chief share in quelling Aske's rebellion. Upon this pressing occasion, finding himself at a great distance from the Court, and surrounded by a barbarous people who grew every hour more disaffected, he ventured on the bold measure of raising troops by his own personal authority, and had nearly subdued the insurgents in Yorkshire before the arrival of his pardon, which, from a Prince of Henry's character, he was by no means sure of obtaining. This was the last memorable act of his life. He died at his manor of Wingfield, in Derbyshire, July 26, 1541, and was buried at Sheffield, where his magnificent monument remains. Dugdale's Baronage informs us that he ordered by his will," dated August 29, in the 29th of Henry VIII., that a tomb of marble should be set over his grave, with three images to be laid therein; one for himself, in a mantle of garters; another of his deceased wife, in her robes; and the third, of his wife, then living;" but the latter lies, with her family, at Erith, in Kent.

This great Peer had by the former of these ladies (Anne, daughter of the amiable and unfortunate Lord Hastings) eleven children. Henry, who died young, and was buried in the Priory of Calke, in Derbyshire; Francis, his successor; two sons, successively baptized John, who died infants; William, styled in the family pedigrees Marshal of Ireland; and Richard. The daughters were, Margaret, wife to Henry Clifford, first Earl of Cumberland; Anne; Dorothy; Mary, married to Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland; and Elizabeth, to William Lord Dacre, of Gillesland. His second Countess, Elizabeth, daughter and coheir of Sir Richard Walden, of Erith, brought him a son and a daughter: John, who died unmarried; and Anne, married first to Peter Compton, son and heir of Sir William Compton, Knight, and, secondly, to William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke.

Francis, the fifth Earl, though a nobleman of no

ordinary abilities, appears to have been confined almost entirely to a military life, and his services in that line are largely detailed in the first volume of this work. He was born in Sheffield Castle in the year 1500, and was summoned to the House of Peers in the life-time of his father, whom he succeeded in the appointment of Lieutenant General of the North. On the 17th of May, 1545, he was installed a Knight of the Garter. An original letter, written to him on that occasion by the King, remains in the archives of the College of Arms:

HENRY R.

Right trusty and well-beloved cousin and councillor, we greet you well; ascertaining that you, in "consideration as well of your approved truth and fidelity, as also of your knightly courage and valiant "acts, with other your probable merits experimentally "known in sundry behalfs, we, with our companions "of the noble Order of the Garter, assembled at election "holden this day at our house of Saint James, by Westminster, have elected and chosen you, among "others, to be one of the companions of the said Order, as your said merits condignly require; and therefore "we will that with all convenient diligence, upon the sight hereof, you address yourself into our presence, "or receive such things as to the said Order appertaineth. "Given under our signet, at our said house, the 23d day of April, the thirty-seventh year of our reign.

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In the spring of 1547, he was constituted Lord Lieutenant of the counties of York, Lancaster, Chester, Derby, Stafford, Salop, and Nottingham; in the following year, Justice of the Forests North of Trent; and, on Mary's accession, President of the Council in

the North. The bravery, prudence, and fidelity, which had distinguished him in these important public situations, induced Elizabeth to retain him among those few servants of the late reign whom she admitted to her Privy Council when she mounted the Throne, but his steady adherence to the religion of his ancestors probably obstructed his further promotion. Of the whole body of the temporal Peers, who had so lately and unanimously subscribed to Mary's recognition of the papal authority, only this nobleman, and one more (Viscount Montague), could now be found to oppose the revocation of that concession. He survived this ununcourtly act of sincerity but for a few months, and, dying September 21, 1560, was buried with his father at Sheffield.

Earl Francis married first, Mary, daughter of Thomas Lord Dacre of Gillesland, by whom he had issue George, who succeeded to his honours; Thomas, who died unmarried; and Anne, wife to John Lord Bray: secondly, Grace, widow of Robert Shakerley, of Holme in Cheshire, who proved childless. Very soon after the death of the latter lady, whose family name has not been transmitted to us, the Earl made an overture of marriage to the Lady Pope, widow of the famous founder of Trinity College, Oxford. Some original letters which passed between these experienced wooers upon that occasion are extant in the Unpublished Talbot MSS., but the etiquette of courtship in those days required more time than could be spared by two lovers whose united years made up somewhat more than a century, and the good old Earl was arrested by death when perhaps he had not made half his advances.

George, the sixth Earl, in common with the young nobility of his time, first presents himself to us in the field. In October, 1557, he was sent by his father, at the head of a strong force, to aid the Earl of Northumberland, then pent up in Alnwick Castle by a Scottish

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 and advantage to herself and her children; for he not