rigours still more severe were inflicted. Stewart thus describes her situation in the castle of Tutbury:---" Two apartments only were allotted to her, and they were small and inconvenient, meanly furnished, and so full of apertures and chinks, that they could not protect her against the inclemencies of the weather. The liberty of going abroad for pleasure, or exercise, was denied to her. She was assailed by rheumatisms, and other maladies, and her physician would not undertake to effect a cure, or even to procure her any ease, unless she should be removed to a more commodious dwelling. Applications, for this purpose, were frequently made, and uniformly rejected. Here, however, her own afflictions did not extinguish in her mind her sensibility for the misfortunes of others; and she often indulged herself in the satisfaction of employing a servant to go through the village of Tutbury in search of objects of distress, to whom she might deal out her charity. But her inhuman keepers envying her this pleasure, commanded her to abstain from it. Imputing their rigour to a suspicious fidelity, she desired that her servant might, on these occasions, be accompanied by one of the soldiers of their guard, or by the constable of the village; but they would not alter their prohibition. They refused to her the exercise of the Christian duty of dispensing an alms; and they would not allow her the soft consolation of moistening her eye with sorrows not her own. To insult her the more, the castle of Tutbury was converted into a common jail. A young man, whose crime was the profession of the Romish religion, was committed to a chamber, which was opposite to her window, in order that he might be persecuted in her sight with a pestilent cruelty. Notwithstanding his cries and resistance, he was dragged every morning to hear prayers, and to join in the Protestant worship; and, after enduring several weeks this extraordinary violence to his conscience, he was most unmercifully strangled, without any form of law or justice. Mary remonstrated, with warmth, to Elizabeth, against indignities so shocking, and so horrible; but instead of obtaining consolation or relief, she was involved more deeply in woe, and exposed to still harder inventions of malice and of anger."-Stewart, Vol. II. p. 288, 289. The intrusion into Mary's bed-chamber; the forcible breaking open of her repositories; the robbery of her money, plate, jewels, and papers, are facts, the truth of which is so notorious, as not to require the support of particular quotations. GLOSSARY. [I have, now and then, used a Scotch or an old English word, where a modern English synonime, equally emphatic, did not present itself. I am no friend to those phrases which are commonly, though often erroneously, called Scotticisms, or to any innovation which would tend to destroy the idiom of the English language; but I could never see any good sense in that indiscriminating anathema, which would proscribe every word that happens to be unknown, or little known, on the south side of the Tweed.] Bield, shelter; a small rudely formed bower, or hut. Skep, a basket of coiled straw, or rushes, of a size to hold a nest; also, a bee-hive. Quern, the hollow stone of a hand-mill. Know, knoll. Cleugh, the cleft of a hill; a recess. Blae, a deep purplish blue. Soughing, producing a sound like the wind through trees, or a wand moved quickly through the air. 7 Shaw, a small copse wood. Heartsome, chearful. Boutree, elder-tree. Skillet, a rattle, or bell, used by common criers. Canach, a plant that grows in moorish and marshy places, with a leafless stalk, and a silky white tuft at the top. Smiddy, smithy. Blawn, blown. Rowan-tree, mountain-ash. Tryst, appointment. Siller, silver. Gowan, mountain-daisy. Bughts, sheep-folds. |