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in shameless adultery with Lord Mountjoy, though her husband, Lord Rich, is still alive."

But

She

In Sidney's verse Stella walks a glorious vision, pure, ideal, chaste, “a thing of beauty, and a joy for ever." In Mr. Dixon's page she seems a hideous abomination. Essex's second sister, Dorothy, was a pattern wife. married very young Sir Thomas Perrot. He died. She then married the Duke of Northumberland. He was on all hands a half madman. His contemporaries called him Wizard. Before he had been six months wedded, if Anthony Bacon is to be believed, he was profligately deserting his wife for other and older favourites. He behaved with an undeviating and uniform cruelty towards her; and her return for all this wickedness was, as far as we know, a correct and most unimpeachable demeanour, and the purest requital, if not of affection, of self-sacrificing duty. Anthony Bacon did his best to injure her peace of mind by writing, while she was enceinte of her first child, and before she had been eight months wedded, an anonymous letter, telling her of her husband's profligacy. Not quite three months after he writes: "The Countess of Northumberland, always reputed a very honourable and virtuous lady, is brought to bed of a goodly boy, who, God grant, may resemble and inherit as well his mother's and his noble uncle's, her most worthy brother's virtues, as his father's ancient nobility." This was all the praise the panegyrist could bestow on him; yet Mr. Dixon says of this lady, whom he cannot more fully defame if he would," Her sister Dorothy, after wedding one husband secretly, and against the canon, has now married Percy the wizard, Earl of Northumberland, with whom she lived the life of a dog. Save in the Suffolk branch of

the Howards, it would not be easy to find out of Italian story a group of women so detestable as the mother and sisters of the Earl."

This is another proof of the historian's genius. There is no calumny true against Lady Rich, except that she lived with her future husband, Lord Mountjoy, before she was married to him, her own husband being either imbecile or mad; her sister Dorothy being, for all that is known to the contrary, as pure and virtuous a woman as shines in history.

If Mr. Lingard deserves such reprehension for narrating what was founded on good evidence, what must be said of Mr. Dixon, who creates these slanders, and then tries to pass them on the public? For his attack on this patient and most resigned woman-this virtuous, good wife-this noble sister—this sad, sad victim of a revengeful, malicious, evil-disposed lord. That Northumberland was a bad man no lack of evidence exists. Through knowledge gained by his marital power over his wife he betrayed her brother to the Cecils, "working at first upon the love and kindness of a wife too true and good for him.' Some of the proofs of her sufferings in her letters still exist to us. They are wrung apparently from the heart of an injured and suffering woman. But Mr. Dixon is strongest in attacking the mother of these two ladies, Essex's mother, the thrice-wedded wife of Blount. Here we again trace the master-mind. Here the poet rises to the heights of his inspiration, and to the mighty theme:—

*.

"As Lettice Knollys, as Countess of Essex, as Countess of Leicester, as wife of Sir Christopher Blount, this mother of the Earl has been a barb in Elizabeth's side for thirty * Henry Howard's (afterwards Northampton's) Letter.

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years. Married as a girl to a noble husband, she gave up his honour to a seducer, and there is reason to fear! (sic) she gave her consent to the taking of his life. While Devereux lived, she deceived the Queen by a scandalous amour, and after his death by a clandestine marriage, with the Earl of Leicester. While Dudley lived, she wallowed in licentious love with Christopher Blount, his groom of the horse. When her second husband expired in agonies at Cornbury, not a gallop from the place in which Amy Robsart died, she again mortified the queen by a secret union with her seducer Blount."

This again is harsh, but not so harsh as the same historian's character of Lady Compton; of course it is not true, perchance in no particular, perchance in some only; it is certainly narrated, so far as it is not purely imaginative, on very wretched testimony-the testimony of a professional libeller-of the very man whom Mr. Dixon has so eloquently denounced as one of those filthy monks.

But perhaps we have rather to thank Mr. Dixon for going no further; having manufactured so much, he might have done much more, for he is no sordid retailer; he may pride himself on being "in the wholesale line." The phrase is not elegant, but will perhaps be pardoned for its pertinency. The imagination which has done so much might have done more. But having a giant's

strength he has forborne to use it. I may simply dispose of the case by stating that the incidents here stated, are utterly improbable and irreconcileable with the known facts.

Lord Dudley left his wife and her son the Earl of Essex, born many years before he knew her, the bulk of

his fortune; and that in terms of such affection, and faith, and love, as rarely find expression in a Will. As to her giving consent to the murder of her first husband, which Mr. Dixon fears (!); as to her wallowing in licentious love with Blount, one at least of these stories originated with one of those very wifeless monks; and yet, to use Mr. Dixon's own words, this "lie against chastity and womanhood, this monstrous lie," some one besides a monk can dream, can recoin, and furbish up, and enlarge, and brighten, and embellish, and so pass into circulation.

The best proof that she did not help to murder her first husband was that the second married her, and did not marry her for two years after. In fact, there is no sufficient ground to believe that her first husband was poisoned at all. The doctors did not think so. He fancied he was, as all men in an ignorant age did fancy they were. Sussex on his death-bed declared the same. It was charged against Dudley that he poisoned all his enemies in succession, and, in fact, everybody who thwarted him in his career. The deaths of Essex, Chatillon, Throgmorton, Sussex, as well as of Ainy Robsart, his first wife, were all laid at his door. Lady Sheffield charged him with attempting to poison her; and of all the evidence her case is the best authenticated; and it was also rumoured that he attempted the life of his kinsman Blount, and of others. Now these suspicions may or may not have been justly founded.

Throgmorton's death was certainly sudden and suspicious. Lady Sheffield's testimony as to her symptoms seems clear, if the evidence as to her statement for it came to us at second hand-is reliable; but the case is too long to go into here. But before accepting these or

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any similar rumours of the age, we are not justified either in dispensing with or ignoring them, nor in accepting them without consideration. All testimony at first hand was of course as reliable in Elizabeth's day as in our own. But the testimony of hearsay, of rumour and report, was on a very different basis. Knowledge was less perfect; surgical science was obscure; the causes of disease rarely known, in all cases its seat was absurdly assigned. There were no Newspapers to give authentic and written details. What was reported was by oral communication. We know how by lapse of time and by imaginative rendering, verbal testimony becomes impaired. But even this was not all. Habits of thought were not as logically confined as they are even to-day. The age was credulous, fond of the marvellous, believed in witchcraft generally, was eminently imaginative. Surely all these circumstances should tempt us to weigh its evidence. Northumberland is found dead in the Tower. Straightway Hatton is reported to have had a hand in his death. If Perrot dies, it is still Hatton; yet Hatton has been dead some time before. So, whenever a crime was believed to have been committed, Leicester did it. If Walter Devereux died in Ireland, or Blount was wounded in a street brawl, or Lady Leicester (née Amy Robsart) is killed, Leicester has done it. It is possible he may have been guilty; yet it is certain that both in Walter Devereux's case and in Amy Robsart's, every precaution of investigation was taken that would be taken to-day. Leicester was estranged from his first and boyish love; but he wrote to Sir F. Blount to make every investigation, to push inquiry to the uttermost, to choose wise and discreet jurymen, not ignorant men.