"Now if those prudent houses hold 't not fit

That I unto my Wentworth wood-house goe, To exercise my dayes in holy writ,

Or, like a recluse in a cell of woe,

Το

pray for those I owe devotion to;

Let th' sentence of sad death come when it pleases,
The axe's edge gives cure to all diseases.

"Erect your scaffolds like pyramides,
Let my corrivals my appellants be;
Let ship-wrackt judges that have writs of ease,
Become spectators of my miserie ;
Teare-poudred sables cloathe my family:
All this is nothing! a more glorious place
Arms me to look death-terrors in the face.

"And yet excuse me that I thus conceave,
If these long charges by me answered
Bring my weake body to untimely grave,
To after ages 't will be registred,
Nay, by just priviledge authorized

That STRAFFORD such a day and yeare did dye
For no high-treason, but to satisfie "."]

Lord Strafford's seat in Yorkshire; where, says Fuller, his ancestors long flourished in great esteem.

9 i. e. Sprinkled or embroidered with tears. See Warton's Observations on Spenser, and Todd's edition of Milton.

So says the writer of a pamphlet entitled, The Earle of Strafford characterized; and printed in 1641: "There is a necessitated policy of my lord of S. and some others, should be given up as just sacrifice, to appease the people," &c.

327

HENRY MONTAGU,

EARL OF MANCHESTER,

WAS grandson of sir Edward Montagu, lord chief justice of the King's-bench in the reign of Edward the sixth, and was father of the lord Kimbolton, who, with five members of the house of commons, were so remarkably accused by king Charles the first. Earl Henry was bred a lawyer, and rose swiftly through most of the ranks of that profession to some of the greatest honours of the state and peerage. His preferments are thus enumerated by Lloyd in his State Worthies3: serjeant at law, knight, recorder of London, lord chief justice of the King'sbench, lord treasurer of England 4, baron of

2

⚫ [In the Middle Temple, says Lloyd, where he attained to great learning: but he was first at Christ's college, Cambridge. See Fuller's Worthies of Northamptonshire, p. 289.]

3 Page 1027.

[Howell says, he bought his treasurer's staff of the countess of Buckingham for £20,000; yet was removed within the year. He was asked, on his return to London, "whether he did not find wood extremely dear at Newmarket ?"—for it was there he had received his white wand. See Letters, sect. 3. p. 116. Lloyd adds, that being asked what his treasurership might be worth per annum, he made answer: "It might be some thousands of pounds to him who after death would go Y A

Kimbolton, viscount Mandeville, president of the council, earl of Manchester, and lord privy seal. Lord Clarendon has drawn his character. He lived to a very great age, and wrote a book called

"Manchester al Mondo, Contemplatio Mortis et Immortalitatis: or, Meditations on Life and Death." Lond. 1636, 12mo. third edit.

[A short extract from this book may convey its general complexion, which is learned and sensible, serious and devout, philosophical and metaphysical.

"Man," says the noble writer, "was not made for contemplation onely; his part is to doe, as well as understand in earthly things to be an actor, of heavenly things to be a spectator. Therefore his felicitie consists neither in rest nor action, but in a fit mixture of both.

"The counsellor saith, a statesman should be thus repartited-his will, to God; his love, to his master;

instantly to heaven; twice as much to him who would go to purgatory; and a nemo scit to him who would adventure to a worse place." Obs. on Statesmen, &c. p. 800.]

[When lord privy-seal, he brought the court of requests into such repute, that what formerly was called the almsbasket of the chancery, had in his time well nigh as much meat in, and guests about it, as the chancery itself. Fuller, ut sup.] 6 Vol. i. p. 54, 55.