this lady whom he married Buckingham had three sons and one daughter. The Lady Mary was his firstborn, his eldest son died at nurse, his second son, who succeeded him to his title and estates, has been condemned to an odious immortality by the Zimri' of the poet Dryden, and is still perhaps better known by Alexander Pope's exaggerated description of his deathbed 'in the worst inn's worst room.' His third son was Lord Francis, who, as Clarendon says, 'having his horse slain under him, got to an oak-tree on the highway about two miles from Kingston, where he stood. with his back against it, defending himself, and scorning to ask quarter, and they barbarously refusing to give it him till with nine wounds in his beautiful face and body he was killed at the age of nineteen in the Civil Wars.'

George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, was murdered in his thirty-sixth year. Hallam has a curious story of Buckingham, which seems to show that, aware of his unpopularity in England, and that sooner or later he must fall, the Duke had entered into negotiations with Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden to seize upon certain American gold mines belonging to Spain. This and other designs of his scheming, intriguing brain were quenched by the knife of John Felton. Buckingham serves to point the moral of the novelist Fielding's description of one of his handsome scoundrels, Nature had certainly wrapt up her odious work in a most beautiful covering.'

August 27, 1887.

THE EARLS OF NEWPORT, AND SOCIETY IN THE ELIZABETHAN AGE.

THE England of Elizabeth, as portrayed by that charming writer, the author of Westward Ho! where all the men were heroes and patriots, all were disinterested, all were sincere professors of a pure and reformed faith, has gradually been dismissed from the minds of historical inquirers. The

influence of the Queen herself was not favourable to high moral principle. As we trace Elizabeth,' so writes Mr. Green, 'through her tortuous mazes of lying and intrigue, the sense of her greatness is almost lost in a sense of contempt.' More especially was this the case in the later portion of the reign of this sovereign lady, when most of the austerity characteristic of her earlier years had vanished away. The most distinguished courtiers, Raleigh, Essex, Blount, and even Sidney must be added to the list, were men of brilliant parts, but not without licence of morals. Sir John Oglander, in his lately published Memoirs (Long's edition, pp. 13, 14), in his blunt way, gives us a glimpse into the morals of the Devereux family, when mentioning the parentage of the first Earl of Newport.

'Abowte ye beginning of Awgust, 1628, my Lorde Mountjoye, base sonn of ye late Lorde Mountjoye, Earl of Devonshyre, on ye bodye of my Lorde Ryche's wyfe, was by ye king created Earle of Nuport in ye Isle of Wyght. I myselve went unto him abowt ye 17th of ye same moonthe, and to be resolved asked of him wheathor itt wase Nuport in owre Island, there being moore Nuportes, and he towld me he wase bowlde with our favors to take that honnor upon him; he is ye fyrste Earle we ever had in owre Island.'

Lady Rich, the mother of the Earl of Newport, had attained an unhappy notoriety among the gallants and courtiers of Elizabeth and of that queen's successor. She was the daughter of Walter Devereux, created Earl of Essex, 14 Eliz. Sir Philip Sidney was deeply attached to her when she was Lady Penelope Devereux, and celebrated her under the name of Philoclea in his Arcadia. She was however married against her will to Robert Lord Rich, afterwards created Earl of Warwick. Sidney married in 1583 Frances, the only daughter of his old friend Sir Francis Walsingham. Astrophel and Stella, a series of amatory poems by Sir Philip Sidney, though written nearly nine years before, was published in 1591. These sonnets and songs recount the loves of Sir Philip Sidney and Lady Rich; and it is, as Hallam (Lit. Hist. vol. ii. p. 225) observes, rather a singular circumstance that in her own and her husband's lifetime this ardent courtship of a married woman should have been deemed fit for publication.

Sidney's passion seems to have been unsuccessful, but far enough from being platonic.' Against this decision of Hallam's some of the biographers of Sidney have protested; however this may be, as is usual in such cases, the idolater degraded the object of his idolatry. His admiration paved the way for her degradation. Lady Rich became an avowed adulteress and the paramour of Blount, afterwards created Earl of Devonshire, who was the father of several of her children, and after her divorce from her husband married her in 1605. Mrs. Jameson in her Romance of Biography gives an account of this ill-fated woman.

In no respect did the English Reformation work more irregularly and produce more family discord than in its dealings with the marriage laws-laws with which in the famous case of King Henry and Katherine of Arragon the Reformers were so soon, so closely, and so unfortunately, as events proved, associated. These difficulties had in the first place arisen from what had been esteemed the superior sanctity of celibacy, and also from the grasping and arbitrary appropriation by the Church of no less than eight degrees of kindred, within which no man or woman might marry lawfully unless he or she procured an express permission. from Rome. To man or woman disgusted with their choice of a mate it had always been open to feel a late vocation for the cloister, or to discover that he or she had married in ignorance within the forbidden degrees, so that the marriage, unless renewed by the grant and confirmation of the Pope, became null and void. Public opinion, the interest of children, and the touch of human feeling might offer some safeguards against this terribly insecure obligation. But both in Roman Catholic times and down to the reign of Elizabeth men and women availed themselves of this liberty of divorce. Sentimentalists took advantage of this laxity, to which some of the foreign Protestants unfortunately yielded, and argued that, since all burdens when not self-imposed are to be considered hardships, in order that the union between man and wife may be perfect, those who have formed it should be at liberty to dissolve it when they please. The age of Elizabeth was a period of religious controversy. Men and women became sick of these controversies, which left them

neither right nor wrong, neither earth nor heaven. Hence arose that very low tone of morality which honest old Harrison, a contemporary writer, says prevailed in the court of Elizabeth. The infection spread especially among the upper classes, and the Elizabethan age cannot be claimed as one of domestic purity among the nobility. In Scotland John Knox with his brother clergy sternly required the Earl and Countess of Argyle to do penance publicly at the date when their differences had gone no further than a temporary separation. In England, where Queen Elizabeth was in the habit of snubbing her bishops and deans, it was not to be expected that the aristocracy would listen to the remonstrances of the inferior clergy, the greater portion of whom were illiterate men, whose own leave to marry was only connived at, since the children sprung from marriages of the clergy were illegitimate till the accession of James the First. The influence of Puritanism was required to come in and purify the unwholesome atmosphere of the court. The character of the great Queen deteriorated as she grew older; as the sands of her life were running out, she clung to the pomps and vanities of the world with fierce tenacity. The statesmen and soldiers of her earlier days had dropped one by one from her council board. To be a successful courtier, it was necessary to practise the arts of frivolity and levity. Too often it appears from the private letters of the time that the ladies who were about the Queen's person indulged in no less licence of manners than their associates of the other sex.

Sir Charles Blount, the second son of Lord Mountjoy, was one of the elderly Queen's young favourites with whom she jested and coquetted, scolded and frolicked. He is more creditably known as the Lord Deputy of Ireland who followed Lord Essex in that office. On his arrival in Ireland, which was then in rebellion, he found himself master of only three miles round Dublin, but in three years the revolt was at an end. Though he afterwards married Lady Rich, he died leaving no legitimate issue. The title of Earl of Devonshire became extinct till it was renewed in 1618 in favour of William Cavendish of Hardwick, created Earl of Devonshire by James I.

Of Blount's illegitimate son, who was created Baron

Mountjoy of Thurleston, co. Derby, 1627, and Earl of Newport, I. W., 1628, Oglander says, 'What success this newe Earle may haue, who hath ye title, but noe lande or place therein, aftor adges shall see.' He took part in the expedition to the Isle of Rhé in 1627. The King of France, Louis XIII, generously sent all the English prisoners without ransom as a present to his sister, Henrietta Maria, Queen of England, and told Mountjoy, who offered a good sum for his liberty, that he should pay no money, but on his return to England he could send him two couple of English hounds. 'This Earle of Nuport,' adds Oglander, had bene made Earle of Portesmouth, if itt had not bene for a cripled foole that I browght up theyre when I lived at Portesmouth, that assumed in derision that name. This cripled foole not only hindored him from that honnor, but manie others that woold have taken itt (all honnor in those days of ye greate Duke being att sale). I in charitie browght him up, and aftorwards by repayre of ye Duke and Lordes to Portesmouth, and theyre affecting him, he grewe to that bowldnesse as to foole them all.'

The Earl of Newport, who was Master of the Ordnance and one of the Council of War, died February 12, 1665. He married Anne, daughter of Lord Butler of Bramfield, who, on the death of her husband, married Thomas Weston, brother of Jerome, second Earl of Portland, Governor of Carisbrooke Castle, who on the death of Jerome's son, Charles, in the sea-fight against the Dutch, A.D. 1605, became his successor, and dying without issue, the title became extinct. George Blount, son and heir to this first Earl of Newport, died unmarried in March, 1675-76; Charles Blount, brother and heir to George, died within a month after him. Henry Blount, brother and heir to Charles, succeeded him, and died unmarried about September 8, 1679, when the title became extinct in the Blount family.

The present Marquis of Bute bears the title of Viscount Mountjoy of the Isle of Wight. This title came into the Crichton-Stuart family through John fourth Earl of Bute, born 1744, who, on the demise of his mother, Mary, only daughter of Edward Wortley Montagu, Esq., co. York, had succeeded to the barony of Mount Stuart, having been