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did not gain upon her in regard to the design upon which he was sent. On the Sunday evening, which was the last she was to spend in this world, she wrote a letter in the Greek tongue, as some say on the blank leaves at the end of a Testament in the same language, which she bequeathed as a legacy to her sister the Lady Catherine. The fatal morning being come, the Lord Guilford earnestly desired the officers that he might take his last farewell of her. Which though they willingly permitted, yet upon notice she advised the contrary, assuring him that such a meeting would rather add to his afflictions, than increase that quiet wherewith they had possessed their souls for the stroke of death. All she could do was to give him a farewell out of a window as he passed toward the place of his dissolution, which he suffered on the scaffold on Tower Hill with much Christian meekness. His dead body being laid in a car, and his head wrapped up in a linen cloth, were carried to the chapel within the Tower, in the way to which they were to pass under the window of the Lady Jane; which sad spectacle she likewise beheld, but of her own accord, and not either by accident, or as some, without any colour of truth, have insinuated, by design, and with a view to increase the weight of her afflictions. About an hour after the death

of her husband, she was led out by the lieutenant to the scaffold that was prepared upon the green over against the White Tower. It is said that the court had once taken a resolution to have her beheaded on the same scaffold with her husband; but considering how much they were both pitied, and how generally Lady Jane was beloved, it was determined, to prevent any commotions, that this execution should be performed within the Tower. She was attended to and upon the scaffold by Dr. Feckenham, taking leave of whom she said, "God will abundantly requite you for your humanity to me, though your discourses have shaken me more than all the terrors of my approaching death." She next addressed herself to the spectators in a plain and short speech. Then kneeling down she said the Miserere in English, after which she stood up, and gave her women, Mrs. Elizabeth Tilney and Mrs. Helen, her gloves and her handkerchief; and to the Lieutenant of the Tower, whom Heylin calls Sir John Gage, but Holinshed, Bridges, her prayer-book. When she untied her gown, the executioner offered to assist her, but she desired him to let her alone; and turning to her women, they undressed, and gave her a handkerchief to bind about her eyes. The executioner kneeling, desired her pardon; to which she answered, "Most willingly." He

desired her to stand upon the straw, which, bringing her within sight of the block, she said, "I pray despatch me quickly;" adding presently after, "Will you take it off before I lay me down?" the executioner said, "No, madam." Upon this, the handkerchief being bound close over her eyes, she began to feel for the block, to which she was guided by one of the spectators; when she felt it, she stretched herself forward and said, "Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit," and immediately, at one stroke, her head was divided from her body. Her fate was universally deplored, even by those who were best affected to Queen Mary. On the 23rd of the same month, the father of Lady Jane, Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk, lost his head upon Tower Hill.

VAN BERGHEN AND HIS WIFE.-The second instance was an ordinary case of felony and murder, but it created a terrible sensation at the time. The criminals, Michael Van Berghen, and Catherine Van Berghen, his wife, were natives of Holland, who, having settled in England, kept a public house in East Smithfield in 1700: one Geraldius Dromelius acted as their servant. Oliver Norris, Esq., a country gentleman, who lodged at an inn near Aldgate, went by chance

into the house of Van Berghen, about eight o'clock in the evening, and continued to drink there till about eleven. Finding himself rather intoxicated, he desired the maid servant to call a coach to carry him home. As she was going to do so, her mistress whispered her, and bid her return in a little time, and say that a coach was not to be procured. These directions being observed, Norris, on the maid's return, resolved to go without a coach, and accordingly took his leave of the family; but he had not gone far before he discovered that he had been robbed of a purse containing a sum of money; whereupon he returned, and charged Van Berghen and his wife with having been guilty of the robbery. This they positively denied, and threatened to turn him out of the house; but he refused to go, and resolutely went into an apartment where the cloth was laid for supper. Dromelius entered the room, and treating Mr. Norris in a rude manner, the latter resented the insult, and at length a quarrel ensued. At this juncture, Van Berghen seized a poker, with which he fractured Mr. Norris's skull, and in the meantime Dromelius stabbed him in different parts of the body; Mrs. Van Berghen being present during the perpetration of the deed. When Mr. Norris was dead, they completely stripped him, and then Van Berghen

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and Dromelius carried the body, and threw it into a ditch which communicated with the Thames; and in the mean time Mrs. Van Berghen washed the blood from the floor of the room. clothes were put up in a hamper, and committed to the care of Dromelius, who hired a boat, and carried them over to Rotherhithe, where he employed the waterman to carry the hamper to lodgings which he had taken, and in which he proposed to remain until he could find a favourable opportunity of embarking for Holland. The next morning, at low water, the body of a man was found, and several of the neighbours went to take a view of it, and endeavoured to try if they could trace any blood to the place where the murder might have been committed; but not succeeding in this, some of them who were up at a very early hour, recollected that they had seen Van Berghen and Dromelius coming almost from the spot where the body was found; and remarked that a light had been carried backwards and forwards in Van Berghen's house. Upon this the house was searched, but no discovery ensued, except that a little blood was found behind the door of a room, which appeared to have been lately mopped. Inquiry was made after Dromelius, but Van Berghen and his wife would give no other account than that he had left their service:

VOL. I.

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