runs thus:" Dere mother, give me but as manie blessings and pardons as I shall make faults, and then you make happie your most obedient sonne, G. Buckingham." The letters of Elizabeth Bourchier, the second Earl of Denbigh's third wife, are very interesting, and of a loving nature, as the following examples will show: "" Deare, sweet joy, here comes many frightfull newes to towne. I heare the king has taken Coventrye, and that St John Hoptone has Plimouth, and thatt hee has seventy thousand men, and that the king has store of forces in Yorkshier. S' John Bowsier is taken prisoner in Yorke. I heare the king will come to towne, and will doe strange cruelties, as burning the town. Oh, my hart, soe you were safe I did not carre iff I wear dead. Itt is a griefe to mee you wowld leave mee. You cannott imagine whatt I wowld give to see you. Iff I had you, to gain ten thousand worlds you should not goe from mee. Oh, dear God! what wowlde I give to see you. For God's sake, ritt (write) to mee and come as soune as may be. Stay not from your dutifull and obedientt wife and humble servant,

E. Fielding." "In almost all of this loving lady's letters," remarks Mr. Knowles, "there is at least one postscript, with occasionally a note added in some corner. In the present, turning the letter upside down, I find the exclamationDear, how thy Bety loves thee! From an interesting postscript to the same letter, it appears that the writer's sympathy with the cause in which her husband was enlisted was not strong "Heare is a booke in print," she writes, "about the duke, your unkell. Itt troubles me, and I beleeve will doe the like to you.... Oh, without doubt, God will lett just judgments fall on them that publish itt, for itt [w]rongs the dead and the innocent. Itt says both the duke and the king poysned King James. The Parliment is sayd to defend itt, and though thay deny the putting of itt forth, yett thay defend itt. Your good grandmother is in the booke. Soo (so) Good (God) blese you and send you all hapinese, and, for your sake, their armye; ells (else) they doe nott deserve my prayers nor noe bodys ells. If my letter bee broken open att the Comitty, I care nott, for your frind's honners is equall with my owne, and itt is a damnable booke. Wode (would) itt had been in print befoar you went. The king may have faults, but

notte like the publishing this vilinous pamphlett."

"Dear hart, I am resolved not to mise [miss] any ocation that I can have to present my humble dutye to y' los [lordship]. I hoape you will faver mee why' deare leters as often as y° cann, for truely my lord you put y' selfe upon soe many hasards y' I can never bee satisfied with hearing from you, for I ame in perpetuall feare of you, and soe are all y' frinds. Dear joy, have a care of thy selfe, for in thee lyes all my hapines, and nothing is so great a greife to me as to be bar[r]ed from seing you and having y' company." Addressed to LORD DENBIGH "att Stafforde."

Thus

August 24 (1644).-" having noe more to say, I take leave desiring you to beleve that I will allways approve myselfe to be yours ever to com'and soe fare as it may stand with God's glory and your good. My name I need not tell you. Farwell, my dear hart. You may send to me by my freind that brings you this. If I had but your nam[e] in a bit of paper from your one [own] hand with aswerance [assurance] of your health, it would bee welcom to mee. Good night, my dear."

July 2, 1644.-“ Dear joy, I long extreamly to see you, for I love you wth an intier afection. I showld have been glade to have been wth you ye 8th of July, because itt is our weding day, but if itt bee not my good fortune to obtaine y1 hapines, my la: Su: Hambleton [Hamilton] and I will have three chery pies and drinke y' health, and I will thinke of you all day long, and wishe my selfe wth you. If God bleses mee wth life I intend to doe this, and I desir[e] to live cheifly becaus I love thee and to injoy thy dear company. Elce this world is so miserable y' I showld n' car[e] to live in itt."

As a pendant to the last extract, we make the following, in its way equally characteristic :

:

"Pray, sweet heart, doe mee ye faver if musk millions bee in season, as I hear they are, as to send mee some, for I have a great minde to eat som[e]. And pray, my lord, give Harry Hill order to by mee some combs, boxe and ivory ons [ones], for I want some extreamly. And pray get some body, if it bee to much troble to you, as I know itt must needs, to by mee a tafaty hoode, and a curle one, and two maskes for mee and to [two] for my la: S: Hambleton, and each of us a blacke scarfe either laced or plaine as you please, and either

other place, was killed my Lord Hollis's eldest son by a groom which had married my Lord Cullies' daughter, which indignity he thought to have avenged; and also in some other place was one of the Life Guard killed in a duel by one of his fellows."

Amongst a number of poetical transcripts in the possession of Col. Towneley at Towneley Hall, Burnley, has been discovered Chesterfield's Epitaph on Queen Caroline, A.D. 1737, to which Lord Stanhope alludes in his History of England, in the following passage:-"She [the Queen] She [the Queen] was censured as implacable in her hatred even to her dying moments, as refusing her pardon to her son, who, it was added, had sent humbly to beseech her blessing. 'And unforgiving, unforgiven died!' cries Chesterfield in some powerful lines which were circulated at the time, but which I have not been able to recover." They are entitled, "Epitaph on Queen Caroline, Consort to George II., who died Nov. 20th, 1737," and are as follows:

:

Here lies unpity'd both by Church and State
The subject of their flattery and hate,
Flattered by those on whom her favor flowed,
Hated for favours impiously bestowed.
She ever aimed the Churchmen to betray,
In hopes to share the [ir] arbitrary sway,
In Tindall's and in Hoadeley's paths she trod,
A hypocrite in all but disbelief in God.
Promoted luxury, encouraged vice,
Herself a slave to sordid avarice.

True friendship's tender love ne'er touch'd her heart,
Falsehood appeared, in vain disguised by art.
Fawning and haughty, when familiar rude,
And never gracious seemed but to delude.
Inquisitive in trifling mean affairs,
Heedless of public good and orphan's tears;
To her own offspring mercy she denied,
And unforgiving, unforgiven died.

66

At Emmanuel College, Cambridge, is preserved Bennet's Register of the College, a work compiled from its earliest records and probably other sources, some of which are no longer in existence. It forms two small folio volumes, closely written upon paper, and bound in rough calf. It bears marks of great industry in its execution, and was compiled (or, more probably, it being a very laborious work, brought to a conclusion), by William Bennet, Fellow of the College, in 1773. He became Bishop of Cork in 1790, and of Cloyne in 1794." At p. 72 of this work is found "Manners of the University in 1534," beginning with the following curious passage::

"Upon Shroffe Sunday at night there were 27 or 30 getters abroad from their Colleges; and that night they coursed the V.-Chancellor's Depute, Dr. Buckmaster, yn at the King's Hall Gate, and

6

when he had gotten in, he called them knaves, and they made answer, if they had him without they would make him a knave. The same night was Parson Yaxley drinking at the Angell untill nine o'clock, and in going then about the back door of Burdon Hostel, he lost his gown and his tippet; and the next night there was stripes given betwixt Mr. Alyson of the King's Hall and Symson, and either hurt the other with daggers very sore. The Sunday in the Cleansing week [week before Passion week] the warden of the Grey Freyers, Bachelor Disse, preached, and after the prayers he was so abashed and astonied, that he could neither say it by harte, nor rede it on his paper, and so he was faine to come down from the pulpit with this protestation, That he was never in that takinge before.' St. Deny's night they came to the Vice-Chancellor three or fourscore getters abroad, knocking, and bid the company, 'Come out, knavys, cowards and heretics;' whereupon the company drove them away with stones and staves, and they cried fyre, to fyre the gates, and they called a Congregation in this manner:-' Congregatio Regentium tantum in Scholis publicis, cum gladiis et fustibus; that night also, between seven and eight, they got Mr. Polley of Christ's College out of the house by a train [device] and so bete him sore and pulled off his hair; and Mr. Goldston, of Peter House, for fear leapt over the College wall and so came naked to Trumpington [a village some two miles distant!]; for he thought, verily, when he heard the noise, that the outcry had risen to destroy the University." These curious specimens of academic morals, we are told, are taken from a kind of journal which seems to have been kept by one of the University Bedels. The following is a copy of a curious letter to one of the masters of the College, Dr. Sancroft (uncle of the Archbishop), from the Earl of Westmoreland [Mildmay Fane], dated "Apthorpe, 1633;" "Master, For so I must still call you, as being a member of your College still, though discontinuance perhaps hath wiped my name out of your buttery tables, or raz'd it quite out of your manciple's books; yet being to wayte upon his majestie, who, I hear, intends very shortly to grace our University with his presence, I crave the favour of a second admittance into your Colledge for that time; for I would be loth to lodge in any other then where I suckt my first milk, and where by descent my love and

At page 253 of the work to which we have been alluding, there is a very singular account of a prophecy, made by John Sadler, fellow of Emmanuel, and afterwards master of Magdalene, and town clerk of the City of London-a somewhat curious conjunction of offices, by the way. Being ejected from the mastership at the Restoration, he retired iuto Dorsetshire, where Cuthbert Bound, minister of Warmwell, copied down the following prophecy, as uttered by him; from the dictation, he alleged, of a spirit seen by himself in the room at the time :

"The matter in the paper was as follows. That there would die in the City of London, so many thousand: I have forgot the number and time, tho' both were mentioned. That the City would be burnt down, great part of it, and that St. Paul's would tumble down, as if beaten down by great guns. That we should have three sea-fights with the Dutch, and that there would be three blazing stars, the last of them very terrible to behold. That afterwards there would come three small ships to land, to the west of Weymouth, that would put all England into an uproar, but it would end in nothing. That in the year 1688 there would come to pass such a thing in the kingdom, that all the world would take notice of. That I should live to see all those things come to pass, but that he and his man (then present) should die. And farther, that some wonderful thing would happen afterwards, which he was not to make known. That he should be able to go abroad next day, and that there would come three persons to see him, one from Ireland, one from Jersey, and his brother Bingham; who did certainly come, as he had told us, and I saw him walking early the next morning in his ground. Upon the report of this, his man, Thomas Grey, and myself, were sent for before the Deputy Lieutenant of the county, and made affidavit of the truth of this, before Colonel Coker, Colonel Giles Strangeways and others, many of whom are yet alive, within three or four days after he told it me.-Signed, CUTHBERT BOUND."

At St. Catherine's College, Cambridge, there is an old admission book in existence a small oblong volume-which professes to begin with the year 1642. In this the names of several remarkable persons are mentioned as having been admitted. In 1671, John Beversham, pensioner, and his brother Benjamin, in 1675. They were sons of Dr. James Beversham, of Keltishall, and nephews of Sir William Beversham. After being committed to prison, by Dr. Eachard, master of the College, acting as Vice-Chancellor, for the offence of robbing a butcher of six pounds on the highway, they were, at the ensuing assizes, sentenced to death. King Charles the Second, however, sent his order (15th March, 1681) to the Sheriff to stay execution, and they were finally released, James surviving, it is believed, to succeed to the baronetcy. Under February, 1676, is the entrance of John Cutts, fellow-commoner, afterwards known in history as the "Lord Cutts," of Marlborough's times. Under April 20th, in the same year, is the admission of William Wotton, as pensioner; he was but nine years and eight months old when entered, and took his degree when thirteen years old. Monk, in his Life of Bentley, says that Dr. Eachard has made this entry against his admission, "Vix decem annorum, nec Hammondo nec Grotio secundus;" this note, however, is now nowhere to be found. Wotton was the "Vice-Chancellor's Senior Optime," on taking his degree (an honorary position given to three of the persons who graduated at the same time as the first, or Senior Wrangler, and who were selected by the Vice-Chancellor, and the Senior and Junior Proctor, respectively, their names appearing in the list before that of the person who, in reality, was the Second Wrangler; this usage ended about 1790).* Bentley, who was afterwards Wotton's

*This custom will not appear quite so unaccountable, when we mention that until 1753 Wranglers and Senior Optimes were included in one class.