of him. A great politisian and sownd in ye reformed religion. Witnes his confession on his dethe bed. . . . His last sickness wase, at Theobaldes, of an ordinary ague; by reason of his impatience to endure payne, and his wilfulnes in hauing of those thinges that weare oposite to his disease. As in his heate puting his handes in colde water, and by a moderate drynkinge of smale beare and other disorders it grewe to a fever, and so he dyed. He would knowe of his phisitions where on his well daye his ague was.'

'Sir Henry Neville on Kinge James.

Never man wrought moore and did les;
Never man spoke bettor and did woorse.'

This long description agrees very well, as the Saturday Reviewer has observed, with what other contemporary writers have handed down respecting the strange character of James. D'Ewes and Weldon were bitter men determined to paint the first Stuart King in his blackest colours. Sir John Oglander, a more kindly man and better disposed towards his sovereign, confirms their accounts of his profane swearing and other gross habits. Much decried as James I has been, England did not fare amiss under his reign. Then were laid the foundations of our vast colonial Empire, or what Sir Charles Dilke and the newspapers call 'Greater Britain.' And to come home nearer to ourselves, the condition of the Isle of Wight became greatly improved when James was on the throne of England. The commission appointed at the accession of Queen Elizabeth under Sir Francis Knollys to investigate the cause of distress in the Isle of Wight, in its report which still exists in the State Paper Office, reveals a very melancholy state of affairs, which was attributed to the depressing circumstances in which the inhabitants lived from the constant alarm of a hostile descent and the removal of the wool staple from Dover to Calais. In the concluding years of Queen Elizabeth's reign, after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, and after the accession of James I a great improvement in the condition of the inhabitants took place.

The custom which had prevailed among the Island gentry of sending their families to the mainland on occasions of

warlike alarms fell into disuse, and the result of this confidence in the power of the home government was the building of such manor houses as Northcourt (the only one retaining its former dignity), Westcourt, Woolverton, Kingston, Mottistone, Arreton, Yaverland, Sheat, and others, which still remain. These old Jacobean houses differ from those that were erected in Yorkshire at the same period in architectural details, but they alike, both in the North and South of England, attest the growing importance and wealth of the squirearchy and higher yeomanry in the first half of the seventeenth century. It is much to be desired that some artist should take sketches of these interesting monuments of a period rich in picturesque domestic architecture, before they are swept away in the advance of villadom and other specimens of the handiwork of the speculative builder. At this time the population of the Isle of Wight is estimated by Mr. Long, in his 'Introduction' to the Og'ander Memoirs, as about 15,000 or 16,000. The houses were generally built of the native stone, and, except those of the gentry, mostly thatched. Each cottage had a garden, in which vegetables were grown, though potatoes were not in common use till a hundred years later. Bread made of wheat flour was commonly eaten, and barley bread only used in times of scarcity. Orchards were common, from which cider was made for home consumption. Most of the farms, except those on the estates of the knights and gentry, were small and owned by the farmers themselves, who cultivated wheat, barley, oats, pease, and vetches. The arable land was not generally enclosed by hedges, and much of the so-called forest was woodland and unenclosed heath. Pigs fed on acorns in the parks of Appuldurcombe, Watchingwell, and Avington or Parkhurst Forest. Sheep roamed on the downs and commons belonging to the manors; they who had rights of pasturage being called 'commoners.' The Island was noted for the excellence of its sheep. Corn and wool, celebrated for its fineness, were the chief exports, the manufactures being next to none; but some alum and copperas works were carried on with success. The clergy farmed their glebes, and their unmarried farm servants usually lived in the parsonage with the household. Most of them probably

were better judges of a bullock than spiritual pastors, being, if Sir John Dingley is to be believed, loose and idle livers, who neglect their charge.' It was not till the first year of James that the statute of Mary forbidding the marriage of the clergy was repealed; and from the coarse demeanour of Queen Elizabeth towards the wife of Archbishop Parker, when receiving the hospitalities of that prelate, it may be imagined that the wives of the clergy would meet with scant courtesy from the stately dames who belonged to the Island squirearchy. A long time had to elapse before the Reformed clergy were treated like gentlemen by the rural aristocracy and their dependants. Öglander almost entirely ignores their existence; they seem never to have been present at the ordinaries and festive gatherings of the knights and gentry, or at my Lord Southampton's bowling green at Standen, though a game of bowls was at that period an especially correct clerical amusement. The social influence of the clergy in the Isle of Wight in the first half of the seventeenth century was little, if any. The functions of the justices of the peace were various and their authority very extensive. They regulated the prices of labour and provisions, licensed and suppressed ale-houses, and combined the duties of guardians of the poor with those which are now assigned to the County Council. Each parish maintained its own poor and kept its roads in repair with the stones gathered from the fields, but this was so imperfectly done that the roads were full of deep ruts and holes, and in winter generally impassable by wheel-carriages. The highways were few, none between Newport and Niton, and between Newport and Newtown the road was barely a wheel track, which lay through the fields, and was crossed by gates at every few hundred yards. Nearly everybody travelled on horseback, the mistress on a pillion behind the master, coaches being almost unknown. Sir John Oglander says that his coach was the second ever seen in the Island. Until 1615 there was no regular post to and from London, and fifty or sixty years earlier all letters to the mainland were conveyed across the Solent by a 'coney catcher,' who visited the Island at short intervals to supply the London market with rabbits. Hares were comparatively scarce till Sir

Edward Horsey's scheme of exchanging a lamb for a hare took effect, but partridges and pheasants abounded. The Undercliff and creeks in the Island swarmed with waterfowl. Sir John Oglander says that his father, Sir William, with his man, often bagged forty couple of wild fowl among the shallows and sedges of Brading Harbour. Deer were not plentiful, except some that ran wild in Parkhurst Forest, which then extended from the west bank of the Medina to the long winding arms of the Newtown estuary. The forest belonged to the Captain of the Island, but the 'commoners could turn their cattle and horses to pasture in its glades. Hawking and coursing, with a game of bowls, served for the ordinary amusements of the gentry, who on wet days amused themselves with the rough sport of flinging cushions at one another, by which sport Sir Richard Worsley nearly lost his only remaining eye. On holidays bull-baiting was the recreation of the commonalty. On the feast day of the Mayor of Newport (Newport having exchanged its former bailiffs for a Mayor in James I's reign), the Governor of the Island always gave £5 to purchase a bull, which, after being baited, was killed and his flesh given to the poor. The Mayor and Corporation with macebearer and constables attended the baiting, and the first dog let loose at the bull was decorated with ribbons and called the Mayor's dog. Cowes and St. Helens were the resort of seafaring men from all countries, and contributed to the prosperity of the Island by the purchase of native commodities and the sale of their own goods. Money,' says Oglander, in perhaps a scmewhat highly-coloured picture describing his youthful reminiscences, was so plentiful in yeomen's purses as now in the best of the gentry, and all the gentry full of money and out of debt, the market full of commodities vending themselves at most high rate of prices, and men-of-war at the Cows, which gave great rates for our commodities and exchanged other good ones with us. If you had anything to sell you needed not to have looked for a chapman, for you would not always ask, but have. All things were exported or imported at our heart's desire, your tenants rich, and a bargain would not stand at any rate. The State was well ordered. We had in good manner wars

with Spain and peace with France, and the Low Countries were our servants, not our masters. Then it was insula fortunata, now infortunata.

March 8, 1890.

THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON, GOVERNOR OF THE ISLE OF WIGHT, AND CAPTAIN OF CARISBROOKE, A.D. 1603-1625.

Lord Southampton is best known to students of the literary history of England as the friend and patron of Shakespeare. The biographers of the poet who holds the greatest name in English literature have by skilfully combining facts and theories so filled up the meagre details of the career of the man Shakespeare, as to give us a tolerably complete picture of his childhood, schooling, youth and manhood. Some of these biographers have added fancies as to the places visited by Shakespeare and the acquaintances whom he made. The strongest flight of their imagination has never suggested a visit from the great dramatist to his generous patron, Lord Southampton, while Governor of this Island. It would indeed add much to the interest of Carisbrooke Castle if we could imagine to ourselves that the eye of the chief of all English poets had gazed upon the fair prospect of Bowcombe and its well-watered valley, which arrests the attention of the visitor as he makes his way over the steep green slopes to the Castle gate. Any such notion must, however, be dismissed, and the Isle of Wight must be content to link any associations which it can claim with Shakespeare to the simple fact that one of the most popular Governors it ever had was closely connected with the fortunes of the poet in his earlier days of honest struggle.

In 1587 Shakespeare, being then twenty-three years old, came up from his native town of Stratford-on-Avon and settled in London. For some years afterwards he cannot be