Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB
[blocks in formation]

agitated society, were comparative novelties. The wonders of the new world, and of the whole southern hemisphere, were discoveries of yesterday. National questions, accordingly, were debated with a degree of passionateness and earnestness, such as we seldom feel; while distant regions loomed before the fancies of men in alliance with everything shadowy, strange and mysterious. The old world seemed to be waking at their side, as from the sleep of ages; and a new world rose to their view, presenting treasures which seemed to be inexhaustible. The wonder of to-day was succeeded by the greater wonder of to-morrow, and the revelations seemed to have no end. At the same time, to very many, their native land had become as a house of bondage, and the waters of the Atlantic were the stream which separated between them and their promised home.

It is instructive to observe how much is done in the government of the world by the ignorance of men more than by their knowledge. What we do from design is of small amount compared with what we do beyond our forethought. In all our plans we prophesy in part. The action of to-day generates the action of to-morrow. The scheme widens as it advances from purpose towards accomplishment. The one thing intended, brings along with it a host of things not intended; and as our vision takes a wider compass, consequences and contingencies are seen to multiply. One man That feeling is now among the bygone in our creates the void, and another gives it occupancy. social history. But the traces of it are still at One agency unlocks the stream, and a multitude times discoverable. The broader and deeper are in waiting to affect its course and issue. Evil stream, now rolling on, leaves its nooks and eddycomes from good, and good comes from evil. ing points, where something of the past still retains Thus mockery is cast over all human foresight. a place, and still secures to it some influence over In this twilight of perception the greatest men the present. It is now about twice seven years have labored-Wycliffe and Luther, Columbus since we passed a few pleasant weeks in one of and Bacon. Much that was in their heart they the less peopled districts of Dorsetshire-that have done, but much more which their heart never county which Charles II. is said to have described conceived have they accomplished. Being dead, as the only county in England fit to be the home they still speak and they still act-but the further of a gentleman. What the qualities were which, the undulations of their influence extend, the less is in the estimation of royalty, gave so much of the the semblance between the things which are realized air proper to the home of gentle blood to the and the things which were expected. They have county of Dorset, it will not be difficult to condone less than they hoped, and more-much that jecture. Dorsetshire is remarkable for the almost they would have done, and much that they would total absence of the usual signs of trade and mannot have done. In short, in the providence of our ufactures. It is no less remarkable, as a natural world, enough is plain and fixed to give pulsation consequence, for the absence of any considerable to virtue and hope in the right-hearted; but enough middle class to separate between the serfs who till is obscure and uncertain to rebuke impatience, and the ground, and the lords who own it. Even to suggest many a lesson of humility. agriculture is prosecuted within such limits as may consist with leaving an ample portion of its surface in the good feudal condition of extended sheepwalks and open downs. Such Dorsetshire has ever been, such it still is; but, thanks to projected railroads, such we trust it is not always to be.

It was the pleasure of Elizabeth, and of her successors James and Charles, to take upon them the office of the persecutor. In that honorable vocation they found coadjutors, of suitable capacity and temper, in Whitgift, Bancroft and Laud. The sovereign and the priest gave themselves to such On the occasion adverted to, we were indebted employment, in the sagacious expectation that the for a season to the hospitalities of an honest yeoopinions of men were matters to be shaped accord-man, whose residence had been occupied, in other ing to the royal pleasure, with little more difficulty than the order of a court ceremonial. But the policy intended to secure an abject submission at home, became the unwilling parent of an enlightened independence abroad. Intolerance of freedom forced it upon new experiments, and proved eminently favorable to its development and power. The seed cast out found a better lodgment, and sent forth a richer fruit. The new world afforded space for its germination and growth which the old could not have supplied; and the new world has reäcted upon the old, in the cause of freedom, as the old could not have acted upon itself. Even now, also, we are only in the beginning of that great outburst of enterprise and improvement which we trace to those memorable times, and, in great part, to the narrow and selfish policy of the agents above named.

[blocks in formation]

days, by personages of much higher pretension than our host. It was an ancient mansion on a hill-side, overlooking an extended valley, which, from the corresponding forms of the hills fronting each other, resembled the bed of some departed Ganges, or St. Lawrence. The lower part of the valley was cultivated and wooded, but the high slopes of the hills were treeless and shrubless, ex-cept on the spot where the dwelling of our yeoman friend presented itself. That structure, with its somewhat castellated front, with its long ascent of half-decayed steps, its mutilated balustrades, and its ample terrace, rose amid lofty elms and chesnuts, forming a picture, not the less pleasant to look upon, from its contrast with the surrounding barrenness. Altogether this Dorset mansion was of a sort to work powerfully on that superstitious feeling and credulity, which are so deeply rooted in the mind of every rural and secluded population. The sounds which came after nightfall, in the autumnal and winter season, across that valley, from the distant sea, and which passed in such wild and strange notes through the branches of those ancient trees, and through the crazy apertures of that more ancient building, did.

of tracts, and pamphlets, and small publications, relating to the countries of the new world, and to the marvels of recent voyaging. Some of them bore date as far back as the times of Elizabeth, but most of them were of the time of James I., and a little later.

not fall upon the ear without some awakening age, conducted a correspondence, exceeding that effect upon the imagination. The dead, who once of all the princes of Europe taken together. Many had paced those terrace walks, were not forgotten; such works were there, and many learned volumes and where could there be a more fitting haunt for which had strayed from their fellows, and which those sights which "we, fools of nature," shrink bore upon them the marks of having suffered much from, than the spaces covered with the deep in their wanderings. But the point which has shadows of those overhanging trees-the living brought the old Dorset hall on the hill-side, in this things, which budded and grew in the times of manner to our memory is, that, among the printed other generations, and which seemed to lift them-works in this long-neglected library, was a number selves aloft, as in a proud consciousness of being more associated with what has been than with what is. Within, also, there was much to strengthen fancies of this complexion. There were the gloomy stairs, with their dark walls, their long worn steps, and their railwork of massy oak. Apartments, with their antique panellings, Some hours passed, and we were still beguiled their faded tapestry, and their concealed doorways. by the perusal and comparison of these remains, At night, the birds, who chose their lodgment which, like some newly-discovered fossil bed, amidst the ancient masonry of the chimneys, failed pointed our imagination to a former condition of not to send their tokens of inquietude into the society, if not to a former world. We felt as chambers below, as the gale from the neighboring though drifted back to those times. We thought channel came with tumultuous force upon the land. we saw good Mr. White, the puritan minister of Part of the building, also, had become a ruin, the neighboring town of Dorchester, as he went thickly mantled with ivy, where owls might have forth the spiritual leader of the little band, who, pleaded their long holding as a right of tenantry, more than two centuries since, sought their spiritand from which they sallied forth at such times, ual as well as their natural home on the shores of as if glad to mingle their screams with the night New England. We seemed to listen to the talk storm, or to flap their wings against the casement of such men as the brave John Smith, and the of the sleeper. Governor Winthorp; and to be witnesses to the To one apartment in that interior a special conferences of such men as the Lords Say and mystery attached. It bore the name of the book-Brooke, Harry Vane, and John Hampden, as they room. Of that room the master of the house cogitated their schemes of settlement for injured always retained the key. It was a part of his and free-hearted men on the other side the Western tenure that the contents of the book-room should Ocean. We remembered Queen Elizabeth, too— on no account be disturbed. Among those contents, beside a curious library, were many other curious things-such as a bonnet, said to have ¡been worn by Queen Elizabeth when visiting those western parts of her dominions; also a fan, which had been wielded by that royal hand; a whole suit of kingly apparel, reported to have been worn by Charles II., and to have been left at the mansion by its royal visitor. Above all, a skull was there. It was the skull of a murdered man. The mark of the death wound was visible upon it. Tradition said that the victim of human violence was an African-a faithful servant in the family which once found its stately home beneath that venerable roof. Amidst so much pointing to the dim past, we may be sure that the imagination of the dwellers in the old hall on the hill-side was not by any means unproductive.

the grave men who were honored as her counsellors, her own stately presence, her own pliant but masculine temper, and the skill with which she dispensed the tokens both of her pleasure and of her pride. Her arts of cajolery to-day, her haughty invective to-morrow, her ambition-her innate love of rule at all times, and in all things. Her successor, also, we remembered the king whose flesh gave signs of fear at the sight of a drawn sword. One of the most timid among men, having the place of chief over the bravest of nations. The monarch who presumed that he was born a great king, and who supposed that he had made himself a great clerk. The ruler whose soul was below all feeling of enterprise, presiding among a people with whom that feeling was strong, irrepressible, almost boundless. The frivolous imbecile, whose days were spent at the chase Of course we must not confess to any partici- or at the cock-pit, and whose nights were given pation in such susceptibilities in our own case. It to court gambols, sensuality, and drunkenness ; was, however, a dark night, and a rough one too, while around him were minds teeming with prinwhen we obtained our first admission to the mys-ciples of the most solemn import, and with feelings terious book-room. By the aid of our lamp, we of the purest and loftiest aspiration. The king explored the matters of virtu which it contained; who hated the name of freedom, and who strained examined the dreaded cranium, and found the mark of the wound upon it, strictly as reported. But our attention was soon directed from the curiosities to the literature. The contents of the library we found in no very orderly condition, and not a few of its treasures had evidently suffered much from the state of uselessness to which the whole had been for so long a time reduced. The books were partly on shelves and tables, and partly in heaps upon the floor. Among them were many existing in all the venerableness of the times before the invention of the printing-press. One of these sets proved to be an illuminated vellum transcript of the epistles of Innocent III.-a pontiff who, in common with many of his race, during the middle

his feeble and tremulous nerves to curb the genius of a people determined to be free. The least manly of all the sovereigns of Europe, claiming to be honored as a demi-god by a nation animated with the stern thought, and full-grown feeling of manhood, beyond any other nation in Christendom, and perhaps beyond all the nations of Christendom collectively in that age.

In all this we see a large amount of the unnatural, and the source of much inevitable mischief. But this mischief fell with its greatest weight on religion, and on the consciences of devout men. Many of the restless spirits of the time-the gallants as they were called-manifested their inquietude beneath this uncongenial control;

and no scene of action being open to them, either | has been otherwise. But in our own earlier hisas soldiers abroad, or as inviting them to do some tory, the adherents of that system, while they fine thing at home, they many of them turned their claimed exemption in some things from the interattention to the newly-discovered regions of the ference of the civil power, in other, and in greater earth, and to plans of colonization. But your things, they have clung to the aids of that power gallants are not good at colonization. That sort with a marked tenacity. The history of English of enterprise demands something more rare than presbyterianism, accordingly, has been too much a courage, and something more valuable than ordi- struggle for ascendency, and too little a struggle nary worldly sagacity. Social virtue is nowhere for freedom. But ascendency, not based on right, tested as in infant settlements. Men who go upon must not be expected to work rightly. It is the such experiments need rooted principle, no less rule of the strongest, and it must be sustained by than stoutness of heart, and a spirit of patient mere strength, more than by principle, virtue or endurance. goodness.

In England, at the time to which we refer, it was on minds of this better order that the pressure in favor of emigration came with its greatest force. Elizabeth was the sovereign of a double empire. She claimed dominion over the soul as truly as over the body. By her ecclesiastical supremacy, she took under her jurisdiction, not only the things which belonged to Cæsar, but the things which belonged to God. Her prescriptions on the matter of religion, embraced all that her people should believe, and all that they should do. From her pleasure they were to receive every article of their creed, and every direction, even the minutest, in regard to worship. No pontiff had ever exercised a more rigorous domination in this respect, when seated in the midst of his cardinals, than was exercised by Elizabeth, when presiding in her assembly of ecclesiastical commissioners. The men who should deny the right of the pope to assume such powers might be burned before St. Peter's. The men who made the same denial in respect to Elizabeth were hanged at Tyburn. The queen, indeed, was head of the church in a more intimate degree than of the state, her ecclesiastical functionaries being generally much more manageable in relation to the one, than her parliaments were found to be in relation to the other. Her power in this department was greater than in any other; and by her proud Tudor temper it was guarded with proportionate solicitude, and exercised with proportionate freedom. In her view, to deny her right to rule the conscience of her subjects, was to deny her right to rule at all, and therefore treason, and an offence to be punished

as treason.

In stating thus much, we are not venturing upon ground open to debate. We merely refer to the unquestionable facts of history-facts deplored, we presume, by the modern churchman as sincerely as by the modern dissenter. The quarrel between Elizabeth and the puritans did not involve any direct impeachment of the ecclesiastical supremacy of the crown. The complaint of the puritan was, not that the queen had presumed to meddle with church affairs, but that she had not exercised her authority in such matters after the puritan fashion. It was deemed just that the sovereign, as such, should uphold sound theology, and scriptural discipline and worship; but the puritan claimed to be the judge as to the doctrine, regimen, or ritual, which should be so regarded. Hence conflict ensued between the royal-conscience and the subject-conscience. Opinions which the crown had ruled as being scriptural, the puritan denounced as erroneous; and regulations enjoined as seemly and devout by the one, were described as superstitious or profane by the other.

Even in the age of Elizabeth, however, there were men who had passed beyond the point adverted to-men who could draw the line, not with an infallible, but certainly with a vigorous hand between the secular and the spiritual-men who maintained that membership in a Christian church should be restricted to persons of Christian character; that the ministers of churches so constituted should be Christian men, approved as such by the persons to whom they minister; and that the worship and discipline of those voluntary assemblies should be determined wholly by themselves, and not at all by the secular power. In the reign of Mary, an act of state had set forth the whole people of England as constituting a popish church. On the accession of Elizabeth, an act of state had set forth the same nation as constituting a protestant church. In both cases the people were the same, and the priesthood for the most part remained the same. The bold men to whom we refer demurred to this manner of proceeding. The mixed multitude of people so spoken of, no doubt included many enlightened and sincere Christians, but could not, it was alleged, be described in any sober sense as being truly a church. In like manner, the ministry of such a church might include many devout men ; but the validity of a ministry so appointed must rest on moral grounds, and not in any degree on the state sanctions which might be urged in its favor.

These principles, simple and harmless as they may now seem, struck at the root of the ecclesiastical supremacy then claimed by the crown. Elizabeth saw that if such doctrines became prevalent, the one half of her empire, and the half which she especially valued, must pass to other hands. Opinions of this nature, accordingly, were in her view treasonable-treasonable in the worst sense. They embraced that very principle of divided allegiance which had caused Romanism to become so obnoxious. The catholic gave his conscience in religious matters to his particular church. This new sect of protestants gave their conscience immediately to God. In either case, the body and the outward only were reserved in allegiance to the throne, the soul and the inward were given to another. In the judgment of Elizabeth, the man holding such a doctrine could be only half a subject, and its natural tendency was to reduce every crowned head to the condition of being only half a sovereign.

Robert Brown, a clergymen by education and office, and a kinsman to the great Lord Treasurer Burleigh, distinguished himself, about the middle of the reign of Elizabeth, as the promulgator of such opinions. This divine was a personage of In the ecclesiastical history of England, the ready, earnest, and impassioned utterance, and in genius of presbyterianism has never proceeded his pulpit exhibitions was eminently popular. beyond this point. In Scotland, of late years, it | Crowds assembled to hear him at Cambridge, and

subsequently at Norwich, where he was bene- were issued to suppress these irregular proceedficed. As a preacher he was well known through ings, and many of the alleged delinquents were great part of England, and with his itinerant made to feel that these intimations of the royal and irregular services in that capacity, he con- pleasure were not so much empty threatening. nected the publication of his opinions from Two Brownist ministers, named John Copping the press. One seal of an apostle was not and Elias Thacker, were imprisoned in Bury St. wanting in his instance. In prosecuting his vo- Edmund's, on the charge of dispersing books opcation, he found that bonds and imprisonment posed to the ecclesiastical supremacy of the crown, commonly awaited him. These he bore through and acknowledging the authority of the queen in many years with the most dogged obstinacy, if civil matters only. Within our own memory, not with the most exemplary patience. It confinement in a jail, especially in some provinwas his boast that he had been committed to cial districts, has been connected with enough of more than thirty prisons, in some of which his the loathsome and the horrible. But of the mishand could not be seen at noonday. To escape eries of such a durance in the age of Elizabeth, we from this inconvenient usage, and from some more have little conception, except as suggested by severe treatment with which he was threatened, some of those painful descriptions which have Brown fled to Middleburgh in Zealand, and insti- reached us from the cells of such sufferers. Coptuted a church in that city after his own model. ping and Thacker might have obtained their libBut the pastor soon found occasion of disagree-erty on renouncing their errors, and promising ment with his new charge, and returning to Eng-conformity. During five long winters their wants land, he submitted to the authorities to which he and wretchedness were made to plead on the side had been so much opposed, and again became a beneficed clergyman. Brown lived to an extreme old age, but the last forty years of his life were the years of a sorry worldling, and his death is said to have been brought on by one of those fits of passion and self-will to which he was liable.

The story of this unhappy man is instructive. He was one of a class-a zealot in religion, with out being religious. His hatred of some real or supposed Christian abuses, was presumed to be evidence of his own Christian character; but while doing so much to mend the religion of other men, it was ere long to be manifest that he had no religion of his own. Passionate opposition to error is not the surest way to truth. Piety is self-government in its highest form. It is the Christian temper which must regenerate Christian institutions.

It was natural that the men who embraced the principles once avowed by this apostate should be solicitous not to be called by his name. But their enemies were no less solicitous to fasten that reproach upon them. To call them Brownists, was to identify them with the extravagant, the fickle, and the base in the career of Robert Brown. What theologian, or what philosopher even, could be expected to forego so felicitous an occasion of using a nickname. The principles of the said Brown were one thing, and the character of the man another. But how much was to be gained by not seeming to perceive that distinction? The learned and the vulgar-philosophy and Billingsgate-are found, on such occasions, to possess much more in common than is commonly supposed.

of submission, but though examined once and again, they wavered not. At length they were apprised that their life would be the cost of their further contumacy. On the 4th of June, 1583, Thacker was led to the place of execution. The books which he had been convicted of dispersing were burned in his presence, and the injured man gave noble proof that his religious principles were stronger than his fear of death. Two days afterwards, Copping was conducted to the same spot, and having witnessed the same proceedings, died with the same martyr firmness. It is something to meet death as the soldier meets it, when multitudes share in the common peril; it is more to submit to it in the comparative solitariness of martyrdom, when nothing can come from man except the influence of distant sympathy or adiniration; but these sufferers bade adieu to earth amidst circumstances which left them no sustaining power, beside their simple hope of heaven. The scattered and bleeding remnant who would honor their memory, were a people despised as much as they were wronged. The heart is formed to crave a sympathetic power from other hearts, and can be strong without it only as strength shall come to it from a much higher source. Man becomes superior to the terrors of this world, in such circumstances, only as he can take firm hold on a better.

The houses of persons suspected of embracing the opinions professed by these men were often rigorously searched. The officers employed on those occasions frequently ill-treated even the women and the children of such families, and, under various pretences, often added the spoiling of their goods to insult and oppression. In 1592, But whatever may have been the case with fifty-six men of this sect were apprehended while their persecutors, the conscientious men holding the holding a secret assembly for religious worship in principles which Brown had abandoned, were phi- a large room in the parish of Islington. The place losophers enough not to allow themselves to be of meeting was that in which the persecuted proscared from great truths by the accident of an in-testants had often worshipped during the reign of felicitous association. They held their secret as- Queen Mary. These persons were committed to semblies. They possessed a private printing- the dungeon in Newgate, the Fleet, Bridewell, press, and issued tracts and treatises, sometimes and other prisons in the metropolis. One of their grave and sometimes satirical, impugning the number states that their persecutors "would alorder of things in the established church, and in- low them neither meat, drink, fire nor lodging, culcating their own widely different views on such nor suffer any, whose hearts the Lord would stir subjects. In some of these pieces the language up for their relief, to have any access to them; employed was not always the softest which purposing, belike, to imprison them to death, as might have been chosen. But men perishing they have done seventeen or eighteen others, in under the weight of hard blows, may be excused the same noisome jails, within these six years." if they sometimes use hard words. Proclamations Most of these men were needy persons, with fami

lies dependent for subsistence on their industry. | summoned from their cells. All that had taken Their offence was declared to be unbailable, place on the preceding day proved to be a mockery. and according to the bad usage of those times, a It was not true that the bitterness of death had jail delivery, in place of coming at brief and cer- passed. They had again to gather up the strength tain intervals, as with us, was an event which the of nature which might enable them to meet that government managed to evade in particular cases, stroke from the hands of a public executioner, and so as to punish, by means of imprisonment, to any thus, mentally at least, it was their hard lot to unextent, denying to the imprisoned their right to an dergo the penalty of a double dissolution. They open, a legal, and a speedy trial. Many, accord- were now conveyed to the same spot with more ingly, died in prison, and the prayer of the men secrecy, and were there disposed of in the manner who had been apprehended at Islington was in which society has been wont to dispose of ma"We crave for all of us but the liberty either to rauders and cut-throats. die openly or to live openly, in the land of our nativity; if we deserve death, it beseemeth the majesty of justice not to see us closely murdered, yea, starved to death with hunger and cold, and stifled in loathsome dungeons; if we be guiltless, we crave but the benefit of our innocence, that we may have peace to serve our God and our prince, in the place of the sepulchres of our fathers."

Among the persons apprehended in 1592, were Henry Barrow and John Greenwood. In the records of the proceedings against these recusants, the former is described as "gentleman," the latter as "clerk." Barrow was the author of a petition to parliament on behalf of himself and his suffering brethren, from which the above extracts are taken. The indictment against Barrow and Greenwood charged them with holding and promulgating opinions which impugned the queen's supremacy; with forming churches, and conducting religious worship contrary to law; and with having indulged in libellous expressions concerning some eminent persous. On these grounds sentence of death was passed on them; and in pursuance of that sentence, they were both conveyed from Newgate to Tyburn.

The case of John Penry was similar to that of Barrow and Greenwood, but, in some respects, is a still more affecting illustration of the tyranny of the times. Penry was a native of Wales. He had studied at Cambridge, and had taken his degree at Oxford. He was a young man of considerable scholarship, of sincere and fervent piety, and in the warmth of his religious zeal he ventured to publish a treatise, in which he complained, with some vehemence, of the pride, and secularity, and popishness of the state of things in respect to religion, with which the English nation appeared to be so well content. A warrant was issued for his apprehension, which he eluded, by seeking an asylum in Scotland. But returning to London soon after the execution of Barrow and Greenwood, he was speedily apprehended; and he appears to have foreseen from that moment all that would follow. Lord Chief Justice Popham passed sentence of death upon him, on the ground of certain papers found in his possession, which were construed as seditious. It was pleaded by the accused that no public use had ever been made of those papers, that some of them were not his own, and had not even been more than very slightly examined by him. But defence was vain. He was admonished that his case admitted of no plea that could avail him. From his prison Penry addressed protestation to the lord-treasurer, containing the following characteristic passages:

The rope was fastened to the beam and placed about their necks, and in that state they were allowed for a few moments to address the people collected around them. Those moments they employed in expressing their loyalty to the queen, their submission to the civil government of their country, and their sorrow if they had spoken with "I am a poor young man, bred and born in the irreverence or with improper freedom of any man. mountains of Wales. I am the first, since the They reiterated their faith in the doctrines on ac- last springing of the gospel in this latter age, that count of which they were about to suffer death, but publicly labored to have the blessed seed thereof entreated the people to embrace those opinions only sown in those barren mountains. I have often as they should appear to be the certain teaching of rejoiced before my God, as he knoweth, that I had Holy Scripture. When they had prayed for the the favor to be born and live under her majesty for queen, their country, and all their enemies and the promoting of this work. And being now to persecutors, and were about to close their eyes on end my days before I am come to the one-half of the world, the proceedings were suddenly stayed, my years in the likely course of nature, I leave and it was announced that her majesty had sent a the success of my labors unto such of my countryreprieve. The revulsion of feeling which ensued men as the Lord is to raise after me. An enemy may be imagined. Consciousness of life suddenly unto any good order or policy, either in church or flowed back to hearts from which it seemed to commonwealth, was I never. All good learning have passed away, and men as good as dead again and knowledge of the arts and tongues I labored began to live. The breathless people shared in to attain unto, and to promote unto the uttermost this reflux of emotion. The condemned men of my power. Whatsoever I wrote in religion, gave expression to their joy as became them-the the same I did simply for no other end than the people did so in loud acclamations; and, as the bringing of God's truth to light. I never did anyvictims were re-conducted from the suburbs of the thing in this cause (Lord, thou art witness!) for metropolis to Newgate, the populace in the lanes contention, vain-glory, or to draw disciples after and streets, and from the windows of the houses, me, or to be accounted singular. Whatsoever I hailed their return as a happy and righteous deliv- wrote or held beside the warrant of the written erance. On that day, Barrow sent a statement of word, I have always warned all men to leave. these occurrences to a distinguished relative, having And wherein I saw that I had erred myself, I have, access to Elizabeth, pleading that, as his loyalty as all this land doth now know, confessed my could no longer be doubtful, he might be set at ignorance. Far be it that either the saving of an liberty, or at least be removed from the "loath-earthly life, the regard which in nature I ought to some jayle" of Newgate. But early on the fol- have to the desolate outward state of a poor friendlowing morning the two prisoners were again less widow, and four poor fatherless infants which

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »