his reign, and was crowned in July with the same provision that was made for the coronation of his nephew. The day before the ceremony, he and his queen rode from the Tower through the city to Westminster, with a train comprising three dukes, nine earls, and twenty-two barons. There was a large attendance of peers, lay and spiritual, and great dignitaries at the ensuing ceremony in Westminster Hall; and More records as most observ- able, that the Countess of Richmond, mother to King Henry VIL, bore up the queen's train in the procession. Richard soon afterwards left London on a royal progress towards York, where he was crowned a second time. 312 MlDDLEHAM CASTLE AND RICHARD III. Richard laid himself out from the commencement of his reign to found a reputation for moderation, equity, and forgiveness of private injuries. 'The day after his acceptance of the crown,' says More, ' he went to West- minster, sat himself down in the court of King's Bench, made a very gracious speech to the assembly there present, and promised them halcyon days. He ordered one Hog, whom he hated, and who was fled to sanctuary for fear of him, to be brought before him, took him by the hand, and spoke favourably to him, which the multitude thought was a token of his clemency, and the wise men of his vanity.' He formally enjoined the great barons to see to the equal administration of justice in their provinces ; and a con- temporary sketch of his progresses speaks of ' his lords and judges in every place sitting determining the com- plaints of poor folks, with due punition of offenders against the laws.' In a circular letter to the bishops, he expresses his fervent desire for the suppression of vice. His legislative measures are admitted to have been valu- able additions to the statute-book. Edward iv. was always in want of money, and was in the habit of personally appealing to his wealthiest subjects for contributions. Richard went on an opposite tack. When the citizens and others offered him a benevolence, he refused it, saying, 'I would rather have your hearts than your money.' He disafforested a large tract of country at Witchwood, which his brother had cleared for deer ; and showed at the MlDDLEHAM CASTLE AND RICHARD III. 313 same time his wish to promote all manly and popular amusements by liberal grants and allowances to the masters of his hounds and hawks. There is, moreover, extant a mandate to all mayors and sheriffs, not to vex or molest John Brown, ' our mater-guider, and ruler of all our bears and apes to us appertaining.' Richard is com- mended by contemporaries for his encouragement of archi- tecture ; and the commendation is justified by a list of the structures which he completed or improved. His love of music is inferred from the extreme measures he adopted for its gratification. Turner quotes a warrant ' empowering one of the gentlemen of his chapel to take and seize, for the king's use, all such singing men and children expert in the science of music, as he could find and think able to do the king service, in all places in the kingdom, whether cathedrals, colleges, chapels, monas- teries, or any other franchised places, except Windsor.' He was visited by minstrels from foreign countries, and gave annuities to several professors of the gentle science, ' and also,' adds Turner, ' perhaps for his fondness for their sonorous state music, to several trumpeters.' Mr. Jesse, in his Memoirs, will have it that Richard's nature was originally a compassionate one ; and he appeals to the pensions considerately bestowed by him on the widows of his enemies, Lady Hastings, Lady Rivers, Lady Oxford, and the Duchess of Buckingham. The shortness of Richard's reign favours the idea that the nation, exasperated beyond endurance by his villanies, 314 MlDDLEHAM CASTLE AND RICHARD III. rose and threw him off like an incubus. But nothing of the kind occurred. The people at large were too much inured to scenes of blood and acts of cruelty to be shocked by them. They cared little or nothing whether a few princes or lords more or less were put to death, so long as they were not fleeced by a tax-gatherer, or oppressed by a local tyrant ; and Richard, like Cromwell at a later period, took good care that there should be no usurped or abused authority besides his own. He was not weighed in the balance, and found wanting, till two discontented nobles, the Stanleys, threw their whole weight into the opposing scale. The numerical inferiority of Richard's army is a conclusive proof that his cause was not a pre- eminently popular one. The pair who contended on Bosworth Field for a king- dom are thus portrayed : ' Richard was better versed in arms ; Henry was better served. Richard was brave ; Henry a coward. Richard was about five feet four, rather runted, but only made crooked by his enemies, and wanted six weeks of thirty-three ; Henry was twenty-seven, slender, and near five feet nine, with a saturnine countenance, yellow hair, and grey eyes.' As to the person of Richard : ' the truth,' says Walpole, ' I take to have been this : Richard, who was slender, and not tall, had one shoulder a little higher than the other, a defect, by the magnifying-glasses of party, by distance of time, and by the amplification of tradition, easily swelled to a shocking deformity.' The impression left by a marked MlDDLEHAM CASTLE AND RICHARD III. 315 personal peculiarity may be unconsciously heightened and transmitted till it becomes inextricably woven into the web of history. The strongest argument in favour of Richard's personal appearance is that drawn from Dr. Shaw's address to the citizens of London preparatory to the usurpation : ' My Lord Protector, that very noble prince, the pattern of all heroic deeds, represents the very face and mind of the great Duke his father. His features are the same, and the very express likeness of that noble Duke.' At these words the Protector was to enter as if by chance ; and although the point was missed by his non-appearance till a few minutes later, such a coup de theatre would hardly have been hazarded if Richard either presented no resemblance, or a miniature and caricature one, of his father. Richard lost nothing of his vigilance or unrelenting sternness in his last hours. Going the rounds at Bosworth, he found a sentinel asleep, and stabbed him, with the remark : ' I found him asleep, and have left him as I found him.' x 1 This narrative of the personal history of Richard in. is in the main condensed from a very able paper in the Edinburgh Review, No. cxv. 1862, with additions. THE VALE OF WHITE HORSE. the railway traveller passes through the middle district of the Great Western line, he will, doubtless, remark that the sky-line of the chalk- down, as seen from the valley, is continually broken by the elevation of some earthwork, carrying the mind's eye back to times of war and bloodshed, spoliation and con- quest. This earthwork is known as Uffington Castle, and occupies the summit of White Horse Hill, 700 feet in diameter from east to west, and 500 feet from north to south. It is surrounded by a double vallum or embank- ment, the inner one high, and commanding an extensive view in every direction, the outer one slighter. On the steep escarpment of the hill, just below the entrenchment, our traveller will see the rude outline figure of a horse at full gallop, formed by removing the thin layer of turf and exposing the white surface beneath of the chalk. Hence the figure is called the White Horse. This is believed to have been cut as a memorial of the battle of ^Escesdun, or Ash-tree Hill, in which the West Saxons, under Ethelred and Alfred in 871, defeated the Danes THE VALE OF WHITE HORSE. 317 with great slaughter on this spot. Be this as it may, the Horse is either of Saxon origin or of higher antiquity. Asser minutely describes how 'the Pagans (Danes) had got the higher ground, and how the battle was begun upon a spot where grew a single thorn-tree, which he himself had afterwards seen, the whole account having been given him by a faithful eye-witness. After a bloody and obstinate dispute, one king and five counts were killed on the Pagan side, with many thousands of common men ; and the rest were dispersed all over the wide plain of Ashdown, and pursued all that night and the next day as far as to their castle at Reading.' The White Horse is a rude figure about 374 feet in length, and is said to cover an acre of ground. The face of the chalk-down is 893 feet above the sea-level; and when the afternoon sun shines upon the figure, it may be seen ten, twelve, and even fifteen miles distant ; and from its immense size it forms a remarkable object. Wise, the antiquary, is in raptures with the skill displayed in the Horse, and in the admirable choice of a situation where it is little exposed to injury or decay. The inhabitants of the neighbourhood had an ancient custom of assembling to scour the Horse, i. e. to clear away the turf where it has encroached upon the outline of the Horse. On such occasions a rural festival was formerly held, and the people were regaled by the lord of the manor; but they do not appear to have observed that custom since 1780; it may possibly have dwindled to a common, purposeless 318 THE VALE OF WHITE HORSE. fair. We remember to have been at Englefield Green in the summer of 1833, and there to have heard of a custom, then common in Berkshire, of boys 'going up to chalk-pits ' annually : may not this be a relic of the White Horse scouring 1 We need hardly remind the reader of Mr. T. Hughes's very popular story of 'The Scouring of the White Horse,' published a few years since. The site of yEscesdun, or Ashdown, has, however, been much disputed. Wise, in a letter to Dr. Mead, contends for the ridge of the chalk-hills extending from Wantage into Wiltshire, and thinks that the White Horse cut on the hill is a memorial of the victory. Aston, a village near Wallingford, and Ashampstead, a village about equally distant from Wallingford, Newbury, and Reading, have each their partisans. Mr. Sharon Turner, in his History of the Anglo-Saxons, inclines to the opinion that Merantune, (where shortly afterwards the Saxons sustained a severe defeat, in which Ethelred was mortally wounded,) was Moreton, near Wallingford. Leland, Camden, and Aubrey take but passing notice of the White Horse, as does the author of A Tour through England, published in 1738; and 'they,' Wise observes, ' leave us much in the dark about the antiquity and design of it, with the curiosity, but at the same time with the haste, of travellers.' Wise expected better things of Camden, who might surely have inquired into the origin of the ceremony of scouring the horse, ' which, from time imme- morial, has been solemnized by a numerous concourse of THE VALE OF WHITE' HORSE. 319 people from all the villages round about.' This writer is not, however, surprised at ' the custom being lost in the mazes of antiquity, though the festival was of a more general nature than wakes, or feasts of the dedication of churches, which are traced to the origin of fairs ; now the latter are confined to single parishes, whereas, though the Horse stands in the parish of Uffington, yet other towns claimed, by ancient custom, a share of the duty upon this occasion, which distinction should render the White Horse Festival more important and memorable.' The White Horse was the standard of the Saxons before and after their coming into England; it was a proper emblem of victory and triumph, as we read in Ovid and elsewhere. The position of the Horse is not rampant or prancing, as represented in the arms of Savoy, whose princes are descended from those of Saxony; but the Horse is current, or galloping, as described in the arms of the House of Brunswick to this day. Wise, in his pamphlet upon this point, 1738-42, says: 'If any disputes should arise among heralds about these different bearings of the horse, as likewise whether he ought to be current for the dexter part or sinister, which, I believe, is a point not entirely settled, I think, till some other more ancient record shall be produced, they may be fairly denominated from this authentic one of 867 years' standing.' The White Horse is to this day the ensign of the county of Kent, where it is a favourite inn-sign. The White Horse of Hanover dates from the House of Hanover sue- 320 THE VALE OF WHITE HORSE. ceeding to the throne of these realms the White Horse being the badge of that house. Just under the White Horse Hill is a knoll of chalk called the Dragon Hill, described as a mound or barrow, intended to cover the dead, the horse being supposed to commemorate the victory. This would be a plausible link in the chain of the antiquary's theory, were it certain that the mound is artificial ; but this is supposititious. At all events, the neighbouring downs are thickly strewn with tumuli and other marks of an early population. The entrenchments, too, are very interesting ; and the advantage which has been taken of the natural ravines to aid in forming camps, is very striking to the student of military antiquities. On the chalk hills north of Lambourn many barrows are found, especially one covered irregularly with large stones. Three of the stones have a fourth laid on them, in the manner of the British cromlechs. By the country people this is called Wayland Smith; and they have a tradition of an invisible smith, residing here, who would shoe a traveller's horse, if it was left here for a short time, with a piece of money by way of payment. How pleasantly this strange tradition is introduced in the romance of Kenilworth, by Sir Walter Scott, must be re- membered. Wise leaves the entire story to lovers of the fancies of fiction, and concludes with these matter-of-fact remarks : ' These stones are, according to the best Danish antiquaries, a burial-altar. Their being raised in the midst of a plain THE VALE OF WHITE HORSE. 321 field near the great road, seems to indicate some person there slain and buried; and such person was probably a chief or king, there being no monument of this sort near that place, perhaps not in England beside. If it be allowed me likewise that King Ethelred lay encamped at Hardwell, this will afford another argument for its being raised for the king slain, whose troops were opposed to King Ethelred's division, as those of the Count's were to Alfred's, for the stones are about half a mile from Hardwell Camp.' About a mile from Wayland Smith, a succession of barrows have been traced, which Wise concluded to denote the burial- places of certain of the Danish counts. Wayland Smith has been lucidly described in the large History of the Great Western Railway, published in 1846 : ' Wayland Smith's Cave is a combination of a cromlech with a regular Druidical circle. The circle is composed of be- tween thirty and forty stones, some of which are overthrown and partially buried, while all are more or less displaced. Within the circle, three stones are set on edge, so as to form a chamber, which is roofed by a fourth. This is the cave. In front of the cave is a sort of cruciform alley of stones, two areas of which are closed at the ends, while the third is open, and forms the entrance to the cromlech. This curious relic stands by the side of the old Ridge Way. The stones are all grey-wethers, and similar to those of Abury and the Trilithons of Stonehenge. The modern pro- prietor of this curious Druidical remain has had the good taste to plant a small wood of fir-trees around it, throwing 322 THE VALE OF WHITE HORSE. the whole into a deep gloom, well suited to its ancient character.' We are induced to extend our antiquarian ramble to another relic of kindred interest, namely, the noted Blowing Stone, which is situated at Kingston Lisle, five miles due north of Lambourn, and the same distance from Wantage. At the back of the stone grows an old elm- tree. The stone itself is a species of red sandstone. It is about three feet high, three feet six inches broad, and two feet thick ; but it is of rough and rather irregular surface. It has several holes in it of various sizes. There are seven holes in the front, three at the top, a large irregular broken hollow at the north end (as it stands north and south), and one if not more holes at the back. If a person blows in at any one of three of the holes, an extremely loud noise is produced something between a note upon a French horn and the bellowing of a calf ; this can be heard in a favourable state of weather at Farringdon Clump, a distance of about six miles ; and a person standing at about a yard distant from either end of the stone while it is blown into, will distinctly feel the ground shake. The holes in the stone are of various sizes ; but those which, if blown into, produce the sound, easily admit a person's finger. The hole most com- monly used to produce the sound is at the top of the stone ; and if a small stick, eighteen inches long, be pushed in at this hole, it will come out at a hole at the back of the stone, about a foot below the top, and almost immediately below the hole blown into. It is evident that this is the place at THE VALE OF WHITE HORSE. 323 which the air finds its exit, as, after the stone has been blown into at the top for a considerable time, this hole becomes wet. There seems, however, no doubt that there are chambers in the stone, as the irregular broken hollow at the north end of it has evidently formed a part of another place, at which a similar sound might have been produced. In the neighbourhood there exists a tradition that this stone was used for the purpose of giving an alarm on the approach of an enemy. In the Penny Cycloptzdia, whence the above description has been abridged, the belief is stated that there is no account of the Blowing Stone in any other publication. Its position is marked in the Ordnance map. The Vale of White Horse to this day presents to the curious observer the earthworks and other relics of war- like times the means of our early civilisation. Here may be traced the camp and the castle, the rude trophy of triumph cut upon the face of the lofty hill, and the grave of the victor ' the desolator desolate ' in the peaceful valley. There are the works of centuries since of the early Briton, the Roman, the Saxon, and the Dane, whose ancient roads, in their directions, afford abundant studies for the patient antiquary and topographer. Through this long lapse of ages, defaced by the struggles for the mastery among war-tribes, . the Vale of White Horse has maintained its fame for con- taining some of the most fertile lands in England ; in- cluding rich pastures and corn-lands, and a belt of rich lands along the Thames, whose pent-up waters and tribu- tary streams must have fed considerable lakes in past ages. 324 THE VALE OF WHITE HORSE. On the hills which border the Thames may be enjoyed extensive views over the Vale of White Horse into Oxford- shire ; and in general the aspect of the country from any considerable hill is that of great richness and variety. The contrast is suggestive. Here ' Decay's effacing fingers ' have spared us studies of the past, which luxuriant Nature, in her reproductiveness, invests with picturesque beauty; the Roman road of centuries ago is almost obliterated by the railway of to-day ; and the green turf was once the site of the tower'd city, with its ' busy hum of men.' THE DUKE OF MONMOUTH'S LAST DAYS. 3ANY are the memorials which exist to this day of 'the unfortunate Duke of Monmouth,' the natural son of Charles n. ; and whose popu- larity with the nation, still more than the presumed par- tiality of his father, made him a somewhat formidable competitor for the succession in the actual circumstances of the legitimate heir. Somerset and Dorset were the closing scenes of Mon- mouth's career. In 1680 he made a memorable progress, accepting the hospitality of his distinguished friends, and visiting the estates of the country party ; but the gentlemen of the court shrank from contact with one whose connec- tion with the opposition and democratic members of Parlia- ment was so notorious. In August, when Monmouth started on his progress, incredible numbers flocked to see this great champion of the English nation who had been so successful against the Dutch, French, and Scots. He first went into Wiltshire and honoured the worthy Squire Thynne, of Longleate House, with his company for some days. From Longleate, Monmouth journeyed into Somer- 326 THE DUKE OF MONMOUTH'S LAST DAYS. set, caressed with the joyful acclamations of the country people, who cried, ' God bless King Charles and the Protestant Duke ! ' In some towns and parishes through which he passed they strewed the streets and highways with herbs and flowers, especially at Ilchester and South Petherton ; others presenting him with bottles of wine. When the Duke came within ten miles of White Lacking- ton House, the seat of George Speke, Esq., one mile distant from Ilminster, he was met by two thousand per- sons on horseback, whose number increased to twenty thousand. To admit so large a multitude, several perches of the park paling were taken down. His Grace, his party, and attendants, took refreshment under the famed sweet Spanish chestnut-tree, now standing, which measures at three feet from the ground upwards of twenty-six feet in circumference. The old branches have been mostly removed by the ravages of time ; but there are others attached to the stock which produce large timber, as well as a quantity of fruit every year. White Lackington House is now a farm : a great part of the edifice has been pulled down. It was in the village of Norton St. Philip's, between Bath and Frome, that the ill-fated Duke was attacked on June 27, 1685, by the Royalists, whose advanced guard had marched from Bath under the Duke of Grafton, Mon- mouth's half-brother. Colonel Holmes, who was at the head of Monmouth's army, had an arm nearly shot off in the engagement; and it is related that the brave soldier, THE DUKE OF MONMOUTH'S LAST DAYS. 327 unassisted, completed the amputation with the cook's knife in the kitchen of the George Inn at the village. This large old mansion was formerly a granary belonging to Hinton Abbey : its capacious porch, the designs of some of its windows, its overhanging upper storeys (upon rude corbels), and its inner gallery leading to what once were bed-chambers, all denote the pile to have been erected in the early portion of the fifteenth century. Macaulay has thus vividly described the capture of Mon- mouth : ' On Cranbourne Chase the strength of the horses failed. They were, therefore, turned loose. Monmouth and his friends disguised themselves as countrymen, and proceeded on foot towards the New Forest. They passed the night in the open air ; but before morning they were surrounded on every side. At five in the morning Grey was seized by two of Lumley's scouts. It could hardly be doubted that the chief rebel was not far off. The pur- suers redoubled their vigilance and activity. The cottages scattered over the heathy country on the boundaries of Dorsetshire and Hampshire, were strictly examined by Lumley, and the clown with whom Monmouth had changed clothes was discovered. Portman came with a strong body of horse and foot to assist in the search. Attention was soon drawn to a place well fitted to shelter fugitives. It was an extensive tract of land separated by an inclosure from the open country, and divided by numerous hedges into small fields. In some of these fields the rye, the peas, and the oats were high enough to conceal a man ; others were 328 THE DUKE OF MONMOUTH'S LAST DAYS. overgrown by fern and brambles. A poor woman reported that she had seen two strangers lurking in this covert. The near prospect of reward animated the zeal of the troops. . . . The outer fence was strictly guarded, the space within was examined with indefatigable diligence, and several dogs of quick scent were turned out among the bushes. The day closed before the search could be completed ; but careful watch was kept all night. Thirty times the fugitives ventured to look through the outer hedge, but everywhere they found a sentinel on the alert : once they were seen and fired at. They then separated, and concealed themselves in different hiding-places. 'At sunrise the next morning the search was recom- menced, and Buyse was found. He owned that he had parted from the Duke only a few hours before. The corn and copsewood were now beaten with more care than ever. At length a gaunt figure was discovered hiding in a ditch. The pursuers sprang on their prey. Some of them were about to fire, but Portman forbade all violence. The prisoner's dress was that of a shepherd. His beard, pre- maturely grey, was of several days' growth. He trembled greatly, and was unable to speak. Even those who had often seen him were in doubt whether this were the brilliant and graceful Monmouth. His pockets were searched by Portman, and in them were found, among some raw peas gathered in the rage of hunger, a watch, a purse of gold, a small treatise on fortification, an album filled with songs, receipts, prayers, and charms, and the George with which, THE DUKE OF MONMOUTH'S LAST DAYS. 329 many years before, King Charles ir. had decorated his favourite son.' The incidents and circumstances of the capture have been described with more particularity as to the names of the places. The decisive battle of Sedgemoor was fought on the 5th of July, after which Monmouth and his friends fled across the boundaries of Wiltshire ; at Woodyates' Inn, near Salisbury, on the road to Blandford, they turned their horses adrift ; and thence crossed the country, nearly due south, to ' the Island ' in the parish of Horton, in Dorset- shire, where, in a field called to this day ' Monmouth Close,' was found the would-be king. An ash-tree, at the foot of which he was found crouched in a ditch, and half-hid under the fern, is standing, and bears the carved initials of persons who had visited it : it was propped up for pre- servation. In one of the fields of peas, tradition tells that the Duke dropped a gold snuff-box. It was picked up some time afterwards by a labourer, who carried it to Mrs. Wedale of Horton probably the proprietor of the field and received in reward fifteen pounds, which was said to be half its value. On his capture, the Duke was first taken to the house of Anthony Etterick, Esq., a magistrate, who resided at Holt, which adjoins Horton. Tradition, which records the popular feeling rather than the fact, reports that the poor woman who informed the pursuers that she had seen two strangers lurking in the Island her name was Amy 330 THE DUKE OF MONMOUTH'S LAST DAYS. Farrant never prospered afterwards; and that Henry Parkin, the soldier who, spying the skirt of the smock-frock which the Duke had assumed as a disguise, recalled the searching party just as they were leaving the Island, burst into tears, and reproached himself bitterly for his fatal discovery (Notes and Queries). The late Earl of Shaftesbury, many years ago, took some pains to identify the localities of the capture, and the Close, which latter is on his lordship's estate, St. Giles's. What he learned upon the spot convinced him that the Duke was not going to Christchurch, but to Bournemouth, where he expected to find a vessel. Monmouth Close, as the inclosure has been called since the capture in July 1685, is in the direct line from Woodyates to Bournemouth. Lord Shaftesbury had printed, for the information of per- sons visiting the spot, an account of the Close and the capture, in which it is stated that when the Duke's pur- suers came up, an old woman gave information of his being in the Island, and of her having seen him filling his pockets with peas. The Island was immediately sur- rounded by soldiers, who passed the night there, and threatened to fire the neighbouring cots. The Duke, when taken, was quite exhausted with fatigue and hunger, having had no food since the battle but the peas which he had gathered in the field. The family of the woman who betrayed him were ever after holden in the greatest de- testation, and are . said to have fallen into decay, and to have never thriven afterwards. The house where she lived, THE DUKE OF MONMOUTH'S LAST DAYS. 331 which overlooked the spot, has fallen down : it was with the greatest difficulty that any one could be got to inhabit it. The Duke being asked what he would do if set at liberty, answered, that if his horse and arms were restored, he only desired to ride through the army, and he defied them all to take him again. Monmouth was brought to London on July i5th, and had on the same day an interview with the king, who obdurately refused to grant him his life, or even the briefest respite. 'Though,' says Hume, 'he might have known, from the unrelenting severity of James's temper, that no mercy could be expected, he wrote him the most submissive letters, and conjured him to spare the issue of a brother who had ever been so strongly attached to his interests. James finding such symptoms of depression and despon- dency in his prisoner, admitted him to his presence, in hopes of extorting a discovery of his accomplices; but Monmouth would not purchase life, however loved, at the price of so much infamy. Finding all efforts vain, he assumed courage from despair, and prepared himself for death with a spirit better suited to his rank and character.' Having been attainted shortly after his landing, he was delivered to the executioner, and beheaded on Tower-hill the same day. The Duke is stated, in the folio dictionary of Pierre Richelet, to have given six guineas to the execu- tioner to do his work well. The statute of Monmouth's attainder is one of the briefest on record. It runs thus : ' Whereas James Duke 332 THE DUKE OF MONMOUTH'S LAST DAYS. of Monmouth has, in a hostile manner, invaded this king- dom, and is now in open rebellion, levying war against the king, contrary to the duty of his allegiance, Be it enacted by the King's most excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, That the said James Duke of Monmouth stand and be convicted and attainted of high treason, and that he suffer pains of death, and incur all forfeitures, as a traitor convicted and attainted of high treason.' This was passed and received the royal assent in a single day, on the strength of a letter from Gregory Alford, the Mayor of Lyme, announcing the landing of Monmouth at that port. The Duke landed on the lyth of June with only 150 men ; but the whole kingdom was alarmed, fearing that the dis- affected would join them, many of the train-bands flocking to him. At his landing he published a declaration, charg- ing his Majesty with usurpation, and several horrid crimes, on pretence of his own title, and offering to call a free Parliament. The declaration was ordered to be burned by the hangman, the Duke proclaimed a traitor, and a reward of ^5000 to any one who should kill him. Monmouth's followers exhibited more courage than their leader, and seemed determined to adhere to him in every fortune. The negligent disposition made by Feversham invited Monmouth to attack the king's army at Sedgemoor, near Bridgewater ; and his men in this action showed what THE DUKE OF MONMOUTH'S LAST DAYS 333 a native courage and a principle of duty, even when un- assisted by discipline, is able to perform. They threw the veteran forces into disorder, drove them from their ground, continued the fight till their ammunition failed them, and would at last have obtained a victory, had not the miscon- duct of Monmouth and the cowardice of Grey prevented it. After a combat of three hours the rebels gave way, and were followed with great slaughter. About 1500 men fell in the battle and pursuit. It is traditionally related that on the 8th of July Mon- mouth was brought a prisoner to Ringwood, and halted at an inn there. The narrator, who was a native of Ringwood, used to tell that her grandmother was one of the spectators when the royal prisoner came out to take horse ; and she never failed to recount how he rejected any assistance in mounting, though his arms were pinioned ; but placing his foot in the stirrup, sprang lightly into his saddle, to the admiration of all observers. Hume's account of the execution is thus minute : ' This favourite of the people was attended to the scaffold with a plentiful effusion of tears. When he saw the axe, he touched it, and said it was not sharp enough. He gave the hangman only half the usual fee, and told him that if he cut off his head cleverly, and not so butcherly as he did the unfortunate Russell's, his man would give him the rest.' [This differs from the anecdote already quoted from the French dictionary.] ' This precaution served only to dismay the executioner ; he struck a feeble blow on Monmouth, 334 THE DUKE OF MONMOUTH'S LAST DAYS. who, raising his head from the block, looked him in the face, as if reproaching him for his failure. He gently laid down his head a second time, and the executioner struck him again and again to no purpose. He then threw aside the axe, and said he was incapable of finishing the bloody office. The sheriff obliged him to renew the attempt, and at two blows more the head was severed from his body. ' He was executed, in the thirty-sixth year of his age, on the 26th July 1685. He possessed many good qualities, and some that were bad. Had he lived in less turbulent times, he might have been an ornament to the court, and of service to his country. But the indulgence of Charles, the caresses of faction, and the allurements of popularity, seduced him into an enterprise which exceeded his capacity. The goodwill of the people followed him even after his death ; and such was their fond attachment, that many believed he was still alive, and that some person resembling him had suffered in his stead.' Soon after his execution Monmouth was buried in the Tower, beneath the communion-table, in the chapel of St. Peter's, from whence it is believed to have been removed. In the year 1852, in taking down the old chapel at Nune- ham Regis, in Warwickshire, was found a decapitated body, which was surmised to be that of Monmouth. The chapel was the property of the Buccleuch family. Monmouth married Ann, the daughter and heir of Francis Scott, Earl of Buccleuch, who was in some measure estranged from THE DUKE OF MONMOUTH'S LAST DAYS. 335 him by his improper connection with Lady Ann Wentworth. Yet the tender interview that is recorded between Mon- mouth and his wife previous to his execution, gives counte- nance to the idea that she may have procured his remains for deposit privately within her own family receptacle ; and under such circumstances it may readily be conceived that such secrecy would be used as not to leave any memento along with the corpse, as to whom it might belong, the very circumstance of decapitation being thought probably quite sufficient now as then for designation. Such is the con- jecture of a Correspondent to Notes and Queries. Another Correspondent shows that Nuneham Regis did not be- long to the Duke and Duchess of Monmouth at all, but descended to the family of Buccleuch from the Dukes of Montague. Then the peaked beard, which this corpse is described to have had, could not have belonged to Mon- mouth, for at the time of the capture his beard was of several days' growth ; and within the week between his capture and execution, it could hardly have become a peaked beard. Again, says this Correspondent, it may be doubted whether Monmouth's widow would have cared to show much respect to his remains, when it is remembered that after his last interview and parting with her, which some have spoken of as very tender, even on the scaffold, ' he went on to speak of his Henrietta,' and maintained that she, with whom he had been living illicitly, was ' a young lady of virtue and honour.' The Duchess certainly showed much feeling 336 THE DUKE OF MONMOUTH'S LAST DAYS. during her interview ; but she must soon have recovered her composure, if it be true, as stated by Dalrymple, that she breakfasted with the king the morning after the execution. Though Nuneham Regis did not belong to the Duke of Monmouth, it is worthy of remark that it was the property of another illustrious man, who lost his life on the scaffold for an attempt precisely similar to that of Monmouth, viz. John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland. There can be no doubt that Monmouth was buried in the Tower. Holm- shed accurately describes the position of his grave as being between the two queens, Catherine Howard and Anne Boleyn, and next to the Duke of Somerset. Do they still repose there ? The Duke of Monmouth lived in a magnificent mansion built by Wren, and which formed the south side of Soho Square. After the Duke's death the house was purchased by Lord Bateman. In 1717 a principal saloon was used as an auction-room. J. T. Smith, in Nollekens and his Times, describes the pulling down of Monmouth House, which he witnessed. The gate entrance was of massive iron-work, supported by stone piers, surmounted by the crest of the Duke of Mon- mouth ; and within the gates was a court-yard for carriages. The hall was ascended by steps. There were eight rooms on the ground-floor. The principal one was a dining-room towards the south, the carved and gilt panels of which had contained whole-length pictures. At corners of the orna- mented ceiling, which was of plaster, and over the chimney- THE DUKE OF MONMOUTH'S LAST DAYS. 337 piece, Monmouth's arms were proudly displayed. The staircase was of oak, the steps very low, and the landing- places were tessellated with woods of light and dark colours. Upon ornamented brackets were busts of Seneca, Caracalla, Trajan, Adrian, etc. The principal room on the first floor was lined with blue satin, superbly decorated with pheasants and other birds in gold. The chimney-piece was richly ornamented with fruit and foliage ; in the centre, within a wreath of oak-leaves, was a circular recess for a bust. The beads of the panels of the brown window-shutters, which 'were very lofty, were gilt ; and the piers between the windows had been filled with looking-glasses. The paved yard was surrounded by a red brick wall, with heavy stone copings, twenty-five feet in height. Among the memorials left by the unfortunate Duke are some MSS., which are interesting in establishing several points referred to by historians. After Monmouth was beheaded, the articles found on his person were given to the king. At James's deposition, three years afterwards, all his manuscripts, including those that had belonged to Monmouth, were carried into France, and they remained till the Revolution in that country, a century afterwards. Among them was the manuscript volume of 157 pages, 'filled with songs, recipes, prayers, and charms,' already mentioned. It was purchased at a book-stall in Paris in 1827, afterwards brought to England, and is now in the British Museum. This book shows the remains of silver clasps that have been destroyed, and part of the leather 338 THE DUKE OF MONMOUTH'S LAST DAYS. cover at each side torn away, seemingly for receiving some name or a coat of arms ; it being dangerous to possess at that period of the French Revolution books with royal arms on them. The several books were sent to St. Omer's; the larger ones were burned, and some small ones were saved ; but all trace of them was lost. The Abbe Waters a colla- teral descendant of Lucy Waters, the Duke of Monmouth's mother was the person with whom George iv. negotiated for the Stuart Papers, and from whom the volumes which have since appeared as Clarke's Life of James the Secojid were obtained ; and it is from the Abbe Waters we have the account of the destruction of King James's autograph papers. The book just named has on the inner cover the words ' Baron Watiers,' or ' Watrers,' and is believed to be that referred to in the following note, by Lord Dartmouth, to the modern editions of Burnet's Own Time: 'My uncle, Colonel William Legge, who went in the coach with him [Monmouth] to London as a guard, with orders to stab him when he was taken, and his table-book, which was full of astrological figures that nobody could understand ; but he told my uncle that they had been given to him some years before in Scotland, and he now found they were but foolish conceits.' The most curious passages in this book are the Duke's memorandums of his journeys on two visits to the Prince of Orange in the year previous to his last rash adventure. There is an entry naming Toddington, a place remarkable in the history of the Duke. Near it was the residence of Lady Henrietta Maria THE DUKE OF MONMOUTH'S LAST DAYS. 339 Wentworth, Baroness (in her own right) of Nettlestead. Five years before the execution, her mother observed that, despite the Duke being a married man, her daughter had, while at court, attracted his admiration, and she was hurried away to Toddington. In 1683, after the failure of the Rye House Plot, Monmouth was banished from the royal presence; and it was to Toddington that he retired. When, on retracting the confession which he had made on the occasion, he was banished the kingdom, the companion of his exile was Lady Henrietta Wentworth. In Macaulay's History we find that the latest act of the Duke on the scaffold, before submitting to the stroke of the executioner, was to call his servant, and put into the man's hand a toothpick-case, the last token of ill- starred love. 'Give it,' he said, l to that person!' 1 After the description of Monmouth's burial occurs this affecting passage : ' Yet a few months, and the quiet village of Tod- dington, in Bedfordshire, witnessed a yet sadder funeral. Near that village stood an ancient and stately hall, the seat of the Wentworths. The transept of the parish church had long been their burial-place. To that burial-place, in the spring which followed the death of Monmouth, was borne the coffin of the young Baroness Wentworth, of Nettlestead. Her family reared a sumptuous mausoleum over her remains ; but a less costly memorial of her was long contemplated with far deeper interest : her name, carved by the hand of him she loved too well, was, a few years ago, still discernible on a tree in the adjoining park.' 340 THE DUKE OF MONMOUTH'S LAST DAYS. The charms and recipes, conjurations and incantations in the pocket-book, are very curious ; extracts from old recipe- books are mixed in the oddest way with abridgments of English history, and memorandums, chiefly of a private and personal kind. 'Altogether, this commonplace work is highly indicative of the weakness, vanity, and supersti- tion which stood forward so prominently in the character of the rash but unfortunate Duke of Monmouth.' Sir Frederick Madden has ascertained, by a careful comparison of the above manuscript and pocket-book 'with several undoubted letters of the Duke of Monmouth,' that the whole of the volume (or nearly so) is certainly in the Duke's handwriting. Some lines written on the fly-leaf of the volume confirm the fact beyond all cavil. They are the autograph of King James himself, and are as follows : ' This book was found in the Duke of Monmouth's pocket when he was taken, and is most of his owne hand- writing.' Among the verses are the following, conjectured to be composed by Monmouth : ' O how blest and how innocent And happy is a country life ! Free from tumult and discontent ; Heer is no flattery, nor strife, For 'twas the first and happiest life, When first man did injoie him selfe. This is a better fate than king's. Hence jentle peace and love doth flow, For fancy is the rate of things. I am pleased because I think it so ; For a hart that is nobly true, All the world's arts can ne'er subdue. ' THE DUKE OF MONMOUTH'S LAST DAYS. 341 The prayers breathe a spirit of the most humble and ardent piety, and if composed by the Duke himself, exhibit the weakness of his character in a more favourable light than the remainder of the volume. One paragraph is striking : ' Mercy, mercy, good Lord ! I aske not of Thee any longer the things of this world ; neither power, nor honour, nor riches, nor pleasures. No, my God, dispose of them to whom Thou pleasest, so that Thou givest me mercy.' Of greater historical value is the Diary of the Duke, mentioned by Wellwood in the sixth edition of his Memoirs, printed in 1718, and of which he says : ' A great many dark passages there are in it, and some clear enough, that shall be eternally buried for me ; and perhaps it had been for King James's honour to have committed them to the flames.' ' It is curious to remark the complete subjugation in which Charles at this period stood towards his brother ; occasioned, perhaps, by the foreign supplies which he scrupled not to receive, being dependent on his adhesion to the policy of which the Duke of York was the avowed representative. Shortly before his death, Charles appears to have meditated emancipation from this state of thraldom ; and Hume says : " He was determined, it is thought, to send the Duke to Scotland, to recall Monmouth, to summon a Parliament, to dismiss all his unpopular ministers, and to thro>v himself entirely upon the goodwill and affections of his subjects." This passage accords with the entries in Monmouth's pocket-book, dated Jan. 5, and Feb. 3.' There has also been preserved a curious and richly orna- 342 THE DUKE OF MONMOUTH'S LAST DAYS. mented sword, left, as it is believed, by the Duke of Mon- mouth among the villagers of Dorsetshire on his flight from the field of Sedgemoor. It was found in 1844 in the hands of a knot of rustic mummers at Woodyates Inn, and was purchased from them for the sum of eighteenpence. The guard and pommel of the sword are chased with royal emblems, portraits, and military subjects, and the whole has been richly plated. Among these ornaments we have the Rose and Crown, the Prince of Wales's Feathers, and Charles i. and his queen. In this view it is clear that the sword could not have been made for Monmouth. He never claimed to be Prince of Wales. Mr. Hewitt is inclined to believe that the sword belonged originally to Monmouth's father, Charles n., when Prince of Wales ; this would be during his residence at the Hague; and the weapon is thought to be Dutch. [Among our national documents are preserved the following : ' An order under the royal sign manual, signed with a trem- bling hand, for the commitment of the Duke of Monmouth's children, July 9, 1685 ; warrant for the delivery of the body of James Duke of Monmouth to the Sheriff of London on the I5th of July, between the hours of 9 and n in the forenoon, for exe- cution on Tower Hill, July 13, 1685; the king's order to allow the Duke of Monmouth and Lord Grey to have each a servant; that the Bishop of Ely is to acquaint the Duke of Monmouth " that he is to dy to-morrow," and that he may see his children, I4th July 1685 ; the king's order for the Duchess of Monmouth to have access to the Duke, either this day, "or to-morrow morning," I4th July 1685 ; the king's order to permit the Duchess of Mon- mouth " to dispose of the body of her daughter, that is now dead in the Tower, as shee shall think fitt," I2th of August 1685.'] THE LADY ALICE LISLE. will be remembered that, after the overthrow of the unfortunate Duke of Monmouth at Sedge- moor, near Bridgewater, his scattered partisans sought protection and relief; some in the hovels of the poor and naked like themselves, and others at the mansions of the gentry in the neighbourhood, whose principles were not unfavourable to Monmouth, or whose humane feelings led them to offer still more readily an asylum to the fugitives. Of the latter class was the venerable hostess of Miles Court, whose husband had distinguished himself among those who sat in judgment on Charles i. Her own better feelings had always attached her to the House of Stuart ; and her son had displayed his courage in favour of James n. at that very battle which had just blasted the hopes of his antagonist. The only rebel of her kindred, the Colonel himself, had long ago retired an outlaw from his country, and was ' shot dead at Lausanne, in Switzerland, by three ruffians engaged for that purpose by some of the royal family.' Nevertheless, the widow of the regicide had been marked out by the Government for destruction. 344 THE LADY ALICE LISLE. It was at that notorious tribunal, in horrible mockery nicknamed ' The Merciful Assize ' of Winchester, and before Chief-Justice Jeffreys, that the infirm yet stately Lady Alice Lisle, now past her seventieth year, stood ar- raigned for high treason, in having concealed and supported two of Monmouth's followers in a cell or vault at Moyles Court, originally constructed to secure the persecuted priest- hood of either party from the malice of their pursuers. The aspect of the judge and prisoner presented a remarkable contrast. The countenance of the former betrayed nothing of that pride or ferocity which might be imagined from the character of the man. From continued habits of intoxica- tion and sensuality, his face and demeanour were indicative rather of sottish indolence and brutal doggedness than of active cruelty or revenge. Few witnesses were called in the present case, yet their hasty evidence seemed too dilatory for the judge's petulance; he declared the charge to be established, and directed the jury to find their verdict accordingly. But the spirit of the indignant matron was not so tamely to be extinguished. She rose majestically from the seat which her infirmities had demanded, rather than her wishes entreated. She raised her lofty form to its full proportions, and cast around, for a moment, her wan yet impressive features, maintaining in wrinkles and fatigue the serenity if not the fire of youth. Then, with an air which awed even the heartless judge upon the bench, she warned the jury of their duty, reminding them that ' the services her son had just performed should THE LADY ALICE LISLE. 345 now exonerate her from regal animosity, had any accrued to her name from the disloyalties of her husband ; that her crime amounted to no more than this : that in ignorance both of the condition of the fugitives and of the law, which now pretended to condemn her, she had opened her doors to the hungry, the naked, and the forlorn ; that even this offence, if offence it were, must rest upon her own confession alone, as no evidence had proved the fact upon her trial ; that she had been allowed neither notice of the accusation, nor counsel, nor defences; and that the safety of his Majesty's subjects was far more endangered by one unjust trial and condemnation than by conspiracies or treason of his people ; and that their own bodies had better be given over to the anger of a bigoted taskmaster than their minds to the fangs of conscious iniquity, and their souls to that place of torment whither the curses of a murdered woman would irrevocably consign them.' The effect of this appeal was visible even on the judge : he leaned forward, with his eyes half raised from the ground, and without suppressing a malicious smile, he motioned the jury to withdraw. They remained absent an unusual time, during which intense anxiety pervaded all except the judge himself, who rolled about from side to side with manifest uneasiness and displeasure. At length the foreman ap- peared, and pronounced ' Not guilty.' An indistinct murmur of approbation followed, whilst the mortified judge, lifting his unwieldy limbs from the chair, his eyes swollen with rage, his mouth foaming, his hands clenched, and stamping 346 THE LADY ALICE LISLE. with rage, yet with the impotence of a child, gave vent to a loud, rapid, and unconnected volley of oaths ; whilst, shaking his fist with frightful vehemence, he drove back the terrified jurymen by the menace of his gesture. Again he sat down ; wrath and disappointment gave way at length to a smile of contempt, which indicated that some scheme was at hand to prevent the recurrence of a like rebuff. Again the door opened ; the same messenger of justice returned, and commenced an apologetic preface, which was speedily interrupted by a demand of their deci- sion. The same verdict was delivered as before ; and every one expected from the judge a still more terrible burst of fury. But their expectations were baulked : he merely nodded in sarcasm, and beckoning to a sergeant, who attended with some score of that barbarous troupe dis- tinguished by the title of ' Kirke's Lambs,' l whispered him to keep guard at the door of the jury-room till the verdict was a third time brought in. The very mention of this merciless brigade, the recollection of the horrid cruelties practised by the Colonel and themselves, was sufficient to 1 After the death of Monmouth, and the suppression of the revolt, the Earl of Feversham hanged twenty-two men at Bridgewater, on the evening of the battle of Sedgemoor, without any form of trial ; and on the Earl leaving the command to Colonel Kirke, the severity and violence of the soldiery were increased, so that Kirke's name was long the object of popular execration hi the west of England. Between Kirke and Jeffreys, in their 'campaign,' as the king jocularly called it, the south-western counties were strewed with the carcases and the dismembered limbs of human beings, women as well as men, butchered by the sword or the axe. THE LADY ALICE LISLE. 347 subdue a stouter heart than that of a juryman in the days of Jeffreys. He alone could feast his eyes upon them ; and as he sat in delightful anticipation of success, he reached down the black cap which hung above his head, and handled it and examined it with evident satisfaction. A third time the door opened ; and the verdict having been first com- municated to the sergeant, and by him, with a smile of approbation, to the judge, 'Guilty; death,' was recorded. Four judges sat the silent witnesses of these proceedings ; and the jury, finding themselves rudely shut out from all means of saving the prisoner, at length consented, rather than have a further collision with the court, to deliver the prey to the destroyer. The strange scene in court has been painted by Mr. E. M. Ward, R.A., and is one of his finest historical works. A slight tumult succeeded ; but a few brandished swords restored silence. The Lady Alice remained totally unmoved. She listened to her doom with firmness and composure, and seemed, in one glance towards the bench, to bid farewell to her enemies for ever. On the following morning she was placed at the bar, when Jeffreys, having pronounced sentence, issued his orders that the prisoner should be burnt alive in the after- noon of the same day. Lady Lisle suffered death on the 2d of September in the market-place at Winchester, her sentence being changed by the king, at her own request, from burning to decapitation. She appeared at the place of execution with great composure, and delivered a paper to the sheriff, in which she observed : ' My defence was 348 JUDGE JEFFREYS. such as might be expected from a weak woman ; but such as it was, I did not hear it repeated again to the jury. But I forgive all persons who have done me wrong, and I de- sire that God will do likewise.' A plain slab inscribed to her memory is in Ellingham Churchyard. By the above special commission, having Chief-Justice Jeffreys at its head, a great number of persons were con- demned and executed at Dorchester, Exeter, and especially Taunton and Wells. The prisoners for trial in Somerset- shire alone were above 1000 ; and of these at least 239 were executed, and probably more. The sentences were carried into effect in thirty-six different towns and villages, among which they were distributed. At Dorchester, in the Town Hall, they have still the chair in which Jeffreys sat at the Assizes. Jeffreys, who is scarcely over-coloured in the above nar- rative, is thus described by Burnet : ' All people,' he says, ' were apprehensive of very black designs when they saw Jeffreys made Lord Chief-Justice, who was scandalously vicious, and was drunk every day, besides a drunkenness of fury in his temper, that looked like enthusiasm. He did not consider the decencies of his post, nor did he so much as affect to seem impartial, as became a judge, but ran out upon all occasions into declamations that did not become the bar, much less the bench. He was not learned in his profession ; and his eloquence, though viciously copious, yet was neither correct nor agreeable.' Long after the judge had gone to his grave, his infamous JUDGE JEFFREYS. 349 memory outlived him ; and persons sixty years of age can remember his name in frequent mention, coupled with epithets of truculent notoriety, and of even traditionary influence. In Devonshire and the neighbouring counties, the children playing at the game called ' Tom Tiddler's Ground' (and which consists in making forays into the ground of Tom Tiddler for the purpose of ' picking up gold and silver,' until Tom can catch one of the marauders, who then takes his place), instead of calling the territory ' Tom Tiddler's Ground,' style it ' Judge Jeffreys's Ground ;' and as the holder is supposed to be an ogre of vindictive and sanguinary habits, is it supposing too much that the memory of the terrible judge of ' The Merciful Assize ' is still retained in the very sports of the children in the districts over which he exercised his fearful sway ? (See Notes and Queries, No. 158.) WEST HORSLEY PLACE AND THE WESTONS. 'EARLY in the centre of the county of Surrey lies one of its oldest historic estates West Horsley Place where the very ancient family of Weston of Weston have been seated from the time of the Norman Conquest. The present mansion is partly of the time of James i. ; but the memories of the old place, and its noble possessors, extend long beyond that period. From Domesday Book it appears that Walter Fitz-Otho de Windsor held this manor, then called Orseld. He was then Governor of Windsor Castle, whence his descendants took their name. William de Windsor, and his son Walter, accompanied King Richard on an expedition to Normandy in 1194; and William probably died there. Hugh de Windsor, who lived in the reign of Henry in., dying with- out male heirs, the estate passed to Christiana called in some pedigrees his sister, but in others his daughter and heiress. Whichever degree of kinship should be assigned to her, she conveyed the estate in marriage to Sir Ralph Berners; but upon his death, in 1297, it reverted to Chris- tiana as his widow. Among the curious memorial entries, WEST HORSLEY PLACE. 351 we find, in the reign of Edward in., Sir John Berners paid to the heirs of Hugh de Windsor ' half a pound of cumin- seed at Easter.' James, the son and heir of Sir John Berners, was one of the obnoxious favourites of Richard n. ; and he was involved in the ruin that befel Richard himself in 1388, when his folly and tyranny had incited the principal nobility (headed by his uncle the Duke of Gloucester) to an insurrection against his government. Sir James Berners was arrested, and committed a prisoner to the castle at Bristol ; and having been attainted by the Par- liament, he was beheaded, and his estates were forfeited to the crown. Stow, after mentioning the decollation of Lord Beauchamp of Holt, on Tower Hill, says : ' Sir James Berners, Knight of the King's Court, a lustie young man, was in the same place beheaded.' Juliana Barnes, or Berners, Abbess of Sopewell, near St. Albans, in 1460, and authoress of the celebrated work generally called The Boke of Seynt Allans, containing tracts on hawking, hunting, fishing, etc., is said to have been the daughter of Sir James Berners ; but the statement is doubtful. King Richard, in 1393, granted the manor of West Horsley, with the park and warrens, to the widow of Sir James Berners. Henry iv., in the first year of his reign, made a grant in fee of the estate to her son Sir Richard Berners ; and three years afterwards he obtained a licence from the king to put this manor in feoffment, that he 352 WEST HORSLEY PLACE. might be enabled to make a settlement on his wife Philippa, the daughter and heiress of Edmund Dalyngruge. This lady survived her husband, and was married to Sir Thomas Lewknor ; but Margery, the only daughter of Sir Richard Berners, on his death in 1421, succeeded to the possession of his estates, including the manor, park, warrens, and advowson of West Horsley. She married Sir John Feriby ; and he dying without issue, she was married a second time to Sir John Bourchier, a knight of the garter, and Constable of Windsor Castle. He died in 1474; and, agreeably to his own directions, was interred in the Chapel of the Holy Rood within the Abbey of Chertsey, to whose monks he gave a silver cross, and other articles, valued at forty pounds. Sir Humphrey Bourchier, K.B., the eldest son of Sir John, lost his life in the service of King Edward iv. at the battle of Barn et in 1471 ; and the succession to the family estates devolved on John Bourchier, the eldest son of Humphrey, who, on the death of his grandfather, became Lord Berners, and sat in several Parliaments in the reigns of Henry vn. and Henry vin. He distinguished himself at the battle of Blackheath in 1497, where the Cornish insurgents were defeated ; and he served as captain of the pioneers at the siege of Terouanne in 1535, when the king, Henry vin., commanded in person. But Lord Berners is most advantageously known as the translator of the Chronicles of Froissart, by command of the king. This work was published in folio in 1525 ; and WEST HORSLEY PLACE. 353 in 1528 he had a grant of the manors of Ockham, Effing- ham, Woldingham, and Titsey (part of the forfeited estates of Edward Duke of Buckingham), which may have been designed by his royal master as the reward of his learned labour. 1 Lord Berners had previously received many especial marks of the monarch's favour. He held the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer for life ; was Lieutenant- General of the town and marches of Calais ; and was ap- pointed, with other persons of rank, to attend the Princess Mary on her voyage to France, to become the queen of Louis xn. in 1514. Lord Berners died at Calais in 1532-3, 1 Froissart has been happily styled the Herodotus of the Middle Ages. ' More important than the poems of Dante and Chaucer, or the prose of Boccaccio, was the introduction of the new literature represented by Froissart. Hitherto chronicles had for the most part consisted of the record of such wandering rumours as reached a monastery, or were gathered in the religious pilgrimages of holy men. But at this time there came into notice the most inquiring, enterprising, picturesque and entertaining chronicler that had ever appeared since Herodotus. John Froissart, called by the courtesy of the time Sir John, in honour of his being priest and chaplain, devoted a long life to the collection of the fullest and most trustworthy accounts of all the events and personages characteristic of his time. From 1326, when his labours commenced, to 1400, when his active pen stood still, nothing happened in any part of Europe that Froissart did not rush off to verify on the spot. If he heard of an assemblage of knights going on at the extremities of France, or in the centre of Germany ; of a tournament at Bordeaux, a court gala in Scotland, or a marriage festival at Milan, his travels began whether in the humble guise of a solitary horseman, with his portmanteau behind his saddle and a single greyhound at his heels, as he jogged wearily across the Border till he finally arrived in Edinburgh ; or in his grander style of equipment, gallant steed, with hackney led beside him, and four dogs of high race gambolling round his horse, as he made his dignified Z 354 WEST HORSLEY PLACE. leaving by his wife Catherine, daughter of John Duke of Norfolk, two daughters, one of whom Joan, the wife of John Knyvet, Esq. became the sole heiress of his estates, but held them for only two years. She died in 1561 ; but long before that period West Horsley Manor, and other estates in Surrey which had been granted to Lord Ber- ners, were transferred to other proprietors, though in what manner is uncertain. In 1536 we find the manor in the hands of Henry Courtenay, Marquis of Exeter, who in 1538, with his lady, was attainted of high treason for an alleged conspiracy to dethrone the king, and raise to the throne Reginald Pole, afterwards Cardinal, and in the reign of Queen Mary, Archbishop of Canterbury. Their estates escheated to the Crown. The Marquis, with some other conspirators, were beheaded on the gih of January follow- ing on Tower Hill, and the Marchioness was punished by imprisonment. journey from Ferrara to Rome. Wherever life was to be seen and painted, the indefatigable Froissart was to be found. From palace to palace, from castle to castle, the unwearied pursued his happy way, certain of a friendly reception when he arrived, and certain of not losing his time by negligence or blindness on the road. If he overtakes a stately cavalier, attended by squires and men-at-arms, he enters into conversation, drawing out the experiences of the venerable warrior by relating to him all he knew of things and persons in which he took an interest. And when they put up at some hostelry on the road, and while the gallant knight was sound asleep on his straw-stuffed couch, and his followers were wallowing amid the rushes on the parlour floor, Froissart was busy with pen and note-book, scoring down all the old gentleman had told him, all the fights he had been present at, and the secret history (if any) of the councils of priests and kings.' Abridged from Eighteen Christian Centuries by the Rev. J. White. WEST HORSLEY PLACE. 355 The manor of West Horsley was granted to Sir Anthony Browne, his Master of the Horse. Upon his death the estate of Horsley devolved for life to his widow, the Fair Geraldine. She was twice married ; but upon her demise West Horsley descended to Sir Anthony Browne, the son of her first husband. He dying in 1592, left this estate to his grandson; after his decease, in 1629, it was sold to one of the Carevvs of Beddington, in Surrey, by which sale was discharged the mortgage made on the estate to John Evelyn. The purchaser must have been Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, Knt, the adopted heir of his uncle, Sir Francis Carew, son of Sir Nicholas Carew, K.G., beheaded in 1539. He was Master of the Horse to King Henry vm. From Sir Nicholas it would seem that, either by gift or devise, West Horsley passed to his nephew Carew Raleigh, the son of his sister Elizabeth, by the ill-fated Sir Walter Raleigh. Carew was born in the Tower during his father's imprison- ment there, about 1604-5. Soon after his father's decapita- tion he was introduced at Court by his kinsman the Earl of Pembroke ; but the conscience-smitten King James not liking his presence, and saying that ' he appeared to him like his father's ghost ' (so like he was in face and figure), the Earl advised him to travel, which he did until the death of the king, when he returned to England. 1 He soon 1 See ' Sir Anthony Browne and his Descendants,' ante, p. 66 et seq. The story of Geraldine, though promulgated by the grave Anthony Wood, and, as he affirms, upon the authority of Drayton, has been stoutly contested as a mere fiction borrowed by the antiquary from a 356 WEST HORSLEY PLACE. afterwards petitioned Parliament to be restored in blood, with a view to obtain restitution of the estate and castle of Sherborne in Dorsetshire, 1 which had belonged to Sir Walter, and had been granted by the Crown to Digby Earl of Bristol ; but the new king, Charles i., having (when Prince of Wales) received a bribe of ten thousand pounds to secure that property to the Earl, although he received him with civility, plainly told him that unless ' he would quit all his right and title to Sherborne, he neither could nor would pass the bill of restoration.' At first Mr. Raleigh refused to forego his claims, yet he was eventually prevailed on to do so, on receiving promises of courtly advancement, which were never fulfilled ; but an Act to restore him in blood was passed in the king's third year. He was aftenvards made one of the gentlemen of the Privy Chamber. He little romance written by Nash, and published in 1 593, containing the adventures of an imaginary hero, whom he calls Jack Wilton. 1 Sherborne Castle, frequently called Sherborne Lodge, was built by Sir Walter Raleigh, and was his favourite residence. Notwithstanding the restorations and additions which have been made, Raleigh's house has been preserved in the centre. In the house are many portraits, and the famous picture of the procession of Queen Elizabeth to Lord Hunsdon's, which has been engraved by Virtue, and lithographed for Nicholi's Progresses of Elizabeth. In the fine pleasure-grounds which surround the Lodge is a grove planted by Raleigh, which still bears his name. Here also is ' Raleigh's Bower, ' in which, tradition says, he smoked the first pipe of tobacco in England. A Roman tessellated pavement has been discovered in the grounds. Here, too, are the re- mains of an early Norman castle, built by Roger, Bishop of Sarum, in the reign of King Stephen, and which changed hands once or twice in the civil war of Stephen and the Empress Maude. In the castle is a little chapel, with just room for the priests to officiate; but it was so WEST HORSLEY PLACE. 357 married the Lady Philippa, relict of Sir Anthony Achley, a young and rich widow. By her he had several children, three of whom were born at West Horsley, which he had made his principal residence ; and he continued to reside there many years. During Cromwell's supremacy, Raleigh was twice returned to Parliament. He was appointed Governor of Jersey by the favour, as reported, of General Monk. After the Restoration, Charles n. would have con- ferred on him some personal honour ; but this was declined, on which the king knighted his eldest son, Walter, who died soon after at West Horsley, and was interred in the parish church, where also two others of his family Carew and Henrietta were buried. In 1665 Mr. Raleigh sold this estate to Sir Edward Nicholas for ,9750. According to Oldys, Mr. Raleigh arranged that those in the adjoining apartment could see the elevation of the host. It is a valuable example of similar arrangements in the houses and castles of the middle ages. In the great civil war the castle was held for the king by the Marquis of Hertford. It was taken by the Parliamentarians in 1642. In 1645 the Royalists held it again, until it was stormed by Cromwell and Fairfax with their forces, not- withstanding the gallant defence of Sir Louis Dives, the governor. After this the castle was demolished. The whole area comprehends four acres, and is surrounded by a deep ditch, on the inner bank of which the foundations and fragments of the walls (six or seven feet thick), enclosing the greater ballium or court, may be traced. The gate- tower, and some parts of the buildings in the centre of the ballium, also remain. At Bingham Melcombe is the ancestral house of Colonel Bingham, a specimen of the small country squire's residence of the sixteenth cen- tury, with its handsome apartments, rich paintings, heraldic-stained windows, and bowling-green, enclosed by a stupendous yew-hedge. 358 WEST HORSLEY PLACE. died in 1666 ; and although he says it was thought by Anthony Wood that he was buried at (St. Margaret's) Westminster, in the same grave with his father, ' it is asserted at West Horsley, in Surrey, which was his seat, that the son was buried there ; and they have a tradition that when he was interred, the head of Sir Walter Raleigh, which had been kept by him, was put into the grave with his corpse.' 1 With reference to this tradition, Oldys quotes a letter he had seen, written by William Nicholas, Esq. (the last posses- sor of West Horsley of his family), in which he writes, he 'verily believes' the head he saw dug up there in 1703 (most probably on the occasion of his mother's funeral) from the side of a grave where a Carew Raleigh had been buried, was that of Sir Walter Raleigh, there being no bones of a body to it, nor room for any, the rest of that side of the grave being firm chalk. Notwithstanding the current opinion that the body of Sir Walter was interred in St. Margaret's Church, Westminster, the following short note, recorded by Manning from the Carew papers at Beddington, gives cause to believe that he was interred at Beddington, though privately, and at night : 1 Cayley says : ' The head (of Sir Walter Raleigh), after being shown on either side of the scaffold, was put into a leather bag, over which Sir Walter's gown was thrown, and the whole conveyed away in a mourning-coach by Lady Raleigh. It was preserved by her in a case during the twenty-nine years which she survived her husband, and afterwards, with no less piety, by their affectionate son Carew, with whom it is supposed to have been buried at West Horsley, in Surrey.' WEST HORSLEY PLACE. 359 ' To my best b[rother] Sur Nicholas Carew, at beddington. ' I DESIAR, good brother, that you will be pleased to let me berri the worthi boddi of my nobell husban, Sur Walter Ralegh, in your chorche at beddington, wher I desiar to be berred. The lordes have give me this ded boddi, though they denied me his life. This nit hee shall be brought you, with two or three of my men. Let me her presently, ' E. R.' ' God hold me in my wites.' Unfortunately there is no date to this note, yet no reason- able cause can be assigned for any refusal by Sir Nicholas of his sister's request. Sir Edmond Nicholas, who settled at West Horsley soon after the above purchase, was secretary to Villiers Duke of Buckingham when Lord High Admiral. He also filled other appointments, adhered to the party of the king during the Civil War, and followed Charles n. into exile. After the Restoration, Sir Edmond Nicholas was reinstated as Secretary of State. He resigned in 1663, having declined a peerage offered him by the king, as a cheap reward for his long and faithful services. He then retired from public life, and passed his few remaining years at West Horsley. He died in 1669, aged 77. He was succeeded by his eldest son John, who, like his father, attended Charles n. in exile. He died in 1704, at the age of 81. He married the Lady Penelope, daughter of Spencer Compton, Earl of North- 360 WEST HORSLEY PLACE. ampton, who was slain during the Civil Wars at Hopton Heath, near Stafford. Lady Nicholas also met with a violent death, being killed at Horsley by the falling of a chimney during the great storm of 1703. Sir John, who entered all his expenses and memoranda in small alma- nacks, thus records the accident : ' Nov. 26th. This night was the dreadful storm and tempest, wherein my deare wife was killed in our bed by the fall of the chimney, and I was wonderfully preserved by God's providence. Vas ! vse ! vse ! A little after three on Saturday morning this sad affliction befel me.' In An Exact Relation of t/ie late Dreadful Tempest, quarto, 1704, are the following particulars: 'My Lady Penelope Nicholas, living at Horsley with Sir John Nicholas, a learned and antient gentleman, was, as it was conceived, killed by the fall of a stack of chimneys ; and her husband, Sir John, was taken out of the rubbish very dangerously hurt. But the chirurgeons, who viewed the body, gave in their opinion, " That her ladyship, being between So and 90, was killed by the fright of that most terrible storm ; and though her leg was broke, yet no blood, nor matter flowing from it, [that] she was dead before the fall of the chimney.'" The last of Sir John Nicholas's three sons, coming into the possession of West Horsley, and dying a bachelor, be- queathed the estate, by will, to Henry Weston, Esq. He formed a design of rebuilding the mansion of West Horsley; and he one day showed the plan for a new house to the Duke of Marlborough, who looked at him, and said, ' Pray, WEST HORSLEY PLACE. 361 Mr. Weston, how old are you ? ' 'I was so struck,' said he, ' at the question, that I laid aside all thoughts of building, and only made some alterations.' He died in 1759. In the pedigree of the Weston family, its origin is traced to Radulphus de Wistaneston, who held certain lands under the Lord de Braose, in the twentieth year of William the Conqueror. The pedigree is entered on a roll of vellum. It enumerates all the lands and estates that have belonged to different branches of the family, down to 1624, and has the arms blazoned of all the families which the Westons have intermarried with. The pedigree fills eight pages in Bray- ley's History of Surrey. West Horsley Place, the family mansion of the Westons, is a gabled brick edifice of the time of James i., but with alterations in the reigns of George i. and n. The house is thought to have been originally erected 'by Sir Anthony Browne, after his marriage with the Fair Geraldine ; and a plan of the old drawing-room ceiling bears the crest of the Earl of Kildare, the father of the Fair Geraldine ; also the initials A. B., and various crests, all known to have belonged to the Browne family. Here is preserved a collection of portraits (many of the Westons) originally formed by Sir Edward Nicholas, in- cluding Sir Walter Raleigh, apparently an original ; Jerome Weston, Earl of Portland, by Vandyke ; Sir Richard Fan- shawe, ambassador to Spain ; Sir William Perkins of Chertsey; and his brother, Captain Matthew Perkins. Among the papers of Sir William Perkins, at West Horsley, 362 SUTTON PLACE. are documents relating to his having sold to the Crown a precious stone, which he calls ' a carbuncle, more valuable than a diamond,' for which he received the sum of ^12,000. At Horsley, too, is a collection of papers of curious things, ' as well during the troubles, as since,' the Restoration, the Popish Plot, and the Revolution, and its Parliaments and journals, all which, if digested into a method, ' would form an authentic record of transactions for near one hundred years past.' SUTTON PLACE AND THE WESTONS. The Westons of Sutton (Sudtone^ in Domesday), are also a family of considerable antiquity. The manor descended to Margaret Countess of Richmond, the mother of Henry the Seventh; and on her decease, in 1509, it came into the possession of her grandson, Henry the Eighth. This prince granted the manor of Sutton, with its appurtenances, to Sir Richard Weston, Knt., with licence to impark land and pasture, wood, heath, and furze, with free warren within the limits of the forest. The grantee, Sir Richard Weston, was the founder of Sutton Place, and the elder brother of William Weston, the last Prior of the house of the Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, at Clerkemvell. Sir Richard was a gentleman of the Privy Chamber to Henry VIIL, Master of the Court of Wards and Liveries, Treasurer of Calais, and Under-Treasurer of England. He had an only SUTTON PLACE. 363 son, named Francis, who was made a Knight of the Bath at the coronation of Anne Boleyn. He was one of the five unfortunate persons involved in the fate of that queen ; for, being accused of high treason, in holding an alleged criminal intercourse with her, he was convicted on trial, and be- headed on Tower Hill, on the i7th of May 1536, whilst his father was still living. Among his descendants was Sir Richard Weston, re- membered for his valuable improvements in agriculture and commerce. In 1782, Mrs. Melior Mary Weston dying unmarried, devised the estate and manor of Sutton to John Webb, Esq., of Sarsfield Court, when he assumed the name and arms of Weston ; this gentleman being a mater- nal descendant of Robert Weston of Prested, in Essex, who lived in the reign of Henry vr., and was the brother of John Weston of Bolton, the ancestor of the Westons of Sutton. 1 Sutton Place was so named to distinguish it from the more ancient manor-house called Sutton House, the re- 1 Humphrey Weston, who resided at Prested, in Richard the Second's reign, was, by different wives, the founder of two different families. The Westons of Sutton descended from his son John, by his first wife, Catherine ; whilst the ancestor of those who continued at Prested was Robert, his son by Joan, his second wife ; and from a younger branch of which sprang Richard Weston, created Earl of Portland by Charles I. John Weston, who was Prior of St. John's, Clerkenwell, in the years 1477 and 1485, and William, his nephew, who was also Prior of the same house on the eve of its dissolution, were both of this family. The latter is represented to have died of grief on the very day when the Act was passed for dissolving his monastery, viz. on the 7th of May 1540* 32d of Henry vill. 364 SUTTON PLACE. mains of which were wholly removed in the last century. The present mansion was erected by Sir Richard Weston in the reign of Henry VIIL, probably in 1529 or 1530, and is situated about three miles north-east of Guildford. Origi- nally the buildings formed an entire quadrangle, enclosing an open court. It consisted of three storeys, surrounding a Tudor-arched gateway, and lit by square-headed windows ; at each angle was a projecting tower, which rose to a con- siderable height. The entrance gateway was taken down in 1786. The interior of the south-east side was rebuilt about 1721, it having previously lain in ruins from the time of Queen Elizabeth, who was entertained here in a gallery upwards of 140 feet in length, when on her way to Chi- chester, in September 1591. Shortly after her 'departure the gallery took fire, either from the extraordinary quantity of fuel used on that occasion, or the neglect of the servants to see it properly extinguished, when a great part was reduced to ashes. The structure is mostly of red brick, with finish- ings of brick of light, warm ochre colour, resembling Caen stone. Most of the larger bricks are marked, or charged, alternately with the initials Q. %j&., and a tun and bunches of grapes, within Gothic borderings; they are thus evidently intended as a rebus on the name of the founder, Richard Weston. The present interior of the mansion is in plain modern style. The great hall, forming the entire centre, measures nearly 51 feet in length, 25 feet in breadth, and 31 feet in height. Its windows contain many curious specimens of SUTTON PLACE. 365 ancient stained glass; shields of arms and other armorial cognizances and devices of former ages, brought from the older manor-house. ' Among them is the White Hart, collared \vith a branch of oak, fructed, and on the body a crescent, sable ; the Red Rose for Lancaster ; the arms of England, with the Rose en soleil, Edward the Fourth's cognizance; the Red and White Roses conjoined, denoting the union of the rival houses of York and Lancaster; the Crown in a Hawthorn Bush, with initials H. and <. on either side, for Henry the Seventh and Elizabeth his queen ; the Falcon and Tower for Anne Boleyn ; a Saracen's Head, the crest of Weston, boldly executed ; a Daisy springing from a Tun; the letters II. . |). and a Tun (possibly for Sep- ton) ; the initials j-^, with the date 1 567 entwined by a double knot ; a Fleur-de-lis under a Crown, with the initials <. $. at the sides for Queen Elizabeth; a Wolf; a Grasshopper; a Shield (several times repeated) containing quarterly, ist and 4th, Erm. on a Chief, Az. five Bezants, Weston; 2d and 3d, Arg. three Camels, Sab., Dister; a small portrait of King Charles the First ; and a Book charged with a hart, stars, and key ; over the book a crown, and below, the motto Respice Suspice, 1630.' Among the devices of a different character are, a negro playing on a lute ; a village festival at sheep-shearing time ; a goose playing on the bagpipes ; a woman holding an infant swathed in cross bandages ; and a clown crossing a brook. The latter is arrayed as a fool in a yellow coat, and wears a cap and hood, with apes' ears, a cock's comb, and bells ; under his belt are thrust five goslings, confined by their necks, and he grasps two others tightly in his hand. Mr. A. J. Kempe states this design to be evidently copied from the rare old book, George Withers' Emblems, 1635. 366 SUTTON PLACE. The fact is, that the clown being sent by his mistress to fetch home some goslings, a river being in the way, he took up the birds under his girdle (by which means they were strangled) lest they should be drowned. The tale is thus moralized by Withers : ' The best good turn that fools can do us, Prove disadvantages unto us. ' The verses annexed to the picture in the book are : ' A fool sent forth to fetch the goslings home, When they unto a river's brink were come, (Through which their passage lay,) conceived a fear His dame's best brood might have been drowned there ; Which to avoyd, he thus did show his wit, And his good nature in preventing it : He underneath his girdle thrusts their heads, And then the coxcomb through the water wades. Here learn that when a foole his helpe intends, He rather does a mischief than befriends ! ' The upper walls of the apartment are nearly covered with large pictures, chiefly landscapes ; and at the lower end is a rude picture of the Deluge, with this explanatory inscription on the frame : ' In the Deluge, the most powerful of the Human race, and the strongest of the Animal creation, may be supposed to Perish last, and the most likely thing to be rescued from the wreck of the Universe is a beautiful little Female. In this picture, there- fore, while the Solitary summit of the last Mountain remains uncovered by the Waters, one of the Gigantic Antediluvian Princes gains his last refuge with His little Daughter; and a hungry Lion, who had swam thither for shelter, Springing on the Maiden, the Father, conscious of his own Strength and supe- riority, expresses Indignation rather than Terror.' SUTTON PLACE. 367 At the sides of the staircase are old portraits and land- scapes, and some of the rooms are lined with embossed leather, richly gilt. The Westons of Sutton have been uniformly distinguished by their stedfast adherence to the principles of the Romish Church j and there is now a Catholic chapel in the south- east gallery of the mansion, but much dilapidated ; its mul- lioned windows are ivy-mantled. Over the marble altar is a small gilt crucifix, and in the lumber-room is a small bell, dated 1530. Such are a few of the decaying glories of Sutton Place. Sutton Park and its attached grounds are about three miles in circuit. On the Wey, near the southern extremity of the demesne, is one of the ' Tumbling Bays,' of which Aubrey speaks. This is a strong dam formed of loose stones, aggregated on each other, across the bed of the river, and continued obliquely down the stream for some distance. When the river is full, the scene here is very picturesque ; the rushing and foaming of the stream over its irregular bed forming an animated waterfall. THE CLIFFORDS OF CRAVEN. 'HERE is no district in England which abounds in more beautiful and romantic scenery than the remote and rarely-visited district of Craven, in Yorkshire. Its long ridge of low and irregular hills, terminating in the enormous masses of Pennigent and Ingleborough ; its deep and secluded valleys, containing within their hoary ramparts of grey limestone fertile fields and pleasant pasturages ; its wide-spreading moors, covered with the different species of moss and ling, and fern and bent grass, which variegate the brown livery of the heath, and break its sombre uniformity ; its crystal stream of unwearied rapidity ; its indigenous woods of yew and beech, and ash and alder, which have waved in the winds of centuries ; its projecting crags, which fling additional gloom over the melancholy tarns that repose in dismal grandeur at their feet; its hamlets and towns, and ivy-mantled churches, which remind the visitor of their antiquity by the rudeness, and convince him of their durability by the massiveness, of their construction, these are all features which require to be seen only once to be impressed upon the recollection for ever. THE CLIFFORDS OF CRAVEN. 369 But it is not merely for the lovers of the wild and beau- tiful and picturesque that the localities of Craven possess a powerful charm. The antiquary, the novelist, and the poet, may all find rich store of employment in the tradi- tions which are handed down from father to son respecting the ancient lords and inhabitants of the district. In Dr. Whitaker's History of Craven there is a groundwork laid out for at least a dozen ordinary novels. To say nothing of the legendary tales which the peasantry relate of the minor families of the district of the Bracewells, the Tem- pests, the Lysters, the Romilys, and the Nortons, whose White Doe, however, has been immortalized by the poetry of Wordsworth can anything be more pregnant with romantic adventure than the fortunes of the successive chieftains of the lordly line of Clifford? their first intro- duction to the North, owing to a love-match made by a poor knight of Herefordshire with the wealthy heiress of the Viponts and the Veseys ! their rising greatness, to the merited disgrace and death of Piers de Gaveston and his profligate minions ! and their final exaltation to the highest honours of the British peerage, which they have now enjoyed for five hundred years, by the strong hand and unblenching heart with which they have always wel- comed the assaults of their most powerful enemies ! Of the first ten lords of Skipton Castle, four died on the field and one upon the scaffold. ' The black-faced Clifford ' who sullied the glory which he acquired by his gallantry at the battle of Sandal, by murdering his youthful prisoner 2 A 370 THE CLIFFORDS OF CRAVEN. the Earl of Rutland in cold blood at the termination of it has gained a passport to an odious immortality from the soaring genius of the Bard of Avon. But his real fate is far more striking, both in a moral and in a poetical point of view, than that assigned to him by our great dramatist. On the evening before the battle of Towton Field, and after the termination of the skirmish which preceded it, an unknown archer shot him in the throat as he was put- ting off his gorget, and so avenged the wretched victims whose blood he had shed like water upon Wakefield Bridge. The vengeance of the Yorkists was not, however, satiated by the death of ' the Butcher,' as Leland informs us that they called him ; for they attainted him in the first year of the reign of Edward iv., and granted his estates a few years afterwards to the Duke of Gloucester, who retained them in his iron grasp till he lost them, with his crown and life, at the battle of Bosworth. The history of his son is a romance ready made. His relations, fearing lest the partisans of the House of York should avenge the death of the young Earl of Rutland on the young Lord Clifford, then a mere infant, concealed him for the next twenty-five years of his life in the Fells of Cumberland, where he grew up as hardy as the heath on which he vegetated, and as ignorant as the rude herds which bounded over it One of the first acts of Henry viz., after his accession to the throne, was to reverse the attainder which had been passed against Clifford's father ; and immediately afterwards the young lord emerged from the THE CLIFFORDS OF CRAVEN. 371 hiding-place where he had been brought up in ignorance of his rank, and with the manners and education of a mere shepherd ! Finding himself more illiterate than was usual even in an illiterate age, he retired to a tower which he built in the beautiful forest of Barden ; and there, under the direction of the monks of Bolton Abbey, gave himself up to the forbidden studies of alchemy and astrology. His son, who was the first Earl of Cumberland, embittered the conclusion of his life by embarking in a series of adven- tures which, in spite of their profligacy, possess a very strong romantic interest. Finding that his father was either un- willing or unable to furnish him with funds to maintain his inordinate riot and luxury, he became the head of a band of outlaws, and, by their agency, levied aids and benevo- lences upon the different travellers on the king's highway. A letter of the old lord, his father, is extant, in which he complains in very moving terms of his son's degeneracy and misconduct. The young scapegrace, wishing to make his father know from experience the inconvenience of being scantily supplied with money, enjoined his tenantry in Craven not to pay their rents, and beat one of them, Henry Popely who ventured to disobey him so severely with his own hand, that he lay for a long while in peril of death. He spoiled his father's houses, etc., ' feloniously took away his proper goods,' as the old lord quaintly observes, ' apparelling himself and his horse all the time in cloth-of-gold and gold- smith's work, more like a duke than a poor baron's son.' He likewise took a particular aversion to the religious orders, 372 THE CLIFFORDS OF CRAVEN. ' shamefully beating their tenants and servants, in such wise as some whole towns were fain to keep the churches both night and day, and durst not come at their own houses.' Whilst engaged in these ignoble practices less dissonant, however, to the manners of his age than to those of ours he wooed and won and married a daughter of the Percy of Northumberland ; and it is conjectured, upon very plausible grounds, that his courtship and marriage with a lady of the highest rank, under such disadvantages on his part, gave rise to the beautiful old ballad of * The Nut-Brown Mayde.' The poem opens with a declaration of the author, that the faith of woman is stronger than is generally alleged ; in proof of which he proposes to relate the trial to which the ' Nut-Brown Mayde ' was exposed by her lover. What follows consists of a dialogue between the pair, and ends thus : ' He. Ye shall not need further to dread ; I will not disparage You (God defend !) sith ye descend Of so great a lineage. Now, understand ; to Westmoreland, Which is mine heritage, I will you bring ; and with a ring, By way of marriage, I will you take, and lady make, As shortly as I can : Thus have you won an earl's son, And not a banished man.' The lady becoming very unexpectedly the heiress of her family, added to the inheritance of the Cliffords the exten- THE CLIFFORDS OF CRAVEN. 373 sive fen which the Percys held in Yorkshire ; and by that transfer of property, and by the grant of Bolton Abbey, which he obtained from Henry vm. on the dissolution of the monasteries, her husband became possessed of nearly all the district which stretches between the castles of Skipton on the south, and of Brougham (or, as the Cliffords, to whom it belonged, always wrote it, Bromeham) on the north. The second Earl of Cumberland, who was as fond of alchemy and astrology as his grandfather, was succeeded by his son George, who distinguished himself abroad by his buccaneering expeditions in the West Indies against the Spaniards. Among the numerous children of whom he was the father, the most celebrated was the Countess of Pem- broke and Montgomery, whose long life of virtuous exertion renders her well qualified to figure as the heroine of a tale of chivalry. The anecdotes which are told of this high- spirited lady in the three counties of York, Westmoreland, and Cumberland, are full of heroic interest and adventure. Her defence of Bromeham Castle against the intrusion of her uncle of Cumberland ; her riding cross-legged to meet the judges of assize, when she acted in person at Appleby as high-sheriff by inheritance of the county of Westmore- land ; her hairbreadth escapes and dangers during the Great Rebellion, are the romantic characteristics of the woman. Her courage and liberality in public life were only to be equalled by her order, economy, and devotion in private. ' She was,' says Dr. Whitaker, ' the oldest and most independent courtier in the kingdom ' at the time of 374 THE CLIFFORDS OF CRAVEN. her death. ' She had known and admired Queen Eliza- beth ; she had refused what she deemed an iniquitous award of King James,' though urged to submit to it by her first husband, the Earl of Dorset ; ' she rebuilt her dis- mantled castles in defiance of Cromwell, and repelled with disdain the interposition of a profligate minister under Charles the Second.' A journal of her life, in her own handwriting, is still in existence at Appleby Castle. She was a girl in the reign of James i. ; and she says, what will no doubt shock modern notions, that when she went with her mother to Theobalds, in Hertfordshire, on the occasion of that king's coming from Scotland, their clothes were covered with vermin, simply because they had sat for a while in Sir Thomas Erskine's chamber. The family mansion of the Cliffords was situated on Clerkenwell Green at that period. Anne Clifford lived also in the days of the Commonwealth ; and to her is attributed the spirited reply to Cromwell's secretary, Williamson : ' I have been neglected in a court, and baulked by an usurper ; but I shall not be dictated to by a subject : your man shan't stand.' The reply, however, must be classed with popular errors. It was in all probability never uttered or written, but was invented as the subject of a paper in The World, not far short of a century subsequent to her death. 1 1 Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 1829. SCRIVELSBY AND THE QUEEN'S CHAMPIONSHIP. HE family of Dymoke ranks, in point of antiquity, male and female, with the most ancient in the kingdom. It derives the celebrated office of Champion from the baronial house of Marmyun, or Mar- myon, with the feudal manor of Scrivelsby, to which the championship is attached. The village of Scrivelsby lies about two miles south of Horncastle, on the road towards Boston, Lincolnshire. Inherited successively by the Mar- myons, the Ludlows, and the Dymokes, this famed estate is rich in historic associations. It appears in Domesday-book to have been then holden by Robert de Spencer, but by what service is not stated. Shortly after, the Conqueror conferred the manor of Scrivelsby, together with the castle of Tamworth, on Robert de Marmyon, lord of Fonteney, whose ancestors were, it is said, hereditary champions to the Dukes of Normandy previously to the invasion of Eng- land. Scrivelsby was, by the terms of the grant, to be held by grand serjeantry, to perform the office of champion at 3/6 SCRIVELSBY AND THE the king's coronation. The lord of Fonteney, thus invested with these extensive possessions in the conquered country, fixed his residence therein, and became a magnificent bene- factor to the church, bestowing on the nuns of Oldbury the lordship of Polesworth, with a request that the donor and his friend Sir Walter de Somerville might be reputed their patrons, and have burial for themselves and their heirs in the abbey the Marmyons in the chapter-house, and the Somervilles in the cloister. The direct male line of the grantee expired with his great-grandson Philip de Marmyon, a gallant soldier, who, in requital of his fidelity to Henry in. during the baronial war, was rewarded, after the victory of Evesham, with the governorship of Kenilworth Castle. His death occurred 20 Edward i. (1292), and he was then found to have been seised of the manor of Scrivelsby and the castle of Tarn- worth. He left daughters only ; and between them his estates were divided, Scrivelsby falling to the share of Joan, the youngest co-heir, and it was by her conveyed in mar- riage to Sir Thomas de Ludlow. The offspring of the alliance consisted of one son, John de Ludlow, who died issueless; and one daughter, Margaret, the lady of Scrivelsby, who inherited from her brother that feudal manor; and wedding Sir John Dymoke, a knight of ancient Gloucester- shire ancestry, invested him with the championship, which office he executed at the coronation of Richard n. From that period to the present a space of nearly five hundred years the Dymokes have uninterruptedly enjoyed this im- QUEEN'S CHAMPIONSHIP. 377 portant estate of Scrivelsby, and continuously performed the duties its tenure enjoins. The second champion was Sir Thomas, the son of Sir John Dymoke, who at the coronations of Henry iv. and Henry v. executed the duties for his mother. His son, Sir Philip Dymoke, officiated as champion of Henry vi., who made a mandate to the keeper of his wardrobe to deliver to the champion such furniture, etc., as his ancestors have been accustomed to have on these occasions. His son, Sir Thomas Dymoke, by his connection with the Lords Wells and the Lancastrian interest, was brought to the scaffold in the reign of Edward iv. His son, Sir Robert Dymoke, who was of very tender years at the time of his father's unhappy death, officiated as champion at the coronation of Richard in., Henry vn., and Henry vin. He was one of the principal commanders at the siege of Tournay, and was a knight banneret. His son, Sir Edward Dymoke, offi- ciated at the coronations of Edward vi., Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth. The last male representative, Sir Henry Dymoke, Bart., succeeded to the estates and the hereditary championship at the decease of his father, the Rev. John Dymoke, in 1828, he having previously performed the duties as deputy for that reverend gentleman at the coronation of King George iv. Sir Walter Scott tells us : ' The champion was performed (as of right) by young Dymoke, a fine-looking youth, but bearing perhaps a little too much the appearance of a maiden knight to be the challenger of the world in a king's 3/8 SCRIVELSBY AND THE behalf. He threw down his gauntlet, however, with becom- ing manhood, and showed as much horsemanship as the crowd of knights and squires around him would permit to be exhibited. On the whole, this striking part of the exhi- bition somewhat disappointed me, for I would have had the champion less embarrassed by his assistants, and at liberty to put his horse on the grand pas; and yet the young lord of Scrivelsby looked and behaved extremely well.' Haydon the painter describes Wellington, Howard, and the champion standing in full view as the finest sight of the day : ' The herald read the challenge ; the glove was thrown down ; they then all proceeded to the throne.' Sir Henry Dymoke was the seventeenth of his family who in- herited the ancient office of champion. Sir Henry also offi- ciated as champion at the coronation of William iv. and our present Most Gracious Sovereign ; but the ceremonial was then shorn of its ancient chivalric state. Sir Henry Dymoke was created a baronet in 1841. He died 28th April 1865, when the baronetcy became extinct; and the estate of Scrivelsby and the office of champion passed to his only brother, the Rev. John Dymoke, rector of Scrivelsby and Roughton, Lincolnshire, now the Honour- able the Queen's Champion. One gentleman, a scion of the house of Dymoke in the female line, Edmund Lionel Welles, Esq. of Grebby Hall, county Lincoln, has, since the death of the baronet, assumed, by royal licence, the additional surname and arms of Dymoke ; no doubt in the contemplation of the QUEEN'S CHAMPIONSHIP. 379 championship, in failure of male issue, being one day granted to him or his descendants. The greater part of Scrivelsby Court, the ancient baronial seat, was destroyed by fire towards the close of the last century. In the portion consumed was a very large hall, ornamented with panels, exhibiting in heraldic emblazon- ment the various arms and alliances of the family through all its numerous and far-traced descents. The loss, says Sir Bernard Burke, has been in some degree compensated by the addition made to the remnant which escaped the flames ; but the grandeur of the original edifice can no longer be traced. The annexed version of an old Anglo-Norman ballad describes with perspicuity and truth the transmission of the lands of Scrivelsby : ' The Norman Barons Marmyon At Norman Court held high degree ; Knights and champions every one, To him who won broad Scrivelsby. Those Lincoln lands the Conqueror gave, That England's glove they should convey, To knight renowned amongst the brave, The Baron bold of Fonteney. The royal grants, through sire to son, Devolved direct in capite Until deceased Phil Marmyon, When rose fair Joan of Scrivelsby. From London City on the Thames, To Berwick Town upon the Tweed, Came gallants all of courtly names, At feet of Joan their suit to plead. 380 SCRIVELSBY AND THE Yet, maugre, all this goodly band, The maiden's smiles young Ludlow won, Her heart and hand, her grant and land, The sword and shield of Marmyon. Out upon Time, the scurvy knave, Spoiler of youth, hard-hearted churl ; Hurrying to one common grave, Good wife and ladie hind and earl. Out on Time since the world began, No Sabbath hath his greyhound limb, In coursing man devoted man, To age and death out, out on him. In Lincoln's chancel, side by side, Their effigies from marble hewn : The anni written when they died, Repose De Ludlow and Dame Joan. One daughter fair, survived alone, One son deceased in infancy ; De Ludlow and De Marmyon, United thus in Margery. And she was woo'd as maids have been, And won as maids are sure to be, When gallant youths in Lincoln green, Do suit, like Dymoke, fervently. Sir John de Dymoke claim'd of right The Championship through Margery, And 'gainst Sir Baldwin Freville, knight, Prevail'd as Lord of Scrivelsby. And ever since, when England's kings Are diadem'd no matter where, The Champion Dymoke boldly flings His glove, should treason venture there. QUEEN'S CHAMPIONSHIP. 381 On gallant steed, in armour bright, His visor closed, and couched his lance, Proclaimeth he the monarch's right To England, Ireland, Wales, and France. Then bravely cry, with Dymoke bold, Long may the king triumphant reign ! And when fair hands the sceptre hold, More bravely still Long live the Queen ! ' l 1 Burke's Visitations of Seats and Arms, vol. i. pp. 188, 189. BRADGATE AND LADY JANE GREY. ' This was thy home, then, gentle Jane ! This thy green solitude ; and here, At evening, from thy gleaming pane, Thine eye oft watch'd the dappled deer, While the soft sun was in its wane, Browsing beneath the brooklet clear. The brook runs still, the sun sets now, The deer yet browseth ; where art thou ? ' >N the most sequestered part of the county of Leicester, deserted and solitary, backed by rude eminences, and skirted by romantic and lowly valleys, are the remains of Bradgate, the birthplace and abode of the beauteous Lady Jane Grey, the accomplished but unfortunate daughter of the House of Suffolk. The ap- proach to this spot from the little village of Cropston is strikingly suggestive. On the left is a group of venerable trees, at the extremity of which are the remains of the mag- nificent mansion of the Greys of Groby. A winding trout- stream washes the walls of the edifice, until it reaches the fertile meadow of Swithland. The beautiful vale of New- town adds to the romantic loveliness of the scene ; and in BRADGATE AND LADY JANE GREY. 383 the distance, upon a hill, is a tower called ' Old John,' commanding a magnificent view of the adjacent country, including the far-off Castle of Belvoir, and the remains of Nottingham Castle. Leland thus describes Bradgate as it appeared in his time : ' From Leicester to Bradgate, by ground welle wooded, 3 miles. At Brodegate is a fair parke and a. lodge, lately builded there by the Lord Thomas Gray, Marquise of Dorsete, father to Henry that is now Marquise. There is a fair and plentiful spring of water, brought by Master Brok, as. a man would juge, agayne the hille, thoroug the lodge, and thereby it dryvitt a mylle. This park was part of the old Erles of Leicester's landes, and sins by heirs generales it cam to the Lord Ferreres of Groby, and so to the Grayes. The park of Brodegate is a vj. mile's cum- pace.' Bradgate lies on the border of the ancient forest of Charn- wood in the hundred of West-goscote, about two miles from Groby, and four from Leicester. A park was enclosed here as early as 1247, as appears from an agreement made be- tween Roger de Quincy, Earl of Leicester, and Roger de Someroy, Baron of Dudley, respecting their mutual hunting in Leicester Forest and Bradgate Park. As a parcel of the manor of Groby, Bradgate formerly belonged to Hugh Grandmeisnell, a Norman, to whom it was given, with other lands in the county, by William the Conqueror ; and who was created Baron of Hinckley and High Steward of England by William Rufus. By the marriage of Hugh 384 BRADGATE AND LADY JANE GREY. Grandmeisnell's daughter and co-heir Petronella, Bradgate passed to Robert Blanchmaines, Earl of Leicester ; and after- wards, by marriage also, to Saker de Quincy, Earl of Winton. In the reign of Edward i. it came into the family of the Ferrers by the marriage of Margaret, daughter and co-heir of Roger de Quincy with William de Ferrers, second son of William de Ferrers, Earl of Derby, whose son and heir, William, was in 1293 created Baron Ferrers of Groby. In 1444, on the death of William Lord Ferrers of Groby, without any surviving male issue, Bradgate descended to Sir Edward Grey, Knight, in right of his wife Elizabeth, sole daughter and heir of Henry, the son of the last-mentioned William (who had died during his father's lifetime) ; and he was accordingly, in 1446, summoned to Parliament, under the title of Sir Edward Grey, Knight, Lord Ferrers of Groby. Sir John Grey, his son, who succeeded as Lord Ferrers of Groby, was slain at the battle of St. Albans in 1460. He married Elizabeth, daughter and co-heir of Richard Widville, Earl of Rivers, who, after his death, be- came the queen of Edward iv. He left two sons Sir Thomas and Sir Richard Grey. Sir Thomas was, in 1471, created Earl of Huntingdon and a Knight of the Garter, and in 1475 was advanced to the dignity of Marquis of Dorset. Henry, his grandson, the third Marquis of Dorset, succeeded to the title in 1530, and married the Lady Ferrers, eldest daughter and co-heir of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk ; and of his illustrious consort Mary, Queen Dowager of France, and youngest sister of Henry vin., by whom he BRADGATE AND LADY JANE GREY. 385 had issue three daughters the Lady Jane Grey, Katherine, and Mary. 1 The male heir of the family was continued by his younger brother John, ancestor of the present Earl of Stamford and Warrington. The Lady Katherine married Lord Herbert, eldest son of the Earl of Pembroke ; and the Lady Mary, Martin Keyes, Esq., of Kent, sergeant-porter to Queen Elizabeth. The family of Grey, we may here mention, was of Nor- man origin. Rollo, or Fulhert, the chamberlain of Rollo Duke of Normandy, was possessed, by gift from Robert, of the castle and lands of Croy in Picardy, from whence he took the name of De Croy, afterwards De Grey. The first notice we find of this family in England is shortly after the Conquest, when Arnold de Grey, grandson of the above- mentioned Rollo, became lord of Water Eaton, Stoke, and Rotherfield, in right of his wife Joan, daughter and heiress of the Baron de Ponte de 1'Arche. The above descent is deduced by a French genealogist and antiquary of great repute, Francis de Belleforest of Cominges. Having arrived at that period in the history of Bradgate when it became celebrated as the birthplace of the greatest 1 Her two brothers dying without issue, the Marquis of Dorset was, in favour to her, though otherwise, for his harmless simplicity, neither misliked nor much regarded, created Duke of Suffolk, fifth Edward vi. On the death of the Duke of Suffolk (who was executed shortly after Lady Jane Grey), the Lady Frances married Adrian Stokes, Esq. She lies buried in St. Edmund's chapel, Westminster Abbey, where an alabaster monument was erected to her memory. 2 B 386 BRADGATE AND LADY JANE GREY. ornament of the age, it behoves us to describe the mansion itself, which became the scene of the childhood and early studies of the incomparable Lady Jane Grey, who was born here in the year 1537. Old Fuller describes the mansion as ' fair, large, and beautiful.' It was erected in the early part of the reign of Henry vm. by Thomas Grey, the second Marquis of Dorset. It was square in plan, with a turret at either corner. It was principally of red brick, and the materials were mostly brought from the manor-house of the Earl of Warwick at Sutton-Coldfield. Bradgate became the favourite residence of the Dorset family, more especially that of Henry, the father of Lady Jane. Of him it has been said, that he loved to live in his own way, and was rather desirous to keep up that magnifi- cence for which our ancient nobility were so much distin- guished in the place of his residence in the country, than to involve himself in the intrigues of a court (Howard's Lady fane Grey). Of this once princely mansion, which has for many years, with the exception of the chapel and kitchen, been in ruins, scarcely enough of the walls remains to assist the careful observer in designating the several apartments. But a tower yet stands which tradition assigns as that occupied by the Lady Jane. Traces of a bowling-green, which Nichols imagines to have been the tilt-yard, are visible ; and the garden-walls, with a broad terrace, less than thirty years ago were nearly entire. The ruins of the water-mill men- tioned by Leland might then be seen, and also the little BRADGATE AND LADY JANE GREY. 387 stream near which is a group of noble chestnut-trees. The spot occupied by the pleasure-grounds could also be traced ; ' and though,' observes Nichols, ' they have now somewhat the appearance of a wilderness, yet they strongly indicate that once, where the nettle and the thistle now reign in peace, the rose and the lily sprang luxuriantly.' The chapel a small building adjoining the Lady Jane's tower, and the only part of the mansion on which any care for its preservation has been bestowed contains a hand- some monument in alabaster, in memory of Henry Lord Grey of Groby (cousin to the Lady Jane Grey) and his wife. Their effigies lie recumbent beneath an arched canopy, sup- ported by composed Ionic columns. The Lord Grey is encased in armour, and robed. The head rests on a helmet, and the gauntlets are placed at the feet. The lady is clothed in a gown and short jacket ; and suspended from her waist-belt is a chain with tassels at the ends ; a long ruff covers the neck. The whole is surmounted by the family arms and supporters. In a vault in the middle of the chapel, made to contain three coffins, repose the re- mains of Lady Diana Grey, daughter of Thomas Earl of Stamford ; Thomas Earl of Stamford, and Mary Countess Dowager of Stamford. The chapel has been repaired and paved; the key is in the charge of the keeper at the lodge. 1 1 Bradgate is the most famous of the picturesque ruins with which the neighbourhood of Leicester abounds, and which, nearly in the middle of England, has been the scene of many stirring events in its history. In the Illustrated London News of July 18, 1868, appeared a set of views in Leicester, full of Rembrantish effect, from the pencil of Samuel Read, 388 BRADGATE AND LADY JANE GREY. The melancholy associations connected with the history of Lady Jane Grey have invested Bradgate with an interest which, notwithstanding its picturesque beauty, the locality would not otherwise have possessed. The story of her 'almost infancy' would be incredible were it not well authenticated. Burton calls her ' that most noble and admired princess, Lady Jane Grey, who, being but young, at the age of seven- teen years, as John Bale writeth, attained to such excellent learning in the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin tongues, and also in the study of divinity, by the instruction of Mr. Aylmer, as appeareth by her many writings, letters, etc., that, as Mr. Fox saith of her, had her fortune been answerable to her bringing up, undoubtedly she might have been compared to the house of Vespasian, Sempronius, and Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, in Rome, and in these days the chiefest men of the universities.' Old Fuller says, ' She had the innocencie of childhood, the beautie of youth, the soliditie of middle, the gravity of old age, and all at eighteen ; the birth of a princesse, the learning of a clerk, the life of a saint, yet the death of a malefactor for her parents' offences.' the well-known painter, of the Old Water-Colour Society. In the accompanying letterpress the writer mentions the ruins of ' Bradgate, the scene of the early life of one whose untimely fate is perhaps the most pathetic episode in English history Lady Jane Grey. At Whit- wick, near Charnwood Forest, is the Abbey of St. Bernard, where the old monastic system is still carried out in its integrity ; and the stranger and the destitute may, as in the olden time, present themselves at the monastery gate for the daily dole.' BRADGATE AND LADY JANE GREY. 389 Aylmer was a clergyman of the Reformed religion, and domestic chaplain to Lady Jane's father. An account of his residence at Bradgate is given in the Jewel 'of Joy, written by Thomas Becon in the reign of Edward vi. Aylmer was afterwards promoted to the see of London by Queen Eliza- beth. It was at Bradgate that Roger Ascham, the tutor of the Lady Elizabeth, paid that memorable visit to Lady Jane Grey, the particulars of which interview he has thus affect- ingly described in his Schoolmaster: ' Before I went into Germanic, I came to Brodegate, in Leicestershire, to take leave of that noble Lady Jane Grey, to whom I was exceeding much beholding. Her parentes, the Duke and the Dutchesse, with all the householde, Gentlemen and Gentleweemen, were hunting in the Parke. I found her in her chamber reading Phaedon Platonis in Greeke, and that with as much delite as some gentlemen would read a merry tale in Bocase. After salutation and dutie done, with some other talke, I asked her why shee should leese such pastime in the Parke. Smiling, she answered me : I wisse, all their sport in the Parke is but a shadow to that pleasure that I finde in Plato. Alas, good folke, they never felt what true pleasure ment. And how came you, Madame, quoth I, to this deepe knowledge of pleasure; and what did chiefly allure you vnto it, seeing not many women, but very fewe men, have attained there- unto? I will tell you, quoth shee, and will tell you a troth which perchance ye will marvel at. One of the 390 BRADGATE AND LADY JANE GREY. greatest benefits that ever God gauve me is, that hee sente so sharpe and seuere parentes, and so gentle a school- master. For when I am in presence of either father or mother, whether I speake, keepe silence, sit, stand, or go, eat, drinke, be mery, or sad, bee swoing, playing, dancing, or anything els, I must doe it, as it were, in such weight, measure, and number, euen so perfectly as God made the world, or ells I am so sharply taunted, so cruelly threatened, yea, presently sometimes with pinches, nippes, and bobbes, and other wayes which I will not name, for the honor I beare them, so without measure misordered, that I think myself in hell till time come that I must go to Mr. Elmer, who teaches me so gently, so pleasantly, with such faire allurements to learning, that I thinke all the time nothing while I am with him. And when I am called from him, I fall on weeping ; because whatever I do els but learning is full of greefe, trouble, feare, and whole misliking vnto mee ; and thus my booke hath been so much my pleasure and more, that in respect of it, all other pleasure in very deede bee but trifles and troubles vnto mee. I remember this talke gladly, both because it is so worthy of memory, and because also it was the last talke that ever I had, and the last time that ever I saw that noble and worthy lady.' Lady Jane's scholarship was sound. Mildred, the wife of Lord Burghley, is described by Ascham as the best Greek scholar among the young women of England, Lady Jane Grey always excepted. Lord Macaulay, however, con- BRADGATE AND LADY JANE GREY. 391 siders the highly educated ladies of this period to have been unfairly extolled at the expense of the women of our time, through one very obvious and very important circum- stance being overlooked. 'A person who did not read Greek and Latin could read nothing, or next to nothing ; and all the valuable books extant in the vernacular dialects of Europe would hardly have filled a single shelf. In looking round a well-furnished library, how many English or French books can we find which were extant when Lady Jane Grey and Queen Elizabeth received their education ? Chaucer, Gower, Froissart, Rabelais, nearly completed the list. It was therefore absolutely necessary that a woman should be uneducated or classically educated. Latin was then the language of courts as well as of the schools ; of diplomacy, and of theological and political controversy. This is no longer the case ; the ancient tongues are supplanted by the modern languages of Europe, with which English women are at least as well acquainted as English men. When, therefore, we compare the acquirements of Lady Jane Grey with those of an accomplished young woman of our own time, we have no hesitation in awarding the superiority to the latter.' To return to Bradgate. On the attainder of the Duke of Suffolk, the family lost all claim to the titles and estates, until James i., by letters patent, bearing date 2ist July 1603, bestowed the barony of Groby on Sir Henry Grey of Pergo, nephew of the last-mentioned nobleman. Sir Henry was the son of the Lord John Grey (youngest brother of the 392 BRADGATE AND LADY JANE GREY. last Duke of Suffolk) by his wife Mary, daughter of Viscount Montacute, to whom, through the interest of his wife, had been granted, in 1559, the site of a capital messuage in Essex, called Pergo, a part of the ancient and royal manor of Havering-at-Bower (Morant's Essex). On returning to the home of his ancestors, Sir Henry Grey immediately disposed of his property in Essex, and settled at the family mansion at Bradgate. Here he lies buried. He was succeeded by his eldest grandson Henry, who married Anne, daughter and co-heir of William Cecil, Earl of Exeter, in whose right he became possessed of the manor, borough, and castle of Stamford, whence he took the title of the earldom on being created a peer, March 6th, 1628, by Charles i. ; and from him is lineally descended the present Earl of Stamford and Warrington. In 1645 an order was made that the Countess of Stam- ford (being then at Bradgate) should have the protection of the House of Lords, that no soldiers or commanders should be quartered in the house or park. In 1694 the mansion had a narrow escape from destruction by fire, caused, it is said, by the then Countess of Stamford ; and, according to tradition, it was fired in three several places. The cause of this rash attempt has been variously accounted for, but all agree in stating that the Countess had an intrigue with her husband's chaplain. Thoresby says, she set it on fire, or caused it to be set on fire, at the insti- gation of her sister, who then lived in London. The story is thus told : Some time after the Earl had married, he BRADGATE AND LADY JANE GREY. 393 brought his lady to his seat at Bradgate. Her sister wrote to her desiring to know ' how she liked her habitation, and the country she was in.' The Countess wrote for answer that ' the house was tolerable, but that the country was a forest, and the inhabitants all brutes.' The sister, in con- sequence, by letter desired her to 'set fire to the house and run away by the light of it.' The former part of the request, it is said, she put immediately into practice. The burning is now visible. A separation immediately afterwards took place, and the Earl married, secondly, Mary, daughter and co-heir of Joseph Maynard, Esq. In the following year, Bradgate was honoured by a visit from King William, when, it is related, that a large room with a bow-window was fitted up for his reception. An old man, who was living in 1804 at Anstey, aged 81, remembered the principal part of Bradgate quite entire. He had been in all the rooms, and said there was a door out of the dining-room into the chapel. The same person recollected being told by his father (who was only thirty years older than himself), that he was carried, when a child, to the end of Anstey town, to see King William pass across the fields on his way to Bradgate. Shortly after the death of the Countess Dowager of Stamford, in 1722, Bradgate appears to have been deserted by the family as a residence, and to have gradually fallen into a state of dilapidation. Towards the close of the last century, the then Earl disposed of the materials of the 394 BRADGATE AND LADY JANE GREY. building, on condition that the purchaser should remove them from the ground within a given period. Luckily, however, for the admirers of history and antiquities, the contract was not fulfilled. Some parts were left standing ; and, with the exception of natural decay, remained in nearly the same state. The youthful Lady Jane Grey, who was of the blood- royal of England, being the great-granddaughter of Henry vii., was the delight of all except her parents, whose severity would in modern times be termed brutal, yet did not alienate her willing obedience. Filial obedience proved her ruin. Her father, then created Duke of Suffolk, pre- suming on his own power and favour, and the declining health of Edward vi., undertook, in conceit with the power- ful Duke of Northumberland, to transfer the crown into their own line. With this view a marriage was concluded between Lady Jane Grey and Northumberland's fourth son, Lord Guildford Dudley, in May 1553. Edward vi. was persuaded by his interested advisers to set aside the rights of his sisters Mary and Elizabeth, and, in consideration of her eminent virtues and royal descent, to settle the crown upon Lady Jane Grey and Dudley. The king died July 6th ; and it was not until the loth that this unfortunate lady even knew of the plot in which she was involved. She was very reluctant to accept the crown, but was at last over-persuaded by the importunities of her parents, and the entreaties of her husband, whom she dearly loved. The two dukes had no party among the people, and ten days BRADGATE AND LADY JANE GREY. 395 placed Mary in undisputed possession of the throne ; while Queen Jane and her young consort had to bid farewell to all earthly glory. The Tower palace, where they were residing, became almost instantaneously the Tower prison. North- umberland perished at once upon the block; but Lady Jane and her husband would probably have been spared, but for Wyat's ill-managed insurrection, which broke out on the queen's intended marriage with the cruel bigot of Spain, King Philip, and was supported by Lady Jane Grey's father, the Duke of Suffolk. The insurrection failed, and not only involved all those in ruin who had directly promoted it, but those in the Tower, who assuredly desired nothing so much as a peaceable and unambitious life. Indeed, Lady Jane's only error was being persuaded to accept a crown to which she had no good title, and for which she did not wish. She took it rather as a burthen than as a favour, and re- signed it with as much indifference as she would have laid down a garland, when its beauties had faded and its scent had gone. Within a week after Wyat's discomfiture, it was deter- mined that Lady Jane and her husband should both die on the same day Monday, the i2th of February 1554. The last evening of her life was employed by her in reli- gious duties. Having taken up a Greek Testament, and attentively perused it for some time, she discovered a few pages of blank paper at the end of the volume, ' which, as it were, awakening and exciting her zeal to some good and charitable office, she took a pen, and in those waste leaves 396 BRADGATE AND LADY JANE GREY. wrote a most godly and learned exhortation' to her sister Katherine. In the narrative which follows this letter, it is asserted that Lady Jane, even on the evening of her existence, was harassed by the Catholic divines; for no sooner had she finished the letter, than two bishops, with some other priests, entered her chamber, and employed more than two hours in the effort to convert her. Fecknam, the Catholic dean of St. Paul's, was foremost; but he failed with one who was more than his equal in controversy. What a splendid example of female constancy and firmness, in a girl who had not then attained her seventeenth year ! Lady Jane, that her fortitude might not be shaken, re- fused a farewell meeting with Lord Guildford, on the morning of the fatal day. It would foment their grief, she said, rather than be a comfort in death, and they would shortly meet in a better place and more happy estate. The fatal morning at length arrived. It was originally intended that Lady Jane and Lord Guildford should suffer together on Tower Hill ; but the Council, dreading the effect of their youth and innocence on the populace, changed their orders, and it was determined that Lord Guildford only should be executed on the Hill, and that Lady Jane's death should take place within the verge of the Tower. Lord Guildford was first led to his fate. From the window of ' Master Partridge's house,' where Lady Jane was lodged, she is said to have beheld Lord Guildford going to execu- BRADGATE AND LADY JANE GREY. 397 tion, and exchanged with him her last parting signal. He passed on to Tower Hill, was brought back in a cart to be buried in the Tower Chapel, and she looked upon his headless trunk. ' O Guildford, Guildford !' exclaimed the unhappy lady, rising even in her agony to the highest sublimity of Christian heroism, 'the antepast is not so bitter that thou hast tasted, and which I shall soon taste, as to make my flesh tremble ; it is nothing compared to the feast of which we shall partake this day in heaven.' The account states that Lady Jane, when sitting in her apartments awaiting the dreadful summons, heard the cart pass under her window, and rose, notwithstanding the efforts of her attendants to restrain her. This statement is not so probable as the other, for she would scarcely have sought so dreadful a spectacle ; and as she had carefully avoided an interview with Guildford, lest her firmness might have been destroyed, it cannot be believed that she would willingly view an object still more calculated to disturb her thoughts. Grafton, the chronicler, corroborates the other statement, that Lady Jane's meeting the mutilated body of her husband was entirely accidental ; for, he says, Lord Guildford Dudley's ' dead carcas, lying in a carre in strawe, was agine brought into the Tower, at the same instant that the Ladie lane, his wife, went to her death within the Tower; which miserable sight was to her a double sorrow and grief.' Dudley, we are told, exhibited considerable dignity and fortitude. After some time spent in prayer, he addressed the assembled multitude, merely to request them 398 BRADGATE AND LADY JANE GREY. to pray for him ; and placing his head on the block, it was in a few minutes separated from his body. The Tower, it has been acutely remarked by a German writer of our history, is a remarkable monument of the past, yet not to its advantage ; ' for the images of the children of Edward iv., of Anne Boleyn, and Jane Grey, and of the many innocent victims murdered in times of despotism and tyranny, pass like dark phantoms before the mind.' The place of execution within the Tower, on the green, was reserved for putting to death privately ; and the precise spot whereon the scaffold was erected is nearly opposite the door of the chapel of St. Peter, and is marked by si large oval of dark flints. Hereon many of the wisest, the noblest, the best, and the fairest heads of English men and English women, of times long passed away, fell from such a block, and beneath the stroke of such an axe, as may now be seen in the armouries. So soon as the closing scene of Lord Dudley's life was over, the sheriff announced to Lady Jane that they were ready to attend her to the scaffold ; nor did this awful summons shake the fortitude which -she had displayed throughout her imprisonment. Howes, in his Chronicle, tells us : ' The Lady being nothing at all abashed, neither with fear of her owne death, which then approached, neither with the sight of the dead carcase of her husband when he was brought into the chapell, came foorth, the lieutenant leading her, with countenance nothing abashed, neither her eyes anything moistened with teares (although her gentle- BRADGATE AND LADY JANE GREY. 399 women, Elizabeth Tylney and Mistress Helen, wonderfully wept), with a book in her hand, wherein she prayed until she came to the said scaffold, whereon, when she was mounted, she was beheaded.' Another account describes her conduct on the occasion in the following words : ' And being come down, and de- livered into the hands of the sheriffs, they might behold in her countenance, so gravely settled with all modest and comely resolution, that not the least hair or mote either of fear or grief could be perceived to proceed either out of her speech or motions ; but like a demure body going to be united to her heart's best and longest beloved, so showed she forth all the beams of a well-mixt and temporal alacrity, rather instructing patience how it should suffer, than being by patience any way able to endure the travel of so grievous a journey. With this blessed and modest boldness of spirit, undaunted and unaltered, she went towards the scaffold.' She was entirely occupied in the perusal of a book of prayer, though Fox asserts that her devotions were continually in- terrupted by Fecknam. A particular account of her behaviour on the scaffold is to be found in an exceedingly rare tract (neither noticed by Ames nor Herbert), which, though without date, bears in- ternal evidence of having been printed immediately subse- quent to her decapitation. That portion of the tract re- garding the Lady Jane is as follows : ' Fyrst, when she was mounted on the scaffolde, she sayd to the people standinge thereabout, " Good people, I com hether to 4OO BRADGATE AND LADY JANE GREY. die, and by a lawe I am condemned to the same. The facte, indede, against the Oueenes highnes was unlawful, and the con- senting thereunto by me, but touching the procurement and de- syre thereof by me, or on my halfe, I doo wash my hands thereof in innocencie before God and the face of you, good Christian people, this day;" and therewith she wrung her handes, in which she had her booke. Then she sayd, " I pray you all, good Christian people, to bear me wytnes that I dye a true Christian woman, and that I looke to be saved by none other mene but only by the mercy of God, in the merites of the blood of His onlye Sonne Jesus Christe ; and I confesse when I dyd know the word of God, I neglected the same, and loved myselfe and the world, and therefore this plagge or punyshment is happely and worthely happened unto me for my sinnes. And yet I thanke God of His goodnes that He hath thus geven me a tyme and respet to repent. And now, good people, while I am alyve, I pray you to assyst me with your prayers." And then she, knelyng downe, she turned to Fecknam, saying, " Shall I say this psalm ? " and he said, " Yea." Then she said the psalm of " Misereri mei Deus," in English, in most devout manner, to thende. Then she stood up, and gave her mayde, Mistres Tylney, her gloves and handkercher, and her booke to Maistre Thomas Brydges, the lyveteuantes brother. Forthwith she untyed her gowne. The hangman went to her to have helped her off therewith; then she desyred him to let her alone, turning towardes the two jentlewomen, who helped her off there- with, and also her Frose paste and neckecher, giving to her a fayre handkercher to knytte about her eyes. Then the hang- man kneled downe and asked her forgevenes, whome she forgave most willingly. Then he willed her to stand upon the strawe, which doing, she saw the blocke. Then she sayd, " I pray thee dispatche me quickly." Then she kneeled downe, saying, ' Wil you take it of before I lay me downe?' And the hangman answered her, " No, Madame." She tyed the kercher about her eyes ; then feeling for the blocke, saide, " What shal I doo ? Where is it ?' One of the standers-by guiding her thereunto, she layde her head downe upon the blocke, and stretched forth BRADGATE AND LADY JANE GREY. 401 her body, and sayd, " Lorde, into Thy handes I commende my spirite." And so she ended.' 1 The lines which this unfortunate lady is said to have scratched with a pin on the walls of her prison in the Tower, viz. ' Non aliena putes homini qua obtingere possunt, Sors hodierna mihi eras erit ilia tibi,' have been thus diversely translated : ' To mortal's common fate thy mind resign, My lot to-day, to-morrow may be thine.' ' Think not, O mortal, vainly gay, That thou from human woes art free ; The bitter cup I drink to-day, To-morrow may be drunk by thee. ' Of the following lines, ascribed also to Lady Jane, the annexed translations have been given : ' Deo jirvante, nil nocet Ihior malus ; Et non jtivante, nil juvat labor gravis: Post tenebras, spero lucem. ' ' Whilst God assists us, envy bites in vain ; If God forsake us, fruitless all our pain. I hope for light after the darkness.' 1 Neither Nichols, in his History of Leicestershire, nor the Chronicle of Queen Jane, nor, it is believed, any other author, mentions the place where the Lady Jane was buried. The general belief is, that her body was interred with that of her husband in the Tower ; but the historian of that fortress was not able to find any conclusive evidence of the place where their remains were deposited. There is a tradition that the body was privately brought from London by a servant of the family,^and deposited in the chapel at Bradgate. 2 C 402 BRADGATE AND LADY JANE GREY. ' Harmless all malice if our God be nigh ; Fruitless all pains if He His help deny. Patient I pass these gloomy hours away, And wait the morning of eternal day ! ' See Nicolas's Life of Lady Jane Grey. The apartments in which Lady Jane was imprisoned have been much contested. Beauchamp Tower was certainly the place of Lord Guildford's prison. Many years ago, in con- verting an apartment in Beauchamp Tower, which had for- merly been the place in which state prisoners had been confined, into a mess-room for the officers of the garrison there, several inscriptions were discovered on the walls of the room. They appeared to have been made with nails, or some other pointed instrument, and the greater part of them were undoubtedly the autographs of the unfortunate tenants of the place. Amongst them was, ' IANE. IANE,' which, it has been conjectured, was written by herself, and that some latent meaning was contained in the repetition of her signature, by which she at once styled herself a queen, and intimated that not even the horrors of a prison coulc force her to relinquish that title. 1 Sir Harris Nicholas, whc first recorded the above circumstance, does not consider the suggestion entitled to any consideration ; for, independentl) of its having been proved that Lady Jane was placed in different apartment from that where this inscription wa found, her character and conduct render it extremely un- 1 The document hi the British Museum, bearing Lady Jane's signa- ture as queen, is supposed to have been the immediate cause of Mary's signing the warrant for her execution. BRADGATE AND LADY JANE GREY. 403 likely that motives of vanity should have had any place in her wounded mind. Another antiquary has supposed that it was written by Jane's father-in-law, the Duke of North- umberland ; but the most rational suggestion is that by Mr. Bayley, who considers it to have been inscribed by Jane's unhappy partner, Lord Guildford Dudley; for nothing is more probable than that, in his separation from his wife, he should have solaced himself by marking the walls of his prison with her name. If it could be proved that it was traced by his hand, so affecting a memorial would speak eloquently of his tenderness, and we might feel convinced that the affection which had been attributed to this interest- ing pair unquestionably existed. The Brick Tower is commonly said to have been that in which Lady Jane Grey was lodged. Mr. Hepworth Dixon, who read to the Archaeological Institute, in 1866, a very interesting precis of the Tower history, may be supposed to refer to the contested inscription in the following passage : ' In the lower room of the Beauchamp Tower you will find among the crowd of Dudley inscriptions the name of JANE. It is probably the work of her husband, Guildford Dudley, who could not think of her even in the Tower as other than the rightful queen. But Jane herself, after her midsummer game of royalty was over, never used that perilous style.' Mr. Dixon adds of the Latin couplet which, it is said, Jane wrote on her prison-wall, and which Fox has preserved (see ante, p. 401) : 'If these lines could be found, they would give the room in which Lady Jane was lodged ; 404 BRADGATE AND LADY JANE GREY. but the search has been often made, and always in vain. I am clear that her prison was not the Brick Tower ; for in a contemporary journal, kept by a resident in the Tower, and describing her daily life, it is said that she lodged in the house of Master Partridge, and that her window commanded a view of the Tower-green, so that she could see the cart which brought in for interment her husband's headless corse. Partridge's house and Lady Jane's prison I take to have been the house standing between the lieutenant's lodg- ings and the Bloody Tower.' Still, this conclusion is based upon the identity of the precise spot to which the above anecdote refers, and this point, as we have already seen, is much contested. The finest portrait of Lady Jane Grey is the beautiful original by Lucas de Heere, now at Althorpe. There are also a very ugly portrait by Vertue, and an original in the possession of Lord Stamford ; besides a portrait once in the possession of Mr. Harrington of Breaston, Derbyshire, into whose hands it came from the Misses Grey of Risley. The substance of this paper relating to Bradgate has been mainly abridged from The Graphic and Historical Illus- trator, 1839, appended to which are some stanzas, entitled, ' The Ladye's Tower,' thus glancing at the historical asso- ciations with which Bradgate is so fraught : ' This lone chapelle, whence prayer to heaven arose, The Ladye's simple Tower that stands beside ; The nameless limpid rill that gurgling flows, With shadows flitting o'er its foaming tide, Which ever with th' opposing rocks doth chide ; BRADGATE AND LADY JANE GREY. 405 The greensward hills that bound the gazer's ken, And seem the stilly spot from all to hide, May well detain the pensive pilgrim, when He quiet lingers here, afar from common men. There, in departed days, the gentle maid, < The lovely and the good, with infant glee, Along the margin of the streamlet played, Or gather'd wild-flowers 'neath each mossy tree ; And little recked what cares hers were to be, While listening to the skylark's aerial lay ; Or merry grasshopper that caroll'd free, In verdant haunts, throughout the live-long day, The beauteous child, as blithe and sorrowless as they. Here from her casement, as she cast a look, Oft might she mourn the reckless sport to scan ; And well rejoice to find in classic book, Solace, withdrawn from all that pleasure can Impart to rude and riot-loving man : Aye, and when at the banquet revels ran To loud extreme, she here was wont to haste, And marvel at creation's mighty plan ; Or with old bards and sages pleasure taste, Unknown to Folly's crowd, whose days all run to waste. Beautiful martyr ! widowed by the hand That reft thee of thy life ere yet 'twas thine ; Thy grave to find beneath a guilty land, Thou had no need of gilded niche or shrine ! Fond recollections round thy memory twine A sacred halo circles thy brief years ; 'Tis thine, redeemed from sin and death, to shine Eternally above this world of fears, Where Christ Himself, thy King, hath wiped away all tears. 406 BRADGATE AND LADY JANE GREY. Farewell, thou mouldering relic of the past ! An hour unmeetly was not spent with thee : Events, as rapid as the autumn's blast, Have hurried onward, since 'twas thine to see The fairest flower of England pensively Expand and blossom 'neath thy rugged shade ; And here thou stand'st, while circling seasons flee, A monumental pile of that sweet maid, Whom men of blood-stain'd hands within the charnel laid. ASSASSINATION OF THE HARTGILLS BY LORD STOURTON. ^HE scene of this atrocity was Stourton, in North Wiltshire, subsequently celebrated as Stour- head, the seat of Sir Richard Colt Hoare, Bart., the amateur antiquary and topographer. Stourton was the family seat of Charles Lord Stourton, who was son and heir of William Lord Stourton, who died at Boulogne while in the service of Edward vi. On Lord Charles taking possession of the family mansion, his mother, Lady Elizabeth, who had survived her husband, placed herself under the roof of William Hartgill, and John Hart- gill, his son, of Kilmington, a village two or three miles from Stourton. These gentlemen had become entitled to the confidence reposed in them, as well by family connec- tion as by their respectability of character. The Lady Elizabeth had not been long in this family when she received a visit from her son, who proposed that she should enter into a bond to a considerable amount never to remarry without his consent; and who, having pressed this measure with little success by his own persuasion, 408 ASSASSINATION OF THE HARTGILLS summoned Mr. Hartgill to enforce it with the influence which he had long gained over his mother as a protector and long-tried friend. But Mr. Hartgill, knowing the over- bearing and cruel spirit of Lord Charles, refused to support his demand, unless he would enter into a reciprocal obliga- tion to allow his mother an annuity suitable to her rank ; and on that point he firmly insisted. Soon after this proposal was made, and rejected, on a Whitsunday morning, while Mr. Hartgill and his family were at Kilmington Church, their devotions were inter- rupted by the appearance of Lord Stourton, who approached the church-door, followed by his defenders in such num- bers, and with such weapons (bows, guns, etc.) as afforded little doubt of the hostility of their intentions. The younger Hartgill, an athletic and courageous young man, who was then at church beside his aged parents, concluding his devotions with an ejaculated petition for the assistance of that ' Lord of Hosts ' in whose house and in whose service he was so unjustly assailed, issued forth to encounter the impious Goliath; and drawing his sword at the church-porch, made his way to his father's house, which was only a few yards distant, and which he happily reached unwounded. But his father, whose arm was enervated by age, and his mother, who tottered with infirmity, durst not venture on so perilous a passage, but took refuge with some of their servants in the church tower. Young Hartgill's motive for this movement was not self- BY LORD STOURTON. 409 preservation, but a desire to succour his parents ; and, accordingly, having taken his long-bow, and given a cross- bow and a charged gun to a second person, he proceeded again towards the church, and with admirable bravery repulsed Lord Stourton and some of his men from the churchyard and the outskirts of the house ; but as some of them still remained in the church, the descent of the persons in the tower was too hazardous to be attempted. Young Hartgill, however, having devised a method of getting some provisions drawn up into the tower, rode directly for London to procure the interference of the authorities ; and on his arrival in town he succeeded so far as to get Sir Thomas Spark, the high-sheriff of Somerset, despatched to take Lord Stourton into custody, and to liberate those persons who were shut up in the church- tower. For, though Mrs. Hartgill was allowed to go into her house on Sunday evening, her husband and his ser- vants were still kept in their close and comfortless con- finement by a band of his lordship's retainers, who surrounded the church during young Hartgill's absence. Meanwhile, the sheriff, as directed by the Lords of the Council, repressed these disorders. Lord Stourton was committed to the Fleet prison, but soon regained his liberty on being bound over to keep the peace. But the desire for revenge continued to rankle in his breast, and he persisted in harassing the Hartgills by destroying their corn and driving away their cattle, till after the accession of Queen Mary, when, on Her Majesty's visit to Basing- 410 ASSASSINATION OF THE HARTGILLS end, in Hampshire, they presented a petition for redress. Both parties were now summoned to appear before the Council, when Lord Stourton promised, if the Hartgills would go to his home, and 'deserve his goodwill, they should have not only that, but the value of all the pro- perty he had taken from them during the quarrel.' To this proposition they readily acceded ; and on a stipulated day they proceeded towards Stourton, accompanied by John Dackombe, Esq., who was to be a witness to their submission to his terms. But on approaching a house through a lane they were met by half-a-dozen of Lord Stourton's men, who, letting the elder Hartgill and his friend pass, stood before the son with the evident intention of preventing his further progress. He, on observing their number and hostile appearance, turned his horse as if to ride homeward ; but immediately perceived a like number of enemies approach- ing him from that point, and before he could draw his sword, and put himself in a posture of defence, he had received several wounds. He set his back, however, against the hedge, and defended himself for some time against the whole twelve ; but exhausted at length by the unequal contest, and by loss of blood from his numerous wounds, he fell into a state of insensibility, and was left by his assailants as dead. After lying some time in this condition, he so far re- covered that, with the assistance of a cook of Lord Stourton's, he got on his horse and rode to the house BY LORD STOURTON. 411 of Mr. Richard Mumpeston of Maiden Bradley, under whose care he soon recovered his health. At length the matter was brought before the Star Cham- ber, and Lord Stourton was sentenced to pay a consider- able sum of money to the Hartgills, and undergo a second imprisonment in the Fleet. Under pretence of having some family business to arrange, which required his presence at Stourton, and after entering into a bond for ^2000 penalty to present himself at the Fleet on the first day of term, he obtained a licence to return into Wiltshire; and, soon after his arrival at Stourton, shortly before Christmas, he sent to the Hartgills, stating that he was prepared to pay them the fine imposed upon him by the Star Chamber, and requesting them to appoint a place and time at which they would meet him to receive it, and settle the differences between them. The Hartgills, who had seriously experienced his treachery, informed his lordship they would meet him on the loth of January, but at no other place than Kilmington Church. On the appointed day, therefore, he went to Kilmington, accompanied by several gentlemen, sixteen of his servants, and several of his tenants, altogether sixty persons ; they went not, however, into the church, but into the church- house, his lordship observing that the church was ' not a fit place in which to talk of worldly matters.' Mr. Hartgill, whose suspicions were strengthened by the number of Lord Stourton's retinue, refused to approach him, when he was invited to do so by his lordship, who 412 ASSASSINATION OF THE HARTGILLS assured him that he should ' have no bodily hurt.' He received a similar assurance from Sir James Fitzjames Chaffyn, and other gentlemen, and was requested to come into the church-house. But Hartgill, as well as his son, still refused to enter .any covered place except the church. It was at length agreed that a table should be set upon the green. This being done, Lord Stourton put down a cap-case and purse, and calling the Hartgills to him, said, the Council had ordered him to pay them ' a certain sum of money, which they should have ; marry (but) he would first know them to be true men.' This was the watchword for Lord Stourton, who, with ten or twelve of his men, seized the Hartgills and dragged them into the church- house, where they took from them their purses, and then bound them with 'two blue bands of inkle' which his lordship had brought with him. One of the purses having been dropped, was picked up by a domestic, Upham ; and a torquoise which it contained was presented to Lady Stourton. This Upham received ' two great blows ' from his master because he was about to pinion the captives instead of tying their hands behind them ; and the younger Hartgill received another blow from the same unmerciful hand because he dared to call the treatment he met with cruel. About this time his lordship, on coming out of the house with his naked sword, and meeting young Mr. Hartgill's wife, ' he kicked at her with his spurs,' says our manuscript, 'also rent a great piece off from one of her hose,' and struck her so violently ' between her neck and BY LORD STOURTON. 413 head ' that she was carried away in a state of insensi- bility. The captives were taken to the parsonage house of Kilmington, where they were kept bound, and without victuals, till about one o'clock the next morning, when they were removed to a house of Lord Stourton's, called Bonham, about two miles distant, and within half a mile from Stourton. Here they were placed, bound as before, in separate apartments, and without fires, till the next evening. About ten o'clock on that evening, his lordship sent to Bonham four of his servants ready to obey their iniquitous master even to commit murder to bring the victims of his revenge to his house, with instructions that if they should offer any resistance, or make any noise by the way, they should be despatched on the spot. On arriving at Bonham, the messengers found another of his lordship's men, who had been stationed there to watch the house, and who was engaged to act in conjunction with them. Then the murderous work began. About ten o'clock at night they took their victims to a close adjoining Lord Stourton's house. There they forced them to kneel down, and knocked them on the head with clubs, his lordship ' standing in the meantime at a gallery door, not a good coyte's cast from the place.' This done, the bodies were wrapped up in their gowns, and carried through a garden into the gallery, where Lord Stourton stood, his lordship bearing a candle to light the murderers ! The bearer of 4H ASSASSINATION OF THE HARTGILLS old Mr. Hartgill made a false step, and fell into a hole the intended depository of his burthen. Life being not quite extinct, a groan was heard, when one of the murderers swearing they were not yet dead, his lordship ordered that their throats should be cut, lest they should disturb a French priest who was lying in an adjoining room. This order was executed by a servant with a pocket- knife, while his lordship held the candle ; but one of the men relenting, exclaimed, 'Ah, my lord, this is a pitiful sight ! Had I thought what I now think, before the thing was done, your whole lands would not have won me to consent to such an act.' To which his lordship answered : ' What, faint-hearted knave ! is it any more than ridding of two knaves, that living, were troublesome to God's laws and men's? There is no more account to be made of them than of killing two sheep ! ' Their bodies were then let down into a 'dungeon' or pit beneath the floor, and two of the men were let down with cords (for there were no steps), to bury them; his lordship all the time watching their progress from above, and urging them to despatch, by observing that the night wore fast away. The bodies were afterwards disinterred by Sir Anthony Hungerford, then high-sheriff of Wiltshire, whose exertions in discovering them received the thanks of the Council. The bodies were fifteen feet below the surface, covered with earth and two layers of paving, on which were thrown two or three cartloads of timber and shavings. Lord Stourton was apprehended and committed to the BY LORD STOURTON. 415 Tower, charged with the murder, on the 28th of January 1556. He was brought up, with one of his men, for exami- nation at Westminster on the loth of February, and was remanded to the 2 6th, when he was arraigned in West- minster Hall, before the Lord Chief-Justice Brooks, the Lord-Steward, and the Lord-Treasurer, appointed by special commission to try him. His four servants were sent to be arraigned in Wiltshire. In the course of the examination, some of the atrocities of Lord Stourton came to light. It appeared that he had caused, not long before, a barn of one Thomas Chaffin to be set on fire by three of his servants ; and then against Chaffin, for saying it was not done without the knowledge of the said Lord Stourton, or some of his servants, he brought an action, and recovering one hundred pounds damages, he took for payment out of his pasture, by force, twelve hundred sheep, with the wool upon their backs, besides all the oxen, kine, and horses that he could find. Lord Stourton and his four servants were found guilty of the murder. The Hartgills, who had fallen victims to his violent and malicious nature, were Protestants ; and as his lordship had always been a staunch supporter of the Roman Catholic religion, and had rendered many services to the Government, it was hoped by his friends that the Queen would have spared his life. But she left him to the laws ; and there is no act of Mary's reign that is so creditable to her memory as this exercise of justice, and her horror at the atrocity of his crime. 416 ASSASSINATION OF THE HARTGILLS On the 28th of February, the Council directed the sheriff of Wiltshire to receive the body of Lord Stourton at the hands of Sir Hugh Paulet, and to see him executed. On the 2d of March, he was taken, under a strong guard, from the Tower on horseback, his arms pinioned behind him, and his legs tied under the horse's belly. His lordship, with Sir Robert Oxenbridge, the lieutenant, four of his servants, and other guards, rode from the Tower for Salisbury, the place of execution ; and resting one night at Staines, and a second at Basingstoke, they arrived at Salisbury on the 4th ; and on the 6th he was executed in the market-place. It is said he ' made great lamentation at his death for his wilful and impious deed.' It was directed that his servants should be hanged in chains at Meere ; and the only mark of distinction shown to Lord Stourton's rank, was his being hanged with, instead of a hempen halter, a silken rope, the privilege of a peer. He was buried in Salisbury Cathedral. ' The visitors,' says the Athenczum, ' will not have forgotten the tomb of this most cruel and treacherous of assassins. There formerly dangled above it, from an iron bar, the silken cord in which this savage was hanged. In the manner of his death this treacherous ruffian had regard for his dignity as a peer ; and, disgusted at the idea of dying in hemp like a common felon, he was permitted to swing in a noose of stout twisted silk.' The son of this criminal lord, John, eighth Baron Stourton, was restored in blood, by Act of Parliament, in 1575. This BY LORD STOURTON. 417 nobleman was one of the peers on the trial of Mary Queen of Scotland. In lineal descent from him is the present Lord Stourton,who is eighteenth Baron. ' This noble family, which derives its name from Stourton, county Wilts, was of considerable rank antecedently to the Conquest ; for we find at that period one of its members, Botolph Stourton, the most active in gallantry, disputing every inch of ground with the foreigner; and finally obtaining from the Duke his own terms. Having broken down the sea-walls of the Severn, and guarded the passes by land, Botolph entered Glastonbury when that victorious Norman had made his appearance in the west; and thus protected, compelled William to grant whatsoever he demanded.' 'Burke' s Peerage. 2 D THE RED AND WHITE ROSES. N an account of these distinctions we are informed that ' the bages that be beryth by the Castle of Clifford is a white rose ; ' but, as usual, no reason why. It is quite clear that this, the celebrated cog- nizance of the House of York, did not originate in the dispute in the Temple Gardens, so dramatically introduced in the play of Henry vi. ; nor does it follow that Shaks- peare, or whoever wrote it, intended it, as Sir Henry Ellis seems to think, to represent that it did so. There is not a line throughout the scene which can be taken to show an intention on the part of the author to represent that the Lancastrian badges were then for the first time assumed. Richard Plantagenet, as grandson of Edmund of Langley, Duke of York, naturally proposes that those who think with him should signify their opinion by adopting the badge of his house, which is by accident blooming behind him. John of Beaufort, a descendant of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, as naturally selects the badge of his family the red rose as the token of adherence to his side of the question. THE RED AND WHITE ROSES. 419 The scene, if entirely the invention of Shakspeare (which has been disputed), is full of truth and character, and in any case testifies rather to the pre-existence of those signs of company than to their derivation from this incident. Roses red, white, and gold are mentioned as ornaments both of dresses and furniture, possessed by various mem- bers of the Plantagenet family from the time of Edward I., who is said to have given for a badge ' a rose gold, the stalk vert? There is no positive authority for this assertion, which is to be found in a Harleian MS. (No. 304) ; but it is very probable that the white and red roses may have been only chosen as differences, as you will find was the case with the ostrich feathers, which are blazoned and depicted gold, silver, and ermine, to distinguish the King's from the Prince's and the Duke of Lancaster's. Tenure of a manor, by presenting a rose on a certain day, was also a common custom in the middle ages. Brook House, Langsett, in the parish of Penistone, in Yorkshire, is said by Beckwith, in his edition of Blount's Ancient Tenures, to have been held even in his day (he died in 1799), by the unseasonable payment of a snowball at Midsummer, and a rose at Christmas ; or, as he pre- sumes, a sum of money in default. We have no evidence of the tenure of Clifford Castle by this sort of service ; but it may have been held by the annual payment of a white rose, although the fact has not transpired. There is also a romantic story associated with the family of Clifford in connection with a rose, as the popular tradition 420 THE RED AND WHITE ROSES. of Rosamunda, the ' Rose of the World,' the ' filia pulchra,' of Walter de Clifford, the favourite of Henry 11., and the victim of Queen Eleanor's vengeance. All we know at present is, that the white rose badge is reputed to have belonged to the Castle of Clifford, and that it came into the possession of the House of York by the marriage of Richard of Coningsburgh, son of Edmund of Langley, with his second wife Maud, daughter of Thomas Lord Clifford. 1 THE OLDEST ROSE-TREE IN THE WORLD. Humboldt, in his Aspects of Nature, gives the following account of, probably, the oldest Rose-tree in the world. In the crypt of the Cathedral of Hildesheim grows a wild rose-tree, said to be a thousand years old ; whereas it is the root only, not the stem, which is eight centuries old, according to accurate information derived by Humboldt from ancient and trustworthy original documents. A legend connects the rose-tree with a vow made by the founder of the cathedral, Ludwig the Pious ; and a document of the eleventh century states that ' when Bishop Hezilo rebuilt the cathedral, which had been burned down, he inclosed the roots of the rose-tree with a vault which still exists : raised upon this vault the crypt, which was re-constructed in 1 06 1, and spread out the branches of the rose-tree upon the walls.' The stem was, in 1849, 262 feet high, and the branches covered about 32 feet of the external crypt wall. 1 Mr. Planche, Somerset Herald ; Journal of the British Archaeolo- gical Association, abridged. APPENDIX. PEERAGES PER SALTUM. 'HEN Lord John Russell was raised to the earldom, he accomplished a feat which has not been per- formed anything like a dozen times in nearly a hundred and twenty years. When he ceased to be a commoner, and entered the House of Peers, he passed clean over the heads of all the barons and viscounts, and took his seat next to the Earl of Dudley, at the bottom of the third rank of the hereditary nobility. The feat is one which doubtless was often performed by court favourites under the arbitrary Tudors, and scarcely less arbitrary and more eccentric Stuarts. But from the days of Sir Robert Walpole, when party government first began, down to this pre- sent year, 1861, so far as we are able to learn from the Peerages, Earl Russell has achieved a success which has befallen to the lot of men for the most part of high historic merit. In 1742, the all-powerful commoner, Sir Robert Walpole, was created Earl of Oxford ; but it was on resigning the premiership, after a tenancy of two-and-twenty years' duration. Again, in 1766, we find another great commoner honoured in the same manner we mean, of course, the elder Pitt, who was then made 422 APPENDIX. Earl of Chatham ; but there was a difference in his case, inas- much as his wife had previously been made a baroness, so that in effect it amounted only to a ' step in the peerage.' Again, in 1797, so greatly was the popular feeling excited by the victory gained by Sir John Jervis over the Spanish fleet off Cape St. Vincent, that the fortunate admiral was at once elevated to the earldom by which his victory still lives in our memories. No other instance that we can find occurs in the annals of the reign of George ill., or of the Regency, or of King George IV. ; neither Nelson nor Wellington gained an earl's coronet per saltitm; the former, indeed, never wore one, and the latter went through one, at least, of the inferior grades before he was created Earl of Wellington, though, as a matter of fact, he did not take his seat in the House of Peers until he had climbed up to a dukedom. In 1831, a younger son of the Duke of Devonshire, Lord G. Cavendish, was created Earl of Burlington ; but for this act of grace there was the assignable reason that he was ultimately heir to the dukedom, in which his own title must eventually merge. About the same time, King William iv.'s eldest son, by Mrs. Jordan, was raised to the earldom of Munster without passing through the intermediate grades ; and her Majesty, on coming to the throne, bestowed the earldom of Leicester on Mr. Coke of Holkham. Since that date, a similar act of gracious- ness has been extended to no commoners, with the exception of Lord Francis Egerton, on whom her Majesty was advised by Sir Robert Peel to bestow the earldom of Ellesmere in 1846; Sir Maurice Berkeley, the owner of Berkeley Castle, and an ex-Lord of the Admiralty, received at Lord Palmerston's hands the coronet of Fitzhardinge, which his brother obtained from Lord Melbourne, but could not transmit to his successor in the family estates ; and lastly, the wife of the present Duke of Sutherland, the daughter and heiress of Mr. Hay Mackenzie of Cromarty, was created Countess of Cromertie, with remain- der to her younger children, in remembrance of her maternal ancestor the Earl of Cromertie in the peerage of Scotland, whose title was forfeited in the last century. London Review. APPENDIX. 423 ' BELL THE CAT.' THIS odd name was given to Archibald Douglas, a Scottish nobleman, from an incident that occurred at Lauder, where the great barons of the nation had assembled at the call of the king, James III., to resist a threatened invasion of the country by Edward IV. of England. They were, however, less disposed to advance against the English than to correct the abuses of James's administration, which were chiefly to be ascribed to the influence exerted over him by mean and unworthy favourites, particularly one Cochran, an architect, but termed a mason by the haughty barons. Sir Walter Scott thus described the strange scene : ' Many of the nobility and barons held a secret council in the church of Lauder, where they enlarged upon the evils which Scotland sus- tained through the insolence and corruption of Cochran and his associates. While they were thus declaiming, Lord Grey re- quested their attention to a fable. " The mice," he said, " being much annoyed by the persecution of the cat, resolved that a bell should be hung about puss' neck, to give notice when she was coming. But, though the measure was agreed to in full council, it could not be carried into effect, because no mouse had courage enough to tie the bell to the neck of the formidable enemy." This was as much as to intimate his opinion that, though the discontented nobles might make bold resolutions against the king's ministry ; yet it would be difficult to find any one coura- geous enough to act upon them. Archibald, Earl of Angus, a man of gigantic strength and intrepid courage, and head of that second family of Douglas whom I before mentioned, started up when Grey had done speaking. " I am he," he said, " who will bell the cat ; " from which expression he was distinguished by the name of Bell-the-Cat to his dying day.' INDEX. A BBESS of Amesbury, 4. ^X Abbess of Lacock, 3. Addison and the Duke of Shrewsbury, 140. Ampthill Park, note, 33. Arundel, Earl of, Earl Marshal, 199. Arundel, Earl of, ' the Renowned Con- fessor,' 196-199. Ascham, Roger, at Bradgate, 389. Ashdown, Battle of, 318. Assassination of the Duke of Bucking- ham by Felton, 143. Assassination of the Hartgills, 407. Aston Church Window, and the Holts' Arms, 172-174. Attainder of the Duke of Monmouth, 331. Aubrey and Britton on the Hungerford Family, 119, 120. BAKER Family Legend, 176. Ballad, Ang" " tarnet, Battle of, Gloucester, 309. nily Lege JD Ballad, Anglo-Norman, 370-381. Barnet, Battle of, and Richard Duke of Barnes, Juliana, and the Bake of Seynte Albans, 351. Basing House, Sacking of, 86. Battle Abbey and Cowdray Castle, 71. Bayntons, the, of Spye Park, 17, 18. Beaumont, Adam, and Sir John Eland, 205. Berners Family, 351. Berners, Lord, translator of Froissart, 352- Blowing Stone described, 322. Bodach Glass Legend, 179-182. Book of Lacock, 7, 8. Bosworth Field, and Buckingham, 91, 92. Bradgate and Lady Jane Grey, 382. Bradgate described, 382, 383 ; 386, 387. Brancepeth Castle, Vicissitudes of, 87. Browne Family and Name, 73, 74. Browne, Sir Anthony, and his Descen- dants, 65. Browne, Mabel, marriage of, 70. Buckingham and Bosworth Fieid, 91. Buckingham, George Villiers Duke of, attempts on his life, 146. Buckingham, Duke of, his funeral, 151. Buckingham and Chandos, Dukes of, 97. Buckingham and Chandos, second Duke of, 99, 100. Buckingham Family, the, 91. Buckingham, Villiers, Dukes of, 95, 96. Burial of Lady Jane Grey, 401. Burton, Sir Charles, 102. /^ALVERLEY Family, the, 49 V_x Calverley, Walter, story of, 49. Carews of Beddington, 355. Castle of Brancepeth, 87. Castle, Donington, and Chaucer, 183. Castle, Fotheringhay, 23, 26, 28. Castle of Oakham, 258. Castle of Pontefract and its Echoes, 214- 230. Castle, Sandal, 304, 305, 306. Castle of Tutbury, 244. Catharine of Aragon at Fotheringhay, Champions, the Queen's, 377. Chapel on the Bridge, Wakefield, 303. Charies, Prince, and the Duke of Buck- ingham, 144. Charles I. at Southwick Park, 149. Charles n. and the Duke of Monmouth, 341- Chartley, Tradition of the Ferrers Family, 133. Chatillon and Fotheringhay, 24. Chaucer, Death of, 188. Chaucer and Donington Castle, 183. INDEX. 425 Christmas Mummers in the Olden Time, 268-274. Church of Fotheringhay, 25, 26. Cicely Duchess of York, 26, 32. Cicely Duchess of York, her Family, 80. Clanricarde, Lord, and the Kildare Family, 58. Clavering, Miss (Lady Cowper), 276, 278. Cliffords' Mansion, Clerkenwell, 374. Cliffords and Rose Tenure, 419, 420. Cliffords of Craven, 368. Clifford, shepherd Lord, 370. Constableship of Donington Castle, 190. Conyers Family, reverses of, 103. Conyers, Sir John, the Dragon-slayer, 165. Cornish Miracle Plays, 271. Coronation of George iv., 377. Country Gentleman, ijth Century, 251. Cowper, Lady, her Diary, 276-281. Craven, History of, 368. Craven, Scenery of, 368. Crewe Family, the, 242, 243. Crocodiles and Dragons, 157, 158. Cumberland, Earl of, 371. plECORATIONS at Sutton Place, JL/ 365, 366. Deepdene, the Howards at, 200. Derby, Countess of, at the Siege of Lathom House, 284, 285, 286. Derby, Earl of, defeated by Lilburne, 288. Dering, Sir Edward, 88. Derwentwater's Corpse Lights, 236. Derwentwater's Farewell, 236. Derwentwater, James Earl of, 231. Derwentwater, Notes on, 238. Despencers and Gaveston, and Edward iv., 217. De Vexi, Lord of Kildare, 54. Diary of Lady Cowper, 280. Dilston or Devilstone Hall, 235. Donington Castle and Chaucer, 183. Dragon Hill, 320. Dragon Legends, 156. Dragon of Wantley, 159, 160. Dymoke Family and the Championship, 375-377- EAGLE and Child tradition, 291. Edmund of Langley at Fother- inghay, 24. Edward Earl of Kent, execution of, 184. Ela Countess of Salisbury, 2. Eland Hall, Yorkshire, 201. Eland Mill, affray at, 208 Eland, Sir John, tragedy of, 201. Elizabeth and Mary Queen of Scots, 36, ?7. 4 2 - Elizabeth, Queen, lines by, 195. Execution of Lord Ferrers, 129-132. Execution of Lady Alice Lisle, 347. Execution of the Marquis of Exeter, 354. Execution of Mary Queen of Scots at Fotheringhay, 38-42. Execution of the Duke of Monmouth, Execution of Lord Dudley and Lady- Jane Grey, 395-400. Execution of Lord Stourton, 416. Exeter, Holland, Duke of, begging, 86. T7AIRFAX, SIR THOMAS, and the JL Siege of Lathom House, 285, 286. Farleigh Castle Estate, 104. Fatalities in Families, 80. Felton assassinates the Duke of Buck- ingham, 147. Felton, John, account of, 140. Ferrers Family, 384. Ferrers Family and Oakham Castle, 259. Ferrers, the House of, 121. Ferrers, Laurence Earl of, murder by, 124. Ferrers, Lord, execution of, 129-132. Fetterlock, Origin of, 25. Fetterlock plan of Fotheringhay Castle, 25. Feud, deadly, in Yorkshire, 200-213. Fitzgerald Earl of Kildare, 54. Fitzwilliam, Sir William, at Fothering- hay, 37, 38. Fotheringhay Castle, 23, 28, 44, 45. Fotheringhay Castle demolished, 45. Fotheringhay Church, 26, 27. Fotheringhay and its Memories, 23. Fotheringhay a prison of State, 34. Foundling Knight, 254. Froissart's Chronicles, note, 353. Froude, Mr., his account of Mary Queen of Scots, 46, 47. Fyndern and the Fyndernes, 242. Fyndernes' Flowers, the, 245. f ENTLEMAN, Country, i?th Cen- VJ tury, 251. Geology and Dragon Legends, 163, 164. Gerald the Great, Earl of Kildare, 57. Gerald eleventh Earl of Kildare, 68. Gerald ninth Earl of Kildare, 60. Geraldine, Fair, 66, 67, 355, note. Golden Horse-shoe, story of, 267. Goldsmith of Leeds, a tragic tale, 247. Gooderich Castle described, 136. Great Stanley, close of his career, 293. Great Stanley, execution of, 295. Greenwich Hospital and the Derwent- water Estates, 237. Grey Family, 384. Greys of Groby, 391. Grey, Lady Jane, born, 386. Grey, Lady Jane, character of, 388. 2 E 426 INDEX. Grey, Lady Jane, her scholarship, 390, 30i. Grey, Lady Jane, and Lord Dudley executed, 395-403. Gundreda, finding of her remains, 298. TT ADDON HALL at Christmas, 273- Tl. 275- Haddon Hall described, 274. Hagley, Tradition at, 172. Hall of Oakham Castle, 259. Hartgills, the, 408, 409. Headless Horse Superstition, 52. Henry y. buried at Fotheringhay, 29. Heraldic cognizance at Sutton Place, 374- Hewet, Sir W., the Cloth-worker, 76. Haytesbury, the Hungerfords at, 116. Horse-shoes at Oakham Castle, 258, 263- 267. Howard, Catherine, fate of, 193. Howard, Henry, Earl of Surrey, the poet, 193. Howard, the Home of. 191. Howard, John, the eminent Yorkist, 191. Howard, Thomas, Earl of Surrey, 192. Howard, Thomas, imprisonment of, 193. Hungerford badge, knots, etc., 113, 114. Hungerford Family, the, 105. Hungerford, Lady, executed at Tybourn, 106, 108. Hungerfords of Cadenham. 107. Hungerfords, the, at Charing Cross, 115, 116, 118. Hunsden House and the Fair Geraldine, 66. Hungerfordiaiui, 104. TNVENTORY of the Hungerford J. Family, 109, no, in, 112. TAMES i. and the Duke of Bucking- J hnm, 144. Joan Plantagenet and her three mar- riages, 184. Jeffreys, Judge, end of, 349. Jeffreys, Judge, portrait of, 345, 348. Jockey of Norfolk on Bosworth Field, ics, 193. ' Judge Jeffreys' Ground,' 348. ~\7 ILDARE, three Earls of, fortunes Jty of, 54. Kilmington Church, affray in, 408-412. Kirkby Moorside and Villiers Duke of Buckingham, 96. Kimbolton Castle, 33. Knock Taugh, or the Hill of Axes, 58. T ACOCK Abbey, present state of, -L' 14, 15. Lacock Abbey described, i, 2. Lacock Abbey, proprietors of, 13. Lacock Village, i. Laidly Worm, the, 169. Lambe, Dr., death of, 145. Lambton Hall Worm, the, 166. Lancaster, Earl of, beheaded, 219. Lancaster, Earl of, at Pontefract Castle, 217. Lathom House, ruins and traditions, 288, 289. Lathom House, Siege of, 282-296. Leeds, Dukedom of, 78. Leeds, Goldsmith of, a tragic tale, 247. Legend of the Bodach Glass, 179. Legends of the Red Hand, 171. Legend of Sir Richard Baker, 176. Legend at Stoke d'Abernon, 178. Lesley or Leslie Family, the, 239. Leven, the brave Earl of, 230. Leven, Ear! of, in the Tower, 240. Leicester, old, views of, 387. Lindwurm, or Dragon, in Moravia, 158, 159. Lines by Lady Jane Grey, 401. Lines on Bradgate, 405. Lisle, Lady Alice, 343-349. Longspe, William, Earl of Salisbury, 2. Love Passage from the Diary of Lady Cowper, 276-280. Lumley Portraits, the, 19. Lyttelton, Lord, and the Red Hand, 173. MABEL BROWNE, romantic career of, 67. Magna Charta of Henry III., 14. Marmyons and the Championship, 375, 37 6 - Marriage of Lord Dudley and Lady Jane Grey, 394, 395. Mary Queen of Scots at Fothennghay, 34- Mary of Valence at Fotheringhay, 24. Memorials of the Duke of Monmouth, 337- ' Merciful Assize,' Winchester, 344. Middleham Castle and Richard III., 308-315. Monmouth, Duke of, capture of, 327-329. Monmouth, Duke of, his last days, 325- 34 2 - Monmouth Close described, 330. Monmouth Documents, 342. Monmouth House, Soho Square, 336. Montague, the last Viscount, 72. Montague, Wortley, and the Dragon of Wantley, 161. Mummers, Christmas, 268-273. Mummers in Northamptonshire, 272. Murder of his Steward by Lord Ferrers, 124. Murder, tragical, 49. Murder at Stourton, 414, 415. Mutiny at Portsmouth, 154. INDEX. 427 N ASH'S Mansions of England, 273. Neville of Brancepeth, 87. Neville, the House of, 80-83. Nicholas, Sir Edmond, at West Hors- ' e y. 359- Nichols, J. G., his account of Lady Hungerford, no. Norfolk, Duke of, at Bosworth, 193. Norfolk, Thomas fourth Duke of, 194, 195- Norton St. Philips, Duke of Monmouth at, 326. ,T > 1 Nuns' Boiler at Lacock, ' Nut-Brown Mayde/ b ayde,' ballad, 372. OAK, celebrated, at Castle Doning- ton, 189. Oakham Castle described, 262. Osborne and Leeds Families, 76. Osborn, the London Bridge Apprentice, 76. Oxenham Family Legend, 182. Oxford, John Earl of, 86. T)APER found in Felton's hat, 148. _L Paulets, reverses of the, 84. Peers' Horse-shoe Custom at Oakham, 260. Pembroke and Montgomery, Countess of, 373. 374- Percy, the House of, reverses of, 83. Perkin Warbeck at Cork, 58. Photography and Mr. Fox Talbot, 13. Pindar Fields, Wakefie!d, 303. Planche, Mr., his account of the Lumley Portraits, 19. Plantagenet co-heirs, reverses of, 102. Pocket-book, the Duke of Monmouth's, 337, 3 88 , 34- Poems and Songs on the Duke of Buck- ingham, 153. Pole, Cardinal, and Gerald Earl of Kildare, 69. Pontefract Castle described, 230. Pontefract Castle demolished, 228. Pontefract Castle and its Echoes, 214- 230. Pomfret and Pontefract, 230. Pontefract, view from, 228, 229. Pope on Villiers Duke of Buckingham, 96. Portraits at West Horsley Place, 361. Portraits, the Lumley, described, 19-22. Portraits of Mary Queen of Scots, 43. T) ADCLIFFE, CHARLES, Earl of Der- XV wentwater, 232. Radcliffes of Derwentwater, the, 231. Raleigh, Carew, birth of, 355. Raleigh, Sir Walter, burial of, 357, 358. Raleigh, Sir Walter, head of, 358. Rebellion of 1745, 223. Red Hand, baronet's hatchment, 175. Red Hand Legends, 171. Red and White Roses, the, 418. Relics of the Derwentwaters, 238. Reresbys of Thybergh, reverses of, 101. Richard n., death of, 223, 224. Richard n. deposed, 220. Richard n. in Flint Castle, 221. Richard II. in the Tower of London, 223. Richard HI., accession of, 311. Richard in. born at Fotheringhay, 28, 29. Richard in., character of, 309. Richard in., his love of music, 313. Richard in. and Richmond at Bosworth, 3H- Richard ill. and Richmond, portraits of, .314, 3 J 5- Rivers, Grey, and Vaughan, executions of, 226. Robin Hood and Barnsdale Forest, 304. Rose Tenures, curious ancient, 419. Rose-tree, the oldest in the world, 420. Ruins of Bradgate, 394, 395. Rutland, county, lines on, 258. SALISBURY CATHEDRAL founded, 5. Salisbury, Earl and Countess of, 5. Sandal Castle, Account of, 304-306. Saxon Standard of the White Horse, 319. Scouring the White Horse, 317. Scrivelsby Court described, 379. Scrivelsby and the Queen's Champion- ship, 375. Sedgemoor, Battle of, 329, 332. Serpent or Dragon in St. Leonard's Forest, 162. Serpent in the Sea, 170. Sevenoake, Sir-William de, 254. Sherborne and Sir Walter Raleigh, 356. Shirley Family, the, 121. Shrewsbury, Duke of, the statesman, 139. Shrewsbury, the Earl of, 135. Shrewsbury, the Earl of, and Mary Queen of Scots, 139. Shrewsbury, Lady, at Lacock, 16. Siege of Lathom House, 282, 296. Sieges of Pontefract Castle, 226, 227. Silken Thomas, tenth Earl of Kildare, 62-64. Skipton Castle and its Lords, 369. Snail, gigantic, and the Laidly Worm, 169. Sockburn Falchion, the, 165. Spendthrift Sir Edward Hungerford, 117, 119. Spye Park Legend, 17. Stafford, Edward, Duke of Buckingham, 93- Staffords of Penshurst, 89. Stamford, Countess of, 392, 393. 428 INDEX. Stanhope, three Earls, 255. State Funeral at Fotheringhay, 29-31. Storm, Great, of 1703, 360. Staunton Harold and Sir Robert Shirley. 123. Stourton described, 407. Stourton Family, 417. Stourton, Lord Charles, 407. Stowe, great sale at, 99. Stowe and the Duke of Buckingham, 97, 98. Surrey, Earl of, the poet, 66. Surrey, Lord, at Flodden Field, 106. Sussex Dragon Legends, 162, 163. Sutton Place described, 363. '"PALBOT, the House of, 135. 1 Talbot, Sir Gilbert, at Bosworth, 139- Talbot, the valiant Lord, 137, 138. Talbot, William, adventures of, 3, 4. Talbotype, the, 14. Temple Garden and Red and White Roses, 418. Thornbury Castle, Gloucestershire, de- scribed, 92-94. Toad in the Hungerford Arms, 117. Towers of Pontefract Castle, 216. Tower of London, Lord Dudley and Lady Jane Grey in, 395-403. Towton, Battle of, 302. Towton and Waterloo battles compared, 302. Traditions of Wallington and the Calver- leys, 48. Tragedy of Sir John Eland, 201. Tresham Family and Rushton Hall, 88. Trial of Lady Alice Lisle, 344-347. Trial of Lord Ferrers for Murder, 127. Trial of Lord Stourton, 419. Trial of Mary Queen of Scots at Fother- inghay, 35. Tutbury Castle, 244. T TFFINGTON Castle, White Horse U Hill, 316. Ulster King-at-Arms, Badge of, 173. VALE of White Horse, the, 316, 324. Vavasours of Weston, the, 51. Vere, Lady Harriet, and Lady Cowper, 277-280. Vicissititdes of Families, by Sir Bernard Burke, 245. Villiers Duke of Buckingham, 95, 96. Villiers, George, Duke of Buckingham, assassinated by Felton, 142. Villiers, John, Earl of Buckingham. 97. -\1TAKEFIELD, the Battle of, 300, VV 301. Wakefield Park, 306. Wakefield Manor and Sandal Castle, 296. Wallington Family, 47. Wallington Border Tower, 48. Walpole's Notes on the Rebellion of 1745, 233, 234. Wayland Smith Tradition, 320, 321. Wentworth, Baroness, of Nettlestead, 339- West Horsley Manor, 355. West Horsley Place and the Westons, 35- Weston Family of West Horsley, 361. Weston, Prior of St. John's, Clerken- well, 363. Westons of Sutton, Family of, 362-367. White Horse, Vale of, 316-324. White Lackington, Duke of Monmouth at, 326. White-breasted Bird Legend, 182. Will Case, the Great Shrewsbury, 140, Wotm Hill and Worm Well, 168, 169. Worm of Lambton Hall, 166. Wyat's Insurrection, 395. "\ 7"ORK, House of, at Fotheringhay, I 28. Yorkshire Tragedy, tfte, 51. MURRAY AND GIBB, EDINBURGH, PRINTERS TO HER MAJESTY'S STATIONERY OFFICE. A CATALOGUE OF NEW& POPULAR WOEKS, AND OF BOOKS SUITABLE FOR PRESENTS AND SCHOOL PRIZES. PUBLISHED BY GEIFFITH AND FARRAN, (SUCCESSORS TO NEWBERY AND HARRIS), WEST CORNER OF ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD, LONDON. 2M. .79. Cancelling all previous Editions of this Catalogue. 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" We urge parents most strongly to obtain this book forthwith ; we know of no book that can compare with it in practical value. EACH CHAPTER IS WORTH THE PRICE OF THE BOOK. 1 ' Ow Own Piretide. Letters from Sarawak, ADDRESSED TO A CHILD, embracing an Account of the Manners, Customs, and Religion of the In- habitants of Borneo. By Mrs. M'DOUGALL. Man's Boot (The), AND OTHER STORIES IN WORDS OF ONE SYLLABLE. Illustrations by HARRISON WEIB. The Mine, or SUBTERRANEAN WONDERS. An Account of the Opera- tions of tbe Miner and the Products of his Labours. Might not Right, or STORIES OF THE DISCOVERY AND CONQUEST OF AMERICA. Modern Sphinx (The). A Collection of ENIGMAS, CHARADES, RE- BUSES, DOUBLE AND TRIPLE ACROSTICS, ANAGRAMS, LOGOGRLVHS, METAGRAMS, VERBAL PUZZLES, CONUNDRUMS, etc. Fcap. 8vo, price 3s. 6rf.; gilt edges, 4s. "A charming book for the long winter nights." Bookseller, Root and Flower. By JOHN PALMER. Sunbeam: a Fairy Tale. By Mrs. PIETZKER. 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With Sixteen Illustrations by JOHN GILBERT CONTENTS : The History of Joseph History of Moses History of our Saviour The Miracles of Christ. Sold separately Qd. each, plain ; Is. coloured. Story of Jack and the Giants. 35 Illustrations by RICHARD DOYLE. Stories of Julian and His Playfellows. Written by his MAMMA. Tales from Catland. Dedicated to the Young Kittens of England. By an OLD TABBY. Illus. by H. WEIR. Seventh Thousand. Talking Bird (The), or THE LITTLE GIRL WHO KNEW WHAT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN. By M. and E. KIRBY. Second Edition. Ten of Them, or THE CHILDREN OF DANEHURST. By Mrs. R. M. BRAY. "Those Unlucky Twins!" By A. LYSTER. The Secret of Wrexford, or STELLA DESMOND'S SECRET. By ESTHER CARR, Author of "Madelon." Tittle Tattle; and other Stories for Children. By the Author of "Little Tales for Tiny Tote," etc. Wandering Blindfold, or A BOY'S TROUBLES. By MARY ALBERT. 22 NEW AND POPULAR WORKS Two Shillings and Sixpence, with Illustrations, cloth elegant, or with gilt edges, Three Shillings. A Child's Influence, or KATHLEEN AND HEK GREAT UNCLE. By LISA LOCKYEE. Fcap. 8vo. " It shows how great is the power of a loving child to influence her seniors." Western Morning News. Adventures of Kwei, the Chinese Girl. By the Author of " Little Lisette," "Clement's Trial and Victory," etc. Bertrand Du Guesclin, the Hero of Brittany. By EJHLE DE BONNECHOSE. Translated by MARGARET S. JEUNE. "The high tone of feeling with which it is written makes it specially valuable as an educational book, taking education in the sense of formation of character. All boys will enjoy it for the scenes of adventure and hero- ism through which it leads them." Literary Churchman. Corner Cottage, and Its Inmates, or TRUST ra GOD. By FRANCES OSBORNE. Father Time's Story Book for the Little Ones. By KATHLEEN KNOX, Author of " Fairy Gifts," &c. 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