688 O, treason of the Blood!"-Othello, Act I. sc. 1.

August 24, 1680, nearly five years before! One Captain Blood, a shady character, was in Colonel Foulkes's regiment in 1692. He appears to have held in 1685 some office at the very Tower of London, where Colonel Thomas Blood had schemed and acted so boldly in 1671. That a son of his could find advancement there, a few years later, although Talbot Edwards the assaulted keeper had remained neglected with unpaid pension, is not more strange than that the Colonel himself should have been pardoned, and enriched with the rent of his Irish lands worth £500 per annum. Wits wrote epigrams on the subject, and declared that Blood would have been more highly remunerated if he had stolen the King instead of his jewels. At this Charles laughed, with his usual good humour.'

1 One version of this jest was written by John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, in "The History of Insipids" (which begins, "Chaste, pious, prudent, Charles the Second"), a lampoon supposed to be of date 1676:

Blood, that wears' Treason' in his face,

Villain compleat, in Parson's Gown,

How much is he at Court in grace,

For stealing Ormond and the Crown!

Since Loyalty does no man good,

Let's steal the King, and out-do Blood!

Another writer, believed to be Andrew Marvel, exhibited his scornful hatred against the clergy, in a different epigram on the same person :—

WT

On Blood's stealing the Crown.

Hen daring Blood, his Rent to have regain'd, [i.e. of Irish lands.
Upon the English Diadem distrain'd,

He chose the cassock, surcingle, and gown,

The fittest Mask for one that robs the Crown.
But his Lay-pity underneath prevail'd,

And, whilst he saved the Keeper's life, he fail'd:
With the Priest's vestment had he but put on
The Prelate's cruelty, the Crown had gone!

[T. Edwards.

Of this Epigram a Latin version is printed by Captain Edward Thompson in his edition of Marvel's Works, 1776, vol. i. Preface, p. xxxix. It is entitled Bludius et Corona.

BLUDIUS, ut ruris damnum repararet aviti,

Addicit fisco dum diadema suo :
Egregium sacro facinus velavit amictu:
(Larva solet reges fallere nulla magis)
Excidit ast ausis tactus pietate profanâ :
Custodem ut servet, maluit ipse capi.
Si modo savitiam texisset pontificalem
Veste sacerdotis, rapta corona foret.

Evelyn, on May 10, 1671, at the Treasurer's house, met Colonel Blood, and thus described him :-"This man had not onely a daring but a villainous unmercifull looke, a false countenance, but very well spoken and dangerously insinuating."-Diary of John Evelyn, ii. 259, 260. The attempt on Ormond was of 6 December, 1670; that on the Crown Jewels, 9 May, 1671.

An account of the Suppressed Letters from Monmouth. 689

Colonel Scott's Narrative, on the Suppression of Monmouth's Letter to King James II.—(The Clarendon Correspondence, i. 144.)

In the year 1734 I was in company with Colonel Scott, at Boulogne-sur-Mer, in France, when the Colonel called me to him, and said, "Mr. Bowdler, you are a young man and I am a very old one, I will tell you something worth remembering. When the Duke of Monmouth was in the Tower, under sentence of death, I had the command of the guard there, and one morning the Duke desired me to let him have pen, ink, and paper, for he wanted to write to the King. He wrote a very long letter, and when he had sealed it, he desired me to give him my word of honour that I would carry that letter to the King, and deliver it into no hands but his. I told him I would most willingly do it, if it was in my power, but that my orders were not to stir from him till his execution; and therefore I dared not leave the Tower. At this he expressed great uneasiness, saying he could have depended on my honour; but at length asked me if there was any officer in that place on whose fidelity I could rely. I told him that Capt. [sic] was one on whom I would willingly confide, in anything on which my own life depended, and more I could not say of any man. The Duke desired he might be called. When he was come, the Duke told him the affair; he promised on his word and honour that he would deliver the letter to no person whatever, but to the King only. Accordingly he went immediately to Court, and being come near the door of the King's closet, took the letter out of his pocket to give it to the King. Just then Lord Sunderland came out of the closet, and, seeing him, asked what he had in his hand; he said it was a letter from the Duke of Monmouth, which he was going to give to the King. Lord Sunderland said, Give it to me, I will carry it to him.' No, my Lord,' said the Captain, I pawned my honour to the Duke that I would deliver the letter to no man but the King himself.' 'But,' said Lord Sunderland, the King is putting on his shirt, and you cannot be admitted into the closet, but the door shall stand so far open that you shall see me give it to him.' After many words, Lord Sunderland prevailed on the Captain to give him the letter, and his Lordship went into the closet with it."-After the Revolution, Colonel Scott, who followed the fortunes of King James, going one day to see the King at dinner, at St. Germains in France, the King called him [Scott] to him, and said, "Colonel Scott, I have lately heard a thing that I want to know from you whether it is true.' The King then related the story, and the Colonel assured him that what His Majesty had been told was exactly true. Upon which the King then said, "Colonel Scott, as I am a living man, I never saw that letter, nor did I ever hear of it till within these few days." From a document preserved among the Clarendon Papers, accumulated by Mr. Wm. Upcott of the London Institution.

While believing that one letter or more may have been thus intercepted and suppressed by Sunderland or his agents, we remain unconvinced that James II. could ever have brought himself to again pardon Monmouth, even if every letter and message had reached him. Under any circumstances, a second interview could scarcely have been granted; the first having been trifled with and wasted. In after years, during his own exile at St. Germains, King James deceived himself by supposing that he might possibly have been willing to extend clemency, even before the time when he heard Colonel Scott's account of the suppressed Letter. There had come to him full knowledge of worse misdoings by Sunderland and other traitors, outweighing the guilt of "King Monmouth," who for awhile had been acknowledged as "England's Darling."

VOL. V.

2 Y

Monmouth's Remembrance of Russell.

"Bitter tears and sobs of anguish,
Unavailing though they be:

Oh! the brave-the brave and noble,
That have died in vain for me."

—W. E. Aytoun's Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers.

WHILE in hiding, after Sedgemoor Fight had proved a final

defeat, memory used her wonted whips and stings on the hunted famishing fugitive; but his thoughts would be compelled for the most part to act anew the painful labours of his recent days, and there would be too little time or sense of quiet to allow of retrospection to the earlier troubles which followed closely on detection of the Rye-House Plot. Only in connection with Lady Henrietta Wentworth, whom he lamented having left, would he remember the time when, two years before, he found shelter beside her at Toddington, and offered to surrender himself to Justice if it could benefit his imprisoned friend William Russell.

Short as was the interval between arrival at the Tower of London and being led forth to execution, we doubt not that Monmouth then remembered the fate of Russell, and bitterly anticipated the indignities of his own approaching death on the scaffold. Lord Russell had connived at and desired even such an Insurrection as Monmouth had soon afterwards attempted, almost unaidedly, but certainly with expectation of being better supported by those who had once been loud in promises and protestations.

The tune, often mentioned, of this particular ballad of "Russell's Farewell," was soon afterwards known as Whitney's Farewell, from James Whitney the Highwayman, who suffered at Tyburn in 1690. Music thus named is in Playford's Dancing-Master, editions 1698 and later. Words of "Whitney's Farewell," beginning, "I on the Road have reigned long," are in our Bagford Ballads, p. 556.

Note, on allusion to Burnet, as the "Groaning-Board Divine” (next page). 6 For our comment on this contemptible fraud of the Sectaries, (in which Gilbert Burnet was implicated), see Bagford Ballads, pp. 99, 925. It was an Elm-Board, declared to yield sepulchral groans in protest against Romanism. The New Song on the Strange and Wonderful Groaning Board" begins,

What Fate inspir'd thee with Groans, to fill Phanatick Brains? What is't thou sadly thus bemoans, in thy Prophetick strains? .. The giddy Vulgar to thee run, amaz'd with fear and wonder; Some dare affirm, that hear thee groan, thy noise is petty Thunder. Gilbert Burnet's concoction of Russell's Printed Speech is mentioned on our p. 325. Tom Farmer's tune to "When busy Fame o'er all the plain" is named on p. 692: the words are in Mr. William Chappell's Roxburghe Ballads, vol. iii. p. 568. The tune of Althea represents Lovelace's "When Love with unconfined Wings."

[Wood's Collection, at the Bodleian Library, 417, ii. art. 123.]

The Lord Russel's last Farewel to

the World.

[To its own Tune, known afterwards as Whitney's Farewell.] Arewel, farewel to Mortal Powers, and fond Ambitious Fools,

ours, rules.

8

Farewell to Monmouth, Horned Grey, who are from justice fled,
And left me to this Fatal Day, to lose my Plotting Head.
Of all the Lords of our Caballs, I am the first that dyes
By th' hand of Justice, which foretells a Counter-Sacrifice:
That Blazing Star at Stafford's Death' foretold a fatal change,
Now I declare, with my last breath, it is but just Revenge.
Farewell to our late Parliament, which made Three Kingdoms shake;
Our lawless Votes my Soul torment, was for Rebellion's sake;
Th' Exclusive Bill I did promote, with vigour, spleen, and power,
Thereby to cut a Monarch's throat: that caus'd this Fatal Hour.
The best of Kings I sought to kill, and draw'd in thousands more,
Who neither wanted wealth nor will, and Traytors long before ;
Beside the Peasants and the poor for Insurrection bent,
To lay the Kingdom all in gore, to please a Parliament.
We neither feared Law nor Right, Prerogative nor Fate;
Impeached Queen and Duke for spight, to make the King afraid: "
We thought he durst not call to 'count our great Conspiring Heads,
But now, like me, they all must mount, and fall into the Shades.
If we had Hang'd Tony and Tom, when first the Plot begun,3
Then I to this had never come, nor James from Justice run;
Denying of the Plot's in vain, since Essex cut's own throat:
Both Rouse and Walcot owns the same, and all the rest must do 't.
For my Confession I commit to th' Groaning-Board's Divine;"
'Tis his desire to word it fit: I hope, for no design!
If the Whiggish Cant he puts upon't, with 'quivocating Shamms,
Then score him up, on our account, his Lybell to the Flames.

Finis.

5

16

[See p. 690.

Printed for J. Dean, Bookseller in Cranborn-Street in Leicester-Fields, near Newport-House, July, 1683. [Black-letter, with Music.]

=

1 See John Evelyn's Diary, December 12, 1680, for account of this Portent. 2 Monmouth had no hand in this villainy, being in favour with the Queen. 3 Tony Anthony, Earl Shaftesbury; Tom Sir Thomas Armstrong (p. 483). 4 James Scott, Duke of Monmouth, at this time in hiding, July, 1683. 5 Arthur Capell, Earl of Essex: a suicide, not a murder (pp. 316, 318, 700). For the execution of John Rouse and Captain Thomas Walcot, see p. 329.

[Pepysian Collection, II. 242.]

Rebellion Rewarded with Justice;

Or, the Last Farewell of the late Duke of Monmouth, which was beheaded on Tower-Hill on the 15th of this Enstant July, 1685.

It is not well for to Rebell, against a Gracious Prince,

Let all beware, and shun the snare, that would be Men of Sence. TO THE TUNE OF, Russel's Farewell, or, Busie Fame. [See p. 690.] This may be Printed, July the 15th, 1685, R. L[e] S[trange]. Arewell! Farewell! deceitful Pride, for thou has me betray'd; Upon vain hopes I have relyed, when I the Traytor play'd: Had I not wandred with Lord Grey, which proves my overthrow, I never had beheld this day to feel the Fatal Blow.

Too much I hearkened to that Crew which never did me good, But now I bid the World adieu, and here my dearest blood Must be a Ransome for my Crime, to pay the Death I owe, And Justice now has found a time to strike the fatal Blow.

Alas! I have not quite forgot the favour that I found, When I was in that Hellish Plot; ah! this my Soul doth wound, That I again should be misled, into a Sea of Wooe, And here I must lay down my head, unto the fatal Blow.

8

My proud aspiring heart, I find, has brought me to this thing;
Ah! how could I be so unkind to such a Gracious King?
Which once did interceed for me, as I in conscience know,
But now pale Death must set me free, then wellcome, fatal Blow! 16
And now at last I did Rebell against him in his Throne,
I was most like an Infidel, as I may justly own;
But this has wrought my life's decay, and final overthrow,
And Justice will no longer stay, but strike the fatal Blow.

While I did in Rebellion stand some lives did pay full dear,
A sad confusion in the Land! but now I bear a share,
And brought to my deserved Doom, whether I would or no,
No friend I have that will presume to stop the fatal Blow.

24

False Friends, alas! hath ruin'd me, and brought me to this place, And now the sad effects, I see, will end in my disgrace: My Lady I must leave behind, and my sweet Babes in wooe, For Destiny hath now design'd for me the fatal Blow.

fall:

And now my last and dying Speech is to advise you all,
Both Friends and Foes, I do beseech, be warned by my
Let Loyalty your actions Crown, then you'll be free from woe,
And now I willingly lye down: Come, strike the fatal Blow!

Printed for J. Deacon, at the Angel, Guilt-spur-street, without Newgate.
[Black-letter. Date, July 15th, 1685, day of Monmouth's execution.]

32