laid with black wreaths lozenge-wise, and in every lozenge a red rose of tinsel sarsnet; in her hand a target of her master's arms. Then came a spare horse with a caparison of black tinsel sarsnet, with lozenge wreaths of white, and in every lozenge a branch of red acorns."

The other three came nearly with the same state, and the tourney commenced. There is no description of the contest, but we learn that one of the combatants was thrown, horse and all, and in consequence the horse and harness became the fees of the officers of arms. The earl marshal decided that all the feathers, helmets, &c. which fell to the ground, were by proscription appropriated as the perquisites of those officers.

Amongst the interesting particulars connected with the second Earl of Bedford, is his residence in Scotland, at the critical period when Rizzio was murdered. He drew up an authentic account of this event, and from this report, which was sent to Elizabeth, we take the following brief description of the catastrophe itself:

Into the cabinet there cometh in the King and Lord Ruthven, who willed David to come forth, saying that there was no place for him. The Queen said, that it was her will; her husband answered, that it was against her honour. The Lord Ruthven then said, that he should learn better his duty, and, offering to have taken him by the arm, David took the Queen by the plaits of her gown, and put himself behind the Queen, who would gladly have saved him; but the King having loosed his hands, and holding her in his arms, David was thrust out of the cabinet through the bedchamber, into the chamber of presence, where were the Lord Morton and Lord Lindsey, who, intending that night to have reserved him and the next day to hang him, so many being about them that bore him evil will, one thrust him in the body with a dagger, and after him a great many other, so that he had in his body above sixty wounds. It is told for certain that the King's own dagger was left sticking in him: whether he struck him or not, we cannot know for certain.* He was not slain in the Queen's presence, as was said, but going down the stairs out of the chamber of presence.—Vol. i. p. 444.

The character given of this Earl of Bedford, is highly creditable to his name. He appears to have been an affectionate father, and was chiefly consoled in his last moments by the thought that his family were settled in comfort and dignity. His talents were of an order to justify the queen in selecting him for offices of the most important trust; his loyalty was of that quality which a reasonable mind would afford to the representative of a great and useful principle; but it savoured of no mean servility, nor was his dutiful homage to the throne tarnished with flattery. His life, in a moral view, was so disciplined, that he earned from Camden, the comprehensive

*It was Douglas, says Hume, who, seizing the King's dagger, stuck it in the body of Rizzio.

eulogy contained in these few words: "He was a true follower of religion and virtue."

The second Earl of Bedford had no male issue; the title descended, therefore, to Edward, the son of Sir Francis Russell, then a youth of only eleven years of age. The interval of his minority is seized by Mr. Wiffen as a seasonable opportunity for giving details relative to other members of the family. Amongst those connected with the House of Russell, at the period to which we have now arrived, was Sir William Russell, who had obtained great reputation, not merely by his valour and conduct in the military service, but by the generous spirit which characterised him as a cavalier of the court. In 1593, he was appointed Lord Deputy of Ireland, in the room of Sir William Fitzwilliam. Here his ambition for war enjoyed such full scope, as that he very speedily became satiated with the luxuries of the field of battle. So completely fatigued was he with the harassing duties of his government in Ireland, that he solicited the queen for leave to resign.

The third Earl of Bedford died in 1627, and was succeeded in his style and honours by his cousin Francis, who, bred up to the law, devoted his early life to the cultivation of his mind, and to the gratification of a taste for literary ease. After he had attained the title, he soon found an opportunity of manifesting the direction of his political sentiments, in his vindication of the privileges of the English hereditary peerage. The rights of this body had been violated by the precedence claimed, and successfully, too, by many English peers, who possessed Irish and Scotch titles, created by James the First. Thirty-two of the ancient English nobility, with the Earl of Bedford at their head, resenting these testimonies of favouritism, which contained such gross reflections on themselves, resolved upon letting the king feel that they were offended, and accordingly preferred a bold petition to his majesty. In this document they disavowed any wish to limit the extent of the royal prerogative, but they prayed of the king, "that they might challenge and preserve their birthright, and take no more notice, to their own prejudice, of such titulars than did the law of the land; but he excused if in civil courtesy they gave them not the respect which was generally accorded to the real Scotch and Irish peerage, seeing that, whilst born and inheritanced under the English laws, those gentlemen had, by importunity, procured these foreign titles only to the injury of the English hereditary peers."

It appears, from unquestionable authority, that the associated noblemen ventured upon another petition of a similar nature to his majesty; and in order to share alike the responsibility of an act unparalleled for its boldness, they resolved upon presenting it conjointly to his majesty. They proceeded in a body to the palace, but the king refused them admittance, and commanded that the petition should be sent to the privy council. This the noblemen refused to do; so sending back word to his majesty that they were

not only as good, but really above his privy council, and that it was against the fundamental laws of the constitution, that a privy council should presume to have the examination or cognizance of matters of parliament, as this petition was from parliament, the highest court in the kingdom.

At this, the king's anger was redoubled: he repeated his former commands; they were again rejected, and at last the young prince went out, by his majesty's desire, to demand the petition. The lords were staunch, and asked of the prince a short time for deliberation. It was granted; they consulted for a short interval, and then told the prince, that if he would openly protest that he received the petition, not in the name of a privy councillor, and would pledge his honour not to deliver it to any but his majesty's own hand; and further, to bring the petitioners into his majesty's presence, then they would deliver the petition to him; but if he did not choose to comply with these conditions, then they would retain it. The prince withdrew, and immediately afterwards the king peremptorily sent for the foremost of the refractory nobles. The Earl of Oxford made his appearance in the royal presence, when the king called on him to give up the petition. The earl had it not, for it was previously concerted that the petition should be left with the rest of the lords, if one or more had been called in. Another of the peers was summoned, and the same demand repeated to him by the monarch, now much moved with indignation. The same answer as before was returned, whereupon the king exlaimed, "Who has it, then?" "The Earl of Lincoln." This nobleman was accordingly sent for, but he no more had the petition than his predecessors in the king's presence, so that his majesty was now fully satisfied, from the declarations of the lords, that the petition would not be given up except by the whole body together. The king, greatly incensed, sent the petitioners away, threatening vehemently to bring them all to the bar of the House of Lords, and to find out the principal who had packed them together, and make him smart for it.

In this remarkable story we see at once the outbreakings of that arbitrary spirit peculiar to the Stuarts, and which was afterwards developed so fatally for themselves. In the contests in which Charles I. engaged with the small, but energetic patriot band, which stood out so undauntedly against his insolent pretensions, the Earl of Bedford could not remain an unconcerned spectator, but joined with every true friend to his country in admiring the intellectual efforts, the suffering, the constancy, the heroic resolution of the chief actors in the struggle. "They were men," observes Mr. Wiffen, "for the most part of sterling principle and patriotism, with minds cast in an athletic mould, and powerful, from their long laborious study of the laws and spirit of the constitution, to resist that yoke which the barbaric might of monarchy, jealous of all but its own feudal pre-eminence, sought to rivet on their necks and

consciences. Parliamentary and legal precedents, and sound im passive arguments, were the weapons which they used; and as their trust and patience were not yet outwearied by illusory promises and weak evasions, nor the desire of revenge yet excited by the parade of tyrannous exaction, they had no aim inconsistent with the real welfare of the monarch; and if their controversy struck at his power and prerogative, it was in the absolutely necessary defence of their personal liberties and rights. Coke, Elliot, Seymour, Littleton, and Pym-Hampden, Selden, Phillips, Rich, and Cotton-were patriots worthy of the phalanx of Leonidas. Wisely, bravely, and yet most temperately, at this juncture, did they guard the mountain-fastnesses of freedom, which their country, their conscience, and the law, had given them to keep; neither ' counted they their lives dear unto them,' so that they might transmit unimpaired-for the respect and awe of future sovereigns-the inalienable rights of the religionist, and the chartered privileges of the subject."

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As it was in the Commons that Charles attempted the first step of his gross usurpation, so was it there that the first organized resistance was made to his ambition. The Earl of Bedford, who had early seen the necessity of duly limiting the power of the monarch, attached himself inseparably to this party, which made in energy for its want of members; and when the celebrated petition of rights was before the Lords, his lordship distinguished himself so pre-emenently by his advocacy of the claims contained in the original petition, that he was ordered by the king to go down to his lieutenancy in Devonshire. We need not follow the biographer through the detail of the public events which finally terminated with the sacrifice of Charles. Throughout these severe trials the Earl of Bedford was consistent in his support of rational liberty; and there is no doubt but that had he been spared a little longer, to mix up his good temper, his firmness, his judgment, and discretion, with the plans of his too animated friends, he might have given a different aspect to many scenes and events, the existence of which were exceedingly to be deplored.

But he was taken ill; and whilst his friends were anxiously investigating the causes of his indisposition, his daughter, Lady Brooke, accidentally discovered on his lordship's person a few suspicious eruptions, which ultimately proved to be marks of the small pox. Mr. Wiffen informs us:

In conformity with the mistaken, and often fatal, practice which then prevailed in the treatment of the disease, the Earl was confined closely to his bed, even when his fever was at the highest; and of this he shortly felt the ill effects. To a faithful servant he confessed that he was so weary of his bed, that he feared it would be his grave, exclaiming, "I fool away my life to please the physicians;" and when these again forbade his rising, he sighed out farther to Dr. Cragg, "Well, then, I will die to observe your rules." Hence, Dr. Cademan, who appears to have advocated a different

treatment, afterwards declared, in a printed pamphlet, his opinion, "that the Earl died of too much of his bed, and not of the small pox. For, till Saturday night (the 8th of May), I am sure he had no sign of danger, as that then there was no hope of life,-nature having given over the field to devotion, which came in, so armed and invincible, as I never saw the like, though I have waited upon many who had no other business of life than to die well. Commending his body to be buried with decency, but not pomp, his breath was spent before his hands and eyes ceased to be lifted up to heaven, as if his soul would have carried his body along with it.—Vol. 2, pp. 191, 192.

At the Restoration we find the fifth lord (William) in possession of the style and honours of the earldom, and he and his family unchanged as to the position in society which they held before the interegnum. But the member of the family, who chiefly rendered it conspicuous in the reign of Charles II., was a relation of the earl's, of the name of Russell, who came upon the scene just at the critical period when the king and the parliament had split, particularly in consequence of the leaning of the former to Popery. Mr. Russell is described by Burnett, as a man of great candour, and universally beloved as well as trusted; and that he possessed a bold and uncompromising spirit is seen at once in the style in which he arraigned the government, at the opening of the session, in 1674, for pressing men ef quality for soldiers, in violation of Magna Charta.

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Property, religion, all that was valuable, being invaded,' he urged, that the authors of their misfortunes should be ascertained -those bad ministers about the king, who committed such excesses -proroguing parliaments; breaking articles of treaty; shutting up the exchequer ; taking pensions of France; and falsely accusing those who, like hinself, denounced their inroads, of being in the pay of Holland'."

In the same perod likewise young Lord Russell highly distinguished himself by his advocacy of the principles which had been so long cherished by his family. He was doomed to suffer the penalties of his great utility as a friend to his country, for so successful were his sultle enemies, that he became involved in a charge which affected his life. The trial of Lord Russell has furnished the materials for me of the grandest historical pictures which the annals of mankind have yet presented. We cannot withhold the representation of the splendid scene, as it is skilfully presented by Mr. Wiffen:

With a serenity that excited the highest admiration, Lord Russell appeared at the bar of the Old Bailey. Every hardship that could be inflicted by angry and vindictive enemies, the steady patriot was doomed that day to bar. Even before he opened his lips in his defence, he was treated by Sawyer, the attorney-general, like a guilty felon. His request for the delay of a few hours, till his witnesses might arrive in town, though