compensates for the ruggedness of the style; and induces us to borrow the details from the correspondence of the period, rather than attempt any narrative of our own. In thus availing ourselves of the testimony of those who lived at the very epoch, and recorded what they witnessed, with all the force and animation of contemporary truth, we become, as it were, personally acquainted with the familiar names of past times, and seem to be again conversing with those who have slept for ages in the silent dust. In a letter to Mr. Trumbull, Feb. 15, 1609, Mr. Beaulieu writes: "The Lady Arabella, who, as you know, was not long ago censured for having, without the King's privity, entertained a notion of marriage, was again, within these few days, deprehended in the like treaty with my Lord of Beauchamp's second son, and both were called, and examined yesterday at the court, about it. What the matter will prove, I know not; but these affectations of marriage in her, do give some advantage to the world, of impairing the reputation of her constant and virtuous disposition." In the following year, Sir Dudley Carleton thus communicates with Sir R. Winwood :— "The great match, which was lately stolen betwixt the Lady Arabella and young Beauchamp, provides them both of safe lodgings; the Lady close prisoner at Sir Thomas Parry's house, at Lambeth; and her husband in the Tower. Melvin, the poetical minister, welcomed him thither, with this distich Communis tecum mihi causa est carceris: Ara- • Winw. Mem. III. 119. ↑ Ibid. 201. And again, in about eleven months afterwards, Sir Ralph Winwood received from Mr. John More a full narrative of the escape of Mr. Seymour and the Lady Arabella. "The first of this month," writes Mr. More, "by the ordinary of Middleburg, I sent your lordship some advertisements of small importance, and that which I now send is, for the most part, of no better stuff. The quick winged and various fame of my Lady Arabella's and Mr. Seymour's flight will far outstrip the passage of this letter; yet in the certain manner of their escape, it may perhaps, in some points, clear the obscurity of forerunning bruits. On Monday last, in the afternoon, my Lady Arabella, lying at Mr. Conyers's* house, near Highgate, having induced her keepers and attendants into security by the fair show of conformity, and willingness to go on her journey towards Durham, which the next day she must have done, and in the meantime disguising herself, by drawing a pair of great Frenchfashioned hose over her petticoats, putting on a man's doublet, a man-like peruke with long locks over her hair, a black hat, black cloak, russet boots with red tops, and a rapier by her side, walked forth between three and four of the clock with Markham. After they had gone afoot a mile and a half, to a sorry inn, where Crompton attended with horses, she grew very sick and faint, so as the ostler that held the stirrup said, that gentleman would hardly hold out to London; yet being set on a good gelding, astride in an unwonted fashion, the stirring of the horse brought blood enough into her face, and so she rid on towards Blackwall; where, arriving about six o'clock, finding there in a readiness two men, a gentlewoman, and a chambermaid, with one boat full of Mr. In my Lord Salisbury's letter to Mr. Trumbull, it is Sir Jame Croft's house. Seymour's and her trunks, and another boat for their persons, they hasted from thence towards Woolwich. Being come so far, they bade the watermen row on to Gravesend. There the watermen were desirous to land, but for a double freight were contented to go on to Lee, yet, being almost tired by the way, they were fain to lie still at Tilbury, whilst the rowers went a-land to refresh themselves. Then they proceeded to Lee, and by that time the day appeared, and they discovered a ship at anchor a mile beyond them, which was the French barque that waited for them. Here the lady would have lain at anchor, expecting Mr. Seymour, but, through the impor tunity of her followers, they forthwith hoisted sail seaward. In the meanwhile, Mr. Seymour, with a peruke and beard of black hair, and in a tawny cloth suit, walked alone without suspicion from his lodging, out of the great west door of the Tower, following a cart that had brought him billets. From thence, he walked along by the Tower wharf, by the warders of the south gate, and so to the iron gate, where Rodney was ready with oars for to receive him. "When they came to Lee, and found that the French ship was gone, the billows rising high, they hired a fisherman for twenty shillings to set them aboard a certain ship that they saw under sail. That ship they found not to be it they looked for, so they made forward to the next under sail, which was a ship of Newcastle. This, with much ado, they hired for forty pounds to carry him to Calais; but whether the collier did perform his bargain or no, is not as yet here known. "On Tuesday, in the afternoon, my Lord Treasurer being advertised that the Lady Arabella had made an escape, sent forthwith to the Lieutenant of the Tower, to set straight guard over Mr. Seymour, which he, after his yare manner, “would thoroughly do, that he would;" but coming to the prisoner's lodgings, he found, to his great amazement, that he was gone from thence one whole day before. "I may not omit in this relation to insert the simple part of two silly persons; the one called Tom Barber, servant to Mr. Seymour, who (believing his master spake bona fide) did, according to his instructions, tell every one that came to inquire for his master, that he was newly betaken to his rest, being much troubled with the tooth-ache; and, when the matter was discovered, did seriously persist to persuade Mr. Lieutenant that he was gone to lie a night with his wife, and would surely return thither of himself again; the other, a minister's wife, attending the lady, who, seeing her mistress disguise herself, and slip away, was truly persuaded that she intended but to make a private visit to her husband, and did duly attend her return at the time appointed. "Now, the king and the lords being much disturbed with this unexpected accident, my Lord Treasurer sent orders to a pinnace that lay at the Downs to put presently to sea-first to Calais road, and then to scour up the coast, towards Dunkirk. This pinnace, spying the aforesaid French bark, which lay lingering for Mr. Seymour, made to her, which thereupon offered to fly towards Calais, and endured thirteen shot of the pinnace before she would strike. In this bark is the lady taken, with her followers, and brought back towards the Tower, not so sorry for her own restraint, as she would be glad if Mr. Seymour might escape, whose welfare she protesteth to affect much more than her own. "In this passionate hurry here was a proclamation, first conceived in very bitter terms, but, by my Lord Treasurer's moderation, seasoned at the print, as nowhere you find it. There are likewise three letters dispatched in haste, written by Sir Thomas Lake, to the King and Queen Regent of France, and to the Archdukes, all written with harsher ink than now, if they were to do (I presume) they should be, especially that to the Archdukes, which did seem to presuppose their course to tend that way; and all three describing the offence in black colours, and pressing their sending back without delay. Indeed, the general belief was, that they intended to settle themselves in Brabant, and that under the favour of the Popish faction; but now I rather think they will be most pitied by the Puritans, and that their course did wholly tend to France. And though for the former, I had only mine own corrigible imagination, yet for the latter many pregnant reasons do occur: as, that the ship that did attend them was French; the place that Mr. Seymour made for was Calais; the man that made their perukes was a French clockmaker, who is fled with them; and in the ship is said to be found a French post, with letters from the Ambassador." The recaptured lady was, thenceforward, doomed to waste the remnant of her days in the solitude of impri sonment: "Never," (we again quote from the pages of the Novelist,) “never did human being in a world of woe strive with more patient perseverance for contentment with his lot than did poor Arabella Seymour. She called to her and all the resources of an humble and a faithful spirit. She trusted in God, she resigned herself to his will, she tried to bear the chastening hand with cheerfulness; but it was in vain she did so. Hours, days, weeks passed—the heavy hours, days, weeks of imprisonment, without one hope coming to lighten the burden or assuage the pangs At first she consoled herself with the knowledge that Seymour was safe beyond the power of the vain tyrant who kept her within those walls; but she soon found that even that consolation, when she indulged in it, produced |