Kitabı oku: «Devonshire Characters and Strange Events», sayfa 12

SIR JOHN FITZ

Tavistock, in the reign of Elizabeth, was a more picturesque town than it is at present. Then the abbey walls, crenellated and with towers at intervals, were still standing in complete circuit, and the abbey church, the second finest in the county and diocese, though unroofed, was still erect. The houses, slate-hung in quaint patterns representing fleurs-de-lis, oak leaves, swallow-tails, pomegranates, with gables to the street, were very different from the present houses, stuccoed drab and destitute of taste. Moreover the absurd, gaunt market hall erected last century was not a central and conspicuous disfigurement to the town.

But a few strides to the west, on the Plymouth road, stood Fitzford House, a mansion recently erected, consisting of a court, entered through a massive gate-house, and the mansion standing back, with porch and projecting wings.

In this house lived the Fitz family. They had been there for four generations and had married well. They were also well estated, with property in Cornwall, in Kent and Southwark, as well as in Devon. John Fitz, the father of the man whose tragic history we are about to relate, married Mary, daughter of Sir John Sydenham, of Brimpton, in Somerset, and had late in life one son, the “unfortunate” Sir John. The Fitzes had been a family bred to the law; the first known of them, John Fitz, had been a bencher of Lincoln’s Inn, and the John Fitz who married Mary Sydenham was also a counsellor-at-law, and he managed considerably to add to the wealth of the family. When he had got as much as he wanted out of the pockets of his clients, he retired to his family place of Fitzford and there amused himself with astrology and the casting of horoscopes. When his son John was about to be born in 1575, John Fitz studied the stars, and, says Prince, “finding at that time a very unlucky position of the heavens, he desired the midwife, if possible, to hinder the birth but for one hour; which, not being to be done, he declared that the child would come to an unhappy end and undo the family.”

John Fitz was riding over the moor one day with his wife, when they lost their direction, were, in fact, pixy-led, and they floundered through bogs, and could nowhere hit on the packhorse track that led across the moors from Moreton Hampstead to Tavistock. Exhausted and parched with thirst they lighted on a crystal stream, dismounted, and drank copiously of the water. Not only were they refreshed, but at once John Fitz’s eyes were opened, the spell on him was undone, and he knew where he was and which direction he should take. Thereupon he raised his hand and vowed he would honour that well, so that such travellers as were pixy-led might drink at it and dispel the power over them exercised by the pixies. The spring still flows and rises under a granite structure erected in fulfilment of his vow by John Fitz; it bears his initials and the date 1568 in raised figures and letters on the covering stone. Formerly it was on a slope in the midst of moorland away from the main track, near the Blackabrook. Now it is enclosed in the reclaimed tract made into meadows by the convicts of Princetown. Happily the structure has not been destroyed: it is surrounded by a protecting wall.

In the same year that John Fitz erected this well, he obtained a lease to carry water in pipes of wood or of lead through the garden of one John Northcott to his mansion at Fitzford. The little house that he built over the spring in his close, called Boughthayes, still stands, picturesquely wreathed in ivy.

He died 8 January, 1589–90, aged sixty-one, and by his will made his wife executrix and guardian of his son, who was then rather over fourteen years old. There is a stately monument in Tavistock Parish Church to John Fitz and his wife, he clothed in armour, which in life he probably never wore, as he was a man of the long robe. The effigies are recumbent, and by them is a smaller, kneeling figure of the son and heir – their only child, the “unfortunate” John Fitz. But the widow did not have charge of her son; as a ward under the Queen he was committed to Sir Arthur Gorges, “who tended more to the good of the child than his own private profit,” which was perhaps unusual. Mary Fitz retired to Walreddon, near Tavistock, another house belonging to the family, for her initials “M. F.” and the date 1591 are cut in granite over the doorway. But presently she married Christopher Harris, of Radford, when she moved to his house near Plymouth.

The young John Fitz is described as having been “a very comlie person.” He was married, before he had attained his majority, to Bridget, sixth daughter of Sir William Courtenay. Of this marriage one child, Mary, was born 1 August, 1596, when her father was just twenty-one years old. John Fitz was now of age, considered himself free of all restraint, owner of large estates, and was without stability of character or any principle, and was inclined to a wild life. He took up his residence at Fitzford, and roystered and racketed at his will.

One day (it was 4 June, 1599) he was dining at Tavistock with some of his friends and neighbours. The hour was early, for in the account of it we are told that “with great varietie of merriments and discourse they outstript the noontide.”

John Fitz had drunk a good deal of wine, and he began to brag of his possessions, and boasted that he had not a foot of land that was not his freehold. Among those present was Nicholas Slanning, of Bickleigh. He interrupted Fitz, and said, “That is not so. You hold of me a parcel of land that is copyhold, and though of courtesy it has been intermitted, yet of due, you owe me so much a year for that land.”

John started from his seat, and told Slanning to his face that he lied, and mad with rage, drew his dagger and would have stabbed him. Slanning with a knife beat down Fitz’s blade, and the friends at the table threw themselves between them and patched up the quarrel as they supposed. Nicholas Slanning then left the apartment and departed for Bickleigh with his man, both being on horseback.

They had not ridden far when they came to a deep and rough descent, whereupon Slanning bade his man lead the horses, and he dismounting walked through a field where the way was easier.

At that moment he saw John Fitz with four attendants galloping along the lane after him. Without ado, Slanning awaited the party and inquired of John Fitz what he desired of him. Fitz replied that he had followed that he might avenge the insult offered him. Thereupon Fitz called to his men, and they drew their blades and fell on Slanning, who had to defend himself against five men. The matter might even then have been composed, but one of Fitz’s men, named Cross, twitted his master, saying, “What play is this? It is child’s play. Come, fight!” Fitz, who had sheathed his sword, drew it again and attacked Slanning. The latter had long spurs, and stepping back they caught in a tuft of grass, and as he staggered backward, Fitz ran him through the body. At the same time, one of Fitz’s men struck him from behind. Slanning fell to the ground and died. He was conveyed home, and buried in Bickleigh Church, where his monument still exists, but in a mutilated condition. It was of plaster, and when the church was “restored” fell to pieces; but the curious Latin inscription has been preserved.

Nicholas Slanning had been married to Margaret, daughter of Henry Champernowne, of Modbury, and he died leaving as his heir a child, and the administration of his estates was committed to that son’s great-uncle. Of Ley, the fine Slanning place, nothing now remains except the balls that stood on the entrance gates, that have been transferred to the vicarage garden at Bickleigh. The situation was incomparably beautiful, and it is to be regretted that the grand old Elizabethan mansion has been levelled with the dust. Sir Nicholas Slanning, created a baronet in 1663, moved to Maristowe in Tamerton Foliot, but the second and last baronet died without issue in 1700, and in 1798 John Modyford Heywood, who inherited the extensive Slanning estates through a female line, sold them all to Sir Manasseh Lopes, a Portuguese Jew diamond merchant, who had obtained a baronetcy by buying up rotten boroughs in Cornwall and putting in members whose votes could be relied on by the ministry of the day. The baronetcy was created in 1805. The first baronet was the son of Mordecai Lopes, of Jamaica.

“Great,” we are informed, “was the lamentation that the countryside made for the death of so beloved a gentleman as Maister Slanning was.”

John Fitz, then aged twenty-four, escaped to the Continent and stayed in France, until the exertions of his wife and mother succeeded in December, 1599, in procuring a pardon for him; whereupon he returned home, unsubdued by the past, insolent, riotous, and haughty. At the coronation of James I, 1603, he was knighted, not for any services done to the Crown or State, but because he was of good family, well connected, and with property.

He returned to Fitzford, where, finding his wife and child something of a drag upon him in his wild and dissipated career, he turned them out of doors, and his wife had to go for shelter to her father. Left now to himself and his evil associates, “Men of dissolute and desperate fortunes,” chief among whom was “Lusty Jacke, one whose deedes were indeed meane, whose qualities altogether none,” he behaved in such sort that “the Towne of Tavistocke, though otherwise orderly governed with sobriety, and likewise of grave magistrates, was thereby infected with the beastly corruption of drunkenesse. Sir John, of his own inclination apte, and by his retained copesmates urged, persevered evermore to run headlong into such enormities as their sensuality and pleasures inclined unto, spending their time in riotous surfettinge and in all abominable drunkenness, plucking men by night out of their beddes, violently breaking windows, quarrelling with ale-conners [ale-tasters], fighting in private brables amongst themselves. And when they had abused the townsmen and disturbed their neighbours, Sir John’s own house was their sanctuary or receptacle to cloak their outrages; so as it seemed they lyved as, in time of old, the common outlaws of the land did, neither worshipping God nor honouringe Prince, but wholly subject to their contentes alone.”

According to Prince, about this time Fitz committed another murder; but what seems to be better authenticated is that he all but killed one of the town constables.

In the summer of 1605, Sir John Fitz was summoned to London to appear before the courts, in answer to a claim of compensation for their father’s murder, made by the children of Nicholas Slanning, the eldest of whom, Gamaliel, was now about eighteen years old. He set out on horseback, attended by a servant. Dissipation had weakened his mind and shattered his nerves. He was in deadly alarm. Not only would he be heavily fined for the assassination of Slanning, but he had been playing ducks and drakes with his property which had been settled by deed of 20 March, 1598–9, on his wife, and he expected to be called to task for this by Sir William Courtenay, his wife’s father. He took it into his head that his life was in danger, that the friends and kinsfolk of Slanning would ambuscade and murder him; that Sir W. Courtenay would be willing to have him put out of the way so as to save the property from being further dissipated. At every point on his journey he showed himself suspicious of being waylaid or pursued. Every day his fancies became more disordered.

At length he reached Kingston-on-Thames, and put up for the night there. But he could not sleep, noises disturbed him, and rising from his bed he insisted on the servant getting ready his nag, and away he rode over Kingston Bridge, alone, having peremptorily forbidden his man to accompany him, entertaining some suspicion that the man had been bought by his enemies and would lead him into a trap. He drew up at the “Anchor,” a small tavern at Twickenham, kept by one Daniel Alley; it was now 2 a.m., and all Twickenham was asleep. He hammered at the door and shouted; presently the casement opened, and the publican put out his head and inquired what the gentleman wanted. Sir John demanded a bed and shelter for the rest of the night. Daniel Alley begged to be excused, he had no spare room, his house was small and not fitted for the reception of persons of quality. However, on Sir John’s further insistence he put on his clothes, struck a light, descended, and did his utmost to make the nocturnal visitor comfortable, even surrendering to him his own bed, and sending his wife to sleep with the children. Sir John cast himself on the bed. He tossed; and host and hostess heard him cry out, and speak of enemies who pursued him and sought his blood. There was no sleeping for Daniel or his wife, and the host rose at dawn to join a neighbour in mowing a meadow. But when he was about to go forth, his wife begged not to be left in the house alone with the strange gentleman. The neighbour came up, and he and Alley spoke together at the door. Their voices reached Sir John, who had fallen into a disordered sleep. Persuaded that the enemies were arrived and were surrounding the house, he rushed out in his nightgown, with his sword drawn, fell on his host, and killed him. Then he ran his sword against the wife, wounding her. But now, with the gathering light, he discovered what he had done, and in a fit of despair stabbed himself in two places. He was secured now by neighbours who had come up, and taken to the bed he had just quitted. A surgeon was sent for, and his wounds were bound up. But Sir John angrily refused the assistance of the leech, and tore away the bandages, and bled to death.

Daniel Alley was buried on the 8th day of August, 1605, and Sir John Fitz on the 10th, and “because he was a Gentleman borne and of good kindred, hee was buried in the Chancell at Twickenham.” The representative of the Fitz family was now his little daughter Mary, whose story is also sufficiently curious to deserve a place here.

The authority for the story of Sir John Fitz’s death is The Bloudie Booke; or, the Tragical End of Sir John Fitz. London, 1605. Probably enough written by a chaplain to the Earl of Northumberland, then at Sion House, who hearing of what had happened, sent this chaplain to Twickenham, and to Sir John, at the “Anchor,” “To put him in mind what he had done and persuade him to repent.”

LADY HOWARD

The Earl of Northumberland had shown himself solicitous for the welfare of the soul of Sir John Fitz when he heard of the murder and suicide at Twickenham; he was even more solicitous over his estate. He was aware that Sir John had left an only daughter, still a child, who was with her mother at Radford. He posted up to London at once, saw the King, and bought of him the wardship of the little orphan for £465, to be paid in instalments, and raised out of the estate of the little heiress, who was then aged nine years and one week.

“The law of wardship,” says Mrs. G. Radford, “seems so cruel and tyrannical that it is wonderful that it should have endured so long. By it, when any man who held land in capite, or direct from the Crown, died, his heir, if a minor, belonged to the king, who had a right to receive all rents and profits from these lands until the heir became of age. He could also marry the ward to whom he would. Henry VIII established the Court of Wards and Liveries, the number of estates held in capite being so great that some organized system was necessary. By it the wardship and marriage of minors were sold to the highest bidder, who was sometimes the child’s mother or the executors of the father’s will. But if they were not very prompt in applying, or did not offer the largest sum, then to any stranger. The guardian would have complete control over the ward, who generally lived in his house, could marry the ward as he liked, this also being generally an affair of money, and received the rents of the minor’s estate without any liability to account.”⁶

Accordingly, at the age of nine, little Mary Fitz was taken from her mother, but under whose charge she was placed at first does not appear. A year or two later, she was living in the house of Lady Elizabeth Hatton, second wife of Sir Edmund Coke, then Master of the Court of Wards. At once the Earl of Northumberland sent his brother, Sir Allan Percy, into Devon to look over the estates of Mary Fitz and make what money he could out of them by felling timber.

Sir Allan was, apparently, quite satisfied with what he saw; he was a needy man, and resolved on marrying the heiress, and this he did about 1608, when he was aged thirty-one and she twelve. But as she was so young it was arranged that she should not live with her husband till she reached a nubile age. She never did live with him, for he caught a severe chill through lying on the damp ground when hot and tired with hunting, and he died in November, 1611. She was the wealthiest heiress in Devonshire, and the Earl of Suffolk schemed to obtain her for his third son, Sir Thomas Howard. She was not only rich, but beautiful. Her father had been a remarkably handsome man, and Lord Clarendon, long after this date, speaks of her as “having been of extraordinary beauty.” But she balked all schemers by running away with Thomas Darcy, a young man of her own age, son of Lord Darcy, of Chiche, afterwards Earl Rivers. Lord Darcy could not object to the match, but Mary Fitz was still a minor, and a ward. If proceedings were threatened, nothing came of it, for the young bridegroom died. The exact date is not known, but he could not have lived with her more than a few months after his marriage.

Mary, still a ward, was now married, for the third time before she was sixteen, to Sir Charles Howard, fourth son of the Earl of Suffolk, not to Sir Thomas, his third son, as had been at first designed. The young couple resided with the Earl at Audley End, and there her first child was born, a daughter, Elizabeth, born on 21 September, 1613, who does not seem to have lived long, as she disappears altogether within a few years. There was a second daughter, Mary, born in London, the date not known; but Sir Charles Howard died on 22 September, 1622, without leaving male issue. It was when a widow about this time, apparently, that Lady Howard was painted by Vandyke, and this was engraved by Hollar. The painting cannot now be traced. She was now one of the stateliest dames of the Court of Henrietta Maria, where she cultivated the friendship of the Duke of Buckingham, who exerted his influence with her so as to render her propitious to the addresses of one of his own dependents, Sir Richard Grenville. The Duke considered that a rich wife would help on the fortunes of his favourite, and thus did the heiress of Fitzford and Walreddon give herself to her fourth and worst husband. But before marrying him she was cautious to tie up her estate in such a manner that he could not touch it. Without breathing a word of what she was doing, she conveyed all her lands to Walter Hele, Anthony Short, and William Grills in trust to permit her during her life, whether sole or married, to receive the rents and dispose of them at her own goodwill and pleasure. Sir Richard Grenville went with his wife to Fitzford, and there in May, 1630, their first child was born, and christened Richard after his father. Sir Richard was mightily incensed when he discovered that he could not handle the revenues of the estates, and this led to incessant bickerings. Clarendon says: —

“He had nothing to depend upon but the fortune of his wife: which, though ample enough to have supported the expense a person of his quality ought to have made, was not large enough to satisfy his vanity and ambition. Nor so great as he, upon common reports, had promised himself by her. By not being enough pleased with her fortune, he grew less pleased with his wife; who, being a woman of a haughty and imperious nature, and of a wit far superior to his own, quickly resented the disrespect she received from him, and in no degree studied to make herself easy to him. After some years spent together in these domestic unsociable contestations, in which he possessed himself of all her estate, as the sole master of it, without allowing her out of her own any competency for herself, and indulging to himself all those licences in her own house which to women are most grievous, she found means to withdraw herself from him, and was with all kindness received into the family in which she had before married, and was always very much respected.”

Before proceeding with the quotation from Clarendon, it will be well to give at once some illustrative touches as to the annoyances she underwent at the hands of Sir Richard, and as to her own conduct towards him. He confined her to a corner of her own house, Fitzford, excluded her from the government of the house, and installed his aunt, Mrs. Katherine Abbott, as his housekeeper, with control over the servants and the keeping of the keys.

This was bad enough, but there was worse to come; his violence and language towards her were so intolerable that she was constrained to appeal to the justices of the peace, who ordered him to allow her forty shillings a week. This, after a time, he refused to pay, unless she would grant him an acquittance. All this is stated in the lady’s plea to obtain a divorce in 1631–2. He also called her bad names before the justices, “she being a vertuous and a chaste lady” – a pretty scene in the court at Tavistock for the citizens to witness and listen to.

“He gave directions to one of his servantes to burn horse-haire, wooll, feathers and parings of horse hoofes, and to cause the smoke to goe into the ladye’s chamber, through an hole made in the plaistering out of the kitchen. He broke up her chamber doore, and came into her chamber at night with a sword drawn. That for the key of his closett which she had taken away and denyed to give him, he tooke hold of her petty coate and tore it, and threw her upon the ground, being with childe, and, as one witness deposeth, made her eye blacke and blewe.”

Sir Richard, on his side, complained, “That they had lived quietly together for the space of two years, and till they came to this Court… That she hath often carried herself unseemly both in wordes and deedes, and sunge unseemly songs to his face to provoke him, and bid him goe to such a woman and such a woman, and called him a poore rogue and pretty fellow, and said he was not worth ten groates when she married him; that she would make him creepe to her, and that she had good friends in London would beare her out of it. That she swore the peace against him without cause, and then asked him, ‘Art thou not a pretty fellow to be bound to the good behaviour?’ Then she said he was an ugly fellow, and when he was once gone from home, she said, ‘The Devill and sixpence goe with him, and soe shall he lacke neither money nor company!’ That she said such a one was a honester man than her husband, and loved Cuttofer (George Cutteford, her steward) better than him. That there were holes made in the kitchen wall by the lady or her daughter (i.e. Mary Howard), that he gave direction that they should be stopped up, that she might not harken to what the servants said in the kitchen, that she had ten roomes at pleasure, and had whatsoever in the house she would desire. That she locked him into his closett and tooke away the key, and it is true he endeavoured to take away the key from her, and hurt his thumb and rent her pocket.”

Sir Richard certainly comes out best in the case. She was a woman of insuperable pride, and with a violent temper and abusive, insulting tongue. Having fled from Fitzford, and taken refuge with the family of the Earl of Suffolk, Sir Richard for a while breathed free, and rejoiced at her absence, till the tenants refused to pay rent into his hands, whereupon he found himself without money; her pre-nuptial settlement was put in force, and the trustees required the tenants to pay their rents to them. To return to Clarendon. “This begat a suit in Chancery between Sir Richard Grenville and the Earl of Suffolk, before the Lord Coventry, who found the conveyance in Law to be so firm, that he could not only not relieve Sir Richard Grenville in equity, but that in justice he must decree the land to the Earl, which he did. This very sensible mortification transported him so much, that being a man who used to speak bitterly of those he did not love, after all endeavours to engage the Earl in a personal conflict, he revenged himself upon him in such opprobrious language as the Government and justice of that time would not permit to pass unpunished; and the Earl appealed for reparation to the Court of the Star Chamber, where Sir Richard was decreed to pay three thousand pounds to the King, who gave the fine likewise to the Earl; so that Sir Richard was committed to the prison of the Fleet in execution for the whole six thousand pounds, which at that time was thought by all men to be a very severe and rigorous decree, and drew a general compassion towards the unhappy gentleman.

“For some years Sir Richard endured this imprisonment, which made him the more bitter against his wife; he at length escaped his captivity, and fled beyond seas. There he remained till the great change in England having caused many decrees of the Star Chamber to be repealed, and the persons awarded to pay penalties absolved, he came home and petitioned to be heard in mitigation of his case. Before this came on, the rebellion broke out in Ireland.” The proceedings for a divorce were taken by Lady Grenville against her husband whilst he was a prisoner in the Fleet, no doubt acting on the advice of the Earl of Suffolk, elder brother of her late husband; and it was whilst she was in London at his house that her second daughter, Elizabeth, was born. The court after hearing arguments from counsel, decreed divorce a mensa et thoro, but that one-half of her means should be paid to Sir Richard annually. In August of the same year (1632), a commission was sent to Fitzford to search the house, as Sir Richard was suspected of clipping the current coin and of coining as well. Sir F. Drake and William Strode visited the house, but notice of their coming had in some way been given. They thoroughly searched “tronkes, chests and cabinetts,” and closely examined Mrs. Abbott, Sir Richard’s aunt “who had the rule of the house.” Pincers, holdfasts, files “smoothe and ruffe,” one of which had been employed for yellow metal, were found, and the servants admitted that they had melted silver lace, etc. All this, though suspicious, was not conclusive, and the charge was not pressed. On 17 October, 1633, Sir Richard escaped from the Fleet and entered the Swedish service in Germany. Nothing is heard of him again till 1639. During these seven years his emancipated wife lived in various places, for the first four or five years with the Earl of Suffolk, and afterwards at her own house in London. She had thrown off her name of Grenville and resumed that of Howard.

Theophilus, Earl of Suffolk, was born in 1584, and was married to Lady Elizabeth Hume, who died in 1533, the year after the divorce. To this period probably belongs an episode that is shrouded in mystery. Lady Howard had a son, George Howard, when born is not recorded.

He is first mentioned in 1644 in a petition made by his mother to the King, and then and afterwards is alluded to as Lady Howard’s son. He certainly was not the son of Sir Charles Howard, for seven years after that gentleman’s death, in 1628, it is stated, in his wife’s pleading before the Court of Chancery, that Sir Charles died “without heires male, leaving only twoe daughters, Elizabeth and Mary.” It is a curious fact that none of the contemporary writers who mention Lady Howard make any aspersions on her morals. That George passed in Tavistock as the son of Sir Charles is certain, but it is just as certain that he was not this. We cannot but suspect a liaison with Theophilus, Earl of Suffolk, in whose house Lady Howard continued to live after the death of his wife. In the confusion of the Civil Wars, and the distraction of men’s minds from family scandals to events of public import, it would have been quite possible for Lady Howard to mislead the Tavistock people as to the true parentage of her son George. The Earl was by no means an old man when the Countess died, in fact, was aged forty-nine years.

During the seven years of Sir Richard’s absence, Lady Howard wrote many letters to her steward Cutteford, who occupied Walreddon and managed her estates in Devon and Cornwall. Whether it was intended as humour or not we cannot say, but she invariably addressed her agent as “Guts,” “Honest Guts,” “Good Guts,” and once “Froward Guts,” and almost every letter was for money. In all the seven years since the decree of divorce, Sir Richard had certainly not received one penny of the sum allotted to him to be paid annually from his wife’s income, and when he returned to England in 1639 he carried his cause before the King’s Council, and claimed of the Earl of Suffolk arrears to the amount of £12,656.

A committee was appointed to hear Sir Richard’s cause, in December, 1640, and so hopeful was he of success, that he actually went down to Fitzford, turned out the caretakers, and installed his aunt there again. Lady Howard wrote to her steward in “a very great distraction” on hearing of these proceedings. But before his case was decided, he was sent by the King to Ireland in command of a troop, and arrived in Dublin in March, 1641–2. He remained in Ireland for more than a year, and earned distinction as a commander. On his return, he learned that the King, who was at Oxford, was short of money, and that the Parliament in London had plenty. He had not been paid for his services in Ireland, so he rode to where the money bags were, assumed the Puritan cant and nasal twang, recounted his great service, and protested his desire to quit the “Tents of Shem and cast in his lot with the righteous,” i.e. to desert the royal cause. The Parliament was delighted, he was at once paid all arrears, was made a major-general of horse in the Parliamentary army, with a regiment of five hundred horse, and power to choose his own officers. On 2 March, 1643–4, he set out with his regiment, riding through London amidst the plaudits of the citizens. His banner was carried in front, displaying a map of England and Wales on a crimson ground, with “England bleeding” in golden letters across the top. The regiment rode on as far as Bagshot, when a halt was called. Then Sir Richard harangued the officers and men, set forth the sinfulness of fighting against their anointed King, and concluded by inviting them to follow him to Oxford, to fight for the King instead of against him. The officers, whom he had not failed to pick out from among his most trusty friends and dependents, all cheerfully assented, and followed by most of his soldiers, Sir Richard rode straight to Oxford and presented himself to the King at the head of a well-equipped troop, and placed his sword at His Majesty’s disposal. The Parliament, duped, was furious, a price was set on Sir Richard’s head, and he was hanged in effigy. A Proclamation was issued, declaring him “traytor, rogue, villain and skellum” – this last word was deemed so appropriate that henceforth he was known as Skellum Grenville. William Lilly, the astrologer, refers to him when he says: “Have we another Red Fox like Sir R. G. acting his close devotions to do our Army mischief? Let’s be wary!”