army; and remained in service on the borders for some months after. On the 24th of April, 1560, the Order of the Garter was conferred on him, and, in the summer of 1565, he was appointed Lord Lieutenant of the counties of York, Nottingham, and Derby. He exercised the office of High Steward of England at the arraignment of the Duke of Norfolk, and succeeded that nobleman in the office of Earl Marshal. In January 1568-9, the Queen of Scots was committed to his custody, and from that remarkable period, till his death, the most material circumstances of his history will be found in the uninterrupted series of letters between him and his friends, which composes the second volume. In perpetual danger from the suspicions of one Princess and the hatred of another; devoted to a service which it is to be hoped his heart did not approve; vexed by the jealousy and rapacity of an unreasonable wife, and by the excesses and quarrels of his sons, from whom he is obliged to withdraw that authoritative attention the whole of which was required by his charge; we shall view this nobleman, through the long space of fifteen years, relinquishing that splendour of public situation, and those blandishments of domestic life, which his exalted rank and vast wealth might have commanded, to become an instrument to the worst of tyrants, for the execution of the worst of tyrannies. Be it remembered, however, in apology for him, that he lived in a time when obedience to the will of the monarch was considered as the crown of public virtue when man, always the creature of prejudice, instead of disturbing the repose of society with his theory of natural liberty, erred, with equal absurdity, but less danger, in the practice of unconditional submission.

He had by his first wife, Gertrude, daughter of Thomas Manners, first Earl of Rutland of that family, four sons and three daughters. Francis, Lord Talbot, who married

Anne, the daughter of William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, and died without issue in 1582; Gilbert; Henry, who had by his wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir William Reyner, of Overton Longvile in Huntingdonshire, and widow of Thomas Holcroft, two daughters (Gertrude, married to Robert Pierrepoint, afterwards Earl of Kingston; and Mary, to Sir William Armine, of Osgodby in Lincolnshire); Edward, who married Joan, eldest daughter and coheir of Cuthbert, the last Lord Ogle, and died childless, in 1617. The daughters were, Catherine, wife of Henry Herbert, Earl of Pembroke; Mary, married to Sir George Savile, of Barrowby, in Lincolnshire; and Grace, to Henry Cavendish, eldest son of Sir William Cavendish.

The Earl's second wife, Elizabeth, by whom he had no children, was too remarkable a character to be slightly mentioned. She was a daughter and coheir to John Hardwick, of Hardwick in Derbyshire, and had been already thrice married; to Robert Barley, of Barley in that county; to Sir William Cavendish, who s mentioned above; and to Sir William St. Lo, Captain of the Guard to Queen Elizabeth. She prevailed on the first of these gentlemen, who died without issue, to settle his estate on her and her heirs, who were abundantly produced from her second marriage: her third husband, who was very rich, was led by her persuasions to make a similar disposition of his fortune, to the utter prejudice of his daughters by a former wife; and now, unsated with the wealth and the caresses of three husbands, she finished her conquests by marrying the Earl of Shrewsbury, the richest and most powerful Peer of his time. "Him she brought" (says a right reverend author, who thought it became him to speak kindly of her because he had preached her great grandson's funeral sermon)" to terms of the greatest honour "to and advantage to herself and her children; for he not

only yielded to a considerable jointure, but to an union of families, &c." In other words, she drew the Earl into the same disgraceful and imprudent concessions which she had procured from his unlucky predecessors; and, partly by entreaties, partly by threats, induced him to sacrifice, in a great measure, the fortune, interest, and happiness, of himself and his family, to the aggrandizement of her children by Sir William Cavendish. To sum up her character with the brevity here required -she was a woman of a masculine understanding and conduct; proud, furious, selfish, and unfeeling. She was a builder, a buyer and seller of estates, a moneylender, a farmer, and a merchant of lead, coals, and timber when disengaged from these employments, she intrigued alternately with Elizabeth and Mary, always to the prejudice and terror of her husband. She lived to a great old age, continually flattered, but seldom deceived, and died in 1607, immensely rich, and without a friend.

The Earl was withdrawn by death from these complicated plagues on the 18th of November, 1590, and lies buried at Sheffield, under a grand monument, with a Latin epitaph, stating at great length the principal occurrences of his life. Both the tomb and the inscription were, as nearly as might be, completed by himself. He foretold, as one of Dugdale's MSS. in the College of Arms informs us, that his heirs would neglect to make that small addition which necessarily fell to their charge; and it turned out so, for the space which should contain the date of his death remains a blank to this day.

Gilbert, the seventh Earl, came into public life when the English nation was rapidly emerging from that simplicity of manners to which it had so long been confined by bigotry and war. We shall accordingly observe in his character certain amiable features, and

certain faults, which were equally unknown to his ancestors. We shall find him the accomplished courtier, and well educated gentleman, occasionally relapsing into the pomp and the ferocity of an ancient Baron. The story of his public life lies within a narrow compass, for he was never called to any high office of the state, though apparently better qualified than any of his predecessors of whom we have been treating. His case in this respect was peculiarly hard; for, though it should seem that Elizabeth passed him over upon some suspicion of his disaffection to her, yet in the next reign he appears to have been thrust aside as one of the old followers of her Court. He was summoned to parliament as a Baron a few months before his father's death; was installed a Knight of the Garter on the 20th of June, 1592; in 1596, went Ambassador to France to ratify the treaty of alliance with Henry the Great; and was appointed by James, at his accession, Chief Justice of the Forests North of Trent. He married Mary, third daughter of Sir William Cavendish, a lady who seems to have inherited no small portion of her mother's extraordinary disposition, as will be fully proved by the following curious anecdote, which was taken from a MS. in the possession of the Rev. Sir Richard Kaye, late Dean of Lincoln, entitled "Johnson's Extracts from Norfolk Papers," and communicated to the Editor by the late J. C. Brooke, Esq. "In 1592, the families of Cavendish and Stanhope, in the county of Nottingham, were upon exceeding ill terms,* insomuch that blood was shed on both sides. The following is a copy of a message sent by Mary Cavendish, Countess of Salop, to Sir Thomas Stanhope, of Shelford, Knight, by one George Holt, and Williamson; and delivered by the said Williamson, February 15, 1592, in the presence of

* See syllabus of Unpublished Talbot Papers, Vol. H. 375, 379, 381, 389, 393, 397, 405, 419, 421, 423, 429, 433, 435, 440, 499.

certain persons whose names were subscribed-' My lady hath commanded me to say thus much to you. That though you be more wretched, vile, and miserable, than any creature living; and, for your wickedness, become more ugly in shape than the vilest toad in the world; and one to whom none of reputation would vouchsafe to send any message; yet she hath thought good to send thus much to you—that she be contented you should live (and doth no ways wish your death), but to this end-that all the plagues and miseries that may befal any man may light upon such a caitiff as you are; and that you should live to have all your friends forsake you; and without your great repentance, which she looketh not for, because your life hath been so bad, you will be damned perpetually in hell fire.' With many other opprobrious and hateful words, which could not be remembered, because the bearer would deliver it but once, as he said he was commanded; but said if he had failed in any thing, it was in speaking it more mildly, and not in terms of such disdain as he was commanded."

The Earl had issue by this high-spirited dame a son, George, who died an infant; and three daughters, Mary, Elizabeth, and Alathea, whom he had the happiness to dispose of in marriage, many years before his death, to three noblemen whose characters were as splendid as their titles: William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke; Henry Grey, Earl of Kent; and Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel. He died at his house in Broad-street, London, on the 8th of May, 1616, and was succeeded by Edward Talbot, his only surviving brother, the last Earl of Shrewsbury of his illustrious line.

The editor here concludes a task which hath occupied most of his leisure time for some years. With no great dread of censure, with smaller pretensions to praise,