Wilkes with his squint, by which the demagogue is better known to posterity than by all the busts and pictures by which his admirers sought to glorify his name. Churchill thereon addressed An Epistle to William Hogarth, which appeared in July 1763, and which Garrick described as the most bloody performance of my time.' Ere the month was out, Hogarth took his revenge in a shilling print, entitled 'The Bruiser, C. Churchill (once the Rev.), in the character of a Russian Hercules, regaling himself after having killed the monster Caricatura, that so sorely galled his virtuous friend, the heaven-born Wilkes. All who have turned over Hogarth, will remember the bear in torn clerical bands, and with paws in ruffles, holding a pot of porter and a knotted club with Lyes and North Briton graven over it, and a pug-dog treating his poems with gross indignity. Whatever Churchill wrote, sold, and sold for good prices, and he kept publishing pamphlet after pamphlet as occasion moved him. He wrote hastily, and not a little of his work was commonplace and mean, but ever and anon occurred a line or a passage of extraordinary vigour and felicity; and for these he will probably be read as long as English literature endures. A sudden desire to see Wilkes induced Churchill to set off for Boulogne in October 1764. On the 29th of that month he was seized there with fever. Feeling the hand of death was on him, he sat up in bed and dictated a brief will, leaving to his wife an annuity of £60, and another of £50 to the girl he had seduced, and providing for his two boys. On the 4th of November he died. His body was brought over to Dover, where in the Church of St Martin it lies buried. The news of his death reached Robert Lloyd as he was sitting down to dinner. He sickened, and thrust away his plate untouched. I shall follow poor Charles,' was all he said, as he went to the bed from which he never rose again. Churchill's favourite sister, Patty, to whom Lloyd was betrothed, sank next under the double blow, and in a few weeks joined her brother and lover. Thus tragically ended Churchill's brief and boisterous career. MARRIAGE OF WILLIAM AND MARY. Not the least important of the collateral causes, which led to the downfall of the Stuart dynasty in these kingdoms, was the marriage of William Prince of Orange to his fair cousin, the Princess Mary of York, on the 4th of November 1677. William arrived in England on the 19th of October previous, to seek the hand of the princess, and conclude a treaty with England, by which the war between France and Holland could be terminated, and peace restored to Europe. Charles II. was in favour of the marriage; his brother James, the bride's father, was not: both, however, were equally anxious to commit the prince to a treaty before the nuptials were solemnised. But the wise hero of Nassau would not speak of politics till he saw the princess, nor enter into any engagement until the marriage was finally settled. Such being his determination, little time was wasted in diplomacy. Whatever dark forebodings the Duke of York might have entertained, were overruled by the king; and the royal pair were married in St James's Palace, then the residence of the duke, at 87 MARRIAGE OF WILLIAM AND MARY. nine o'clock on a quiet Sunday evening; a passage leading from the bedroom of the princess being fitted up as a temporary chapel for the occasion. The royal etiquette of the day permitted few spectators; those present were the king and queen, the Duke of York and his young wife Mary of Modena, with their pages and personal attendants. Compton, bishop of London, performed the ceremony, the king giving away the bride. On the question being asked, 'Who giveth this woman?' Charles exclaimed, 'I do ;' a reply not to be found in the matrimonial service of the church. At the words, 'With all my worldly goods I thee endow,' William, in accordance with the Dutch custom, placed a handful of gold coin on the prayer-book, at which the king cried out to the bride: 'Pick it up-pick it up! it is all clear gain!' Immediately after the ceremony, the royal party received the congratulations of the chief officers of state and foreign ambassadors; and at eleven o'clock the bride and bridegroom retired to rest. All the absurd and indelicate wedding-customs of the olden time were observed on this occasion: the cake was eaten, the bride-posset drunk, the stocking thrown, and the curtain drawn, the last by the king himself, who, as he did it, shouted, 'St George for England!' Indeed, the marriage of the Third George with Queen Charlotte, was the first royal wedding in this country at which those customs, 'more honoured in the breach than in the observance,' were finally dispensed with. This Protestant Alliance,' as it was termed, diffusing a general satisfaction over the land, was celebrated with great rejoicing. At Edinburgh, the Duke of Lauderdale announced the welcome intelligence from the Cross, which was hung with tapestry, and decorated with arbours formed of many hundreds of oranges. Then the duke, several of the nobility, the lord provost and civic magistrates, drank the healths of the royal family; the conduits ran with wine, and sweetmeats were thrown among the crowd; while the guns of the castle thundered in unison with the huzzas of the populace. William was anxious to return to Holland immediately after his marriage, the more so because small-pox had broken out in St James's Palace, and his wife's beloved sister, the Princess Anne, was lying dangerously ill of it. But the queen's birthday falling on the 15th of November, he was induced to wait for the festivities of that occasion, intended to be celebrated with extra pomp on account of the wedding. On the evening of that day, the following Epithalamium, composed by Waller, was sung by the royal musicians before the assembled company at Whitehall. 'As once the lion honey gave, Out of the strong such sweetness came Produced this sweet, this lovely dame. 545 On that fair tree, which bears his name, His flowery youth with wisdom crowned.' 'I saw them launch; the prince the princess bore, While the sad court stood crowding on the shore. The prince still bowing on the deck did stand, And held his weeping consort by the hand, Which waving oft, she bade them all farewell, And wept, as if she would the briny ocean swell.' The wind again becoming unfavourable, William landed at Sheerness, and, accompanied by his bride and four attendants, made an excursion to Canterbury. Here he put up at an inn, and his cash falling short, he despatched his favourite Bentinck to the mayor and corporation, requesting a supply of money. The municipal authorities were taken by surprise. Strongly suspecting that the selfstyled royal party were impostors, some of the council advised their immediate arrest and committal to prison; others, with more prudence, recommended less stringent measures; but all agreed not to part with one farthing of money; and so the evasive reply was given to Bentinck, that the corporation had no funds at disposal. In the meantime, Dean Tillotson of the Cathedral, the sharp-witted son of a shrewd Yorkshire clothier, heard of the strange affair, and making his way to the inn, saw and recognised the princess. Rushing back to the deanery, he collected all his ready money and plate, and returning to the inn, presented it to the prince. Twelve years afterwards, when William and Mary were king and queen of England, this service of the far-seeing dean was not forgotten. He was made Clerk of the Closet to their majesties, and soon after consecrated ArchThe dean's interposition made a magical change in the state of affairs. The suspicious landlord, who had been inconveniently pressing his foreign guests for the amount of his bill, became in a moment the most obsequious of mortals. The gentlemen of Kent, now knowing who it was they had among them, crowded with their congratulations, and more substantial presents, to the prince and princess. William remained at the inn four days longer, and then left for Margate, where he embarked on the 28th of November; and after a short but stormy passage, the only lady on board unaffected by sea-sickness being the princess, he arrived safely in Holland. THE GUNPOWDER PLOT. NOVEMBER 5. St Bertille, abbess of Chelles, 692. Born.-Hans Sachs, German poet, 1494, Nuremberg; Dr John Brown, miscellaneous writer, 1715, Rothbury, Northumberland. Died.-Maria Angelica Kaufmann, portrait-painter, 1807, Rome. THE GUNPOWDER PLOT. The 5th of November marks the anniversary of two prominent events in English history-the discovery and prevention of the gunpowder treason, and the inauguration of the Revolution of 1688 by the landing of William III. in Torbay. In recent years, an additional interest has been attached to the date, from the victory at Inkerman over the Russians, in the Crimea, being gained on this day in 1854. Like the Bartholomew massacre at Paris in 1572, and the Irish massacre of 1641, the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, standing as it were midway, at a distance of about thirty years from each of these events, has been the means of casting much obloquy on the adherents of the Roman Catholic religion. It would, however, be a signal injustice to connect the Catholics as a body with the perpetration of this atrocious attempt, which seems to have been solely the work of some fanatical members of the extreme section of the Jesuit party. The accession of James I. to the throne had raised considerably the hopes of the English Catholics, who, relying upon some expressions which he had made use of while king of Scotland, were led to flatter themselves with the prospect of an unrestricted toleration of the practice of their faith, when he should succeed to the crown of England. Nor were their expectations altogether disappointed. The first year of James's reign shews a remarkable diminution in the amount of fines paid by popish recusants into the royal exchequer, and for a time they seem to have been comparatively unmolested. But such halcyon-days were not to be of long continuance. The English parliament was determined to discountenance in every way the Roman Catholic religion, and James, whose pecuniary necessities obliged him to court the good-will of the Commons, was forced to comply with their importunities in putting afresh into execution the penal laws against papists. Many cruel and oppressive severities were exercised, and it was not long till that persecution which is said to make a wise man mad, prompted a few fanatics to a scheme for taking summary vengeance on the legislature by whom these repressive measures were authorised. The originator of the Gunpowder Plot was Robert Catesby, a gentleman of ancient family, who at one period of his life had become a Protestant, but having been reconverted to the Catholic religion, had endeavoured to atone for his apostasy by the fervour of a new zeal. Having revolved in his own mind a project for destroying, at one blow, the King, Lords, and Commons, he communicated it to Thomas Winter, a Catholic gentleman of Worcestershire, who at first expressed great horror, but was afterwards induced to co-operate in 1 the design. He it was who procured the co-adjutorship of the celebrated Guido or Guy Fawkes, who was not, as has sometimes been represented, a low mercenary ruffián, but a gentleman of good family, actuated by a spirit of ferocious fanaticism. Other confederates were gradually assumed, and in a secluded house in Lambeth, oaths of secrecy were taken, and the communion administered to the conspirators by Father Gerard, a Jesuit, who, however, it is said, was kept in ignorance of the plot. One of THE GUNPOWDER PLOT. the party, named Thomas Percy, a distant relation of the Earl of Northumberland, and one of the gentleman-pensioners at the court of King James, agreed to hire a house adjoining the building where the parliament met, and it was resolved to effect the purpose of blowing the legislature into the air by carrying a mine through the wall. This was in the spring of 1604, but various circumstances prevented the commencement of operations till the month of December of that year. R. Winter. C. Wright. J. Wright. Percy. Fawkes. THE GUNPOWDER CONSPIRATORS-FROM A PRINT PUBLISHED IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE DISCOVERY. had been occasioned by a dealer in coal, who rented a cellar below the House of Lords, and who was engaged in removing his stock from that place of deposit to another. Here was a golden oppor tunity for the conspirators. The cellar was forthwith hired from the coal merchant, and the working of the mine abandoned. Thirty-six barrels of gunpowder, which had previously been deposited in a house on the opposite side of the river, were then secretly conveyed into this vault. Large stones and bars of iron were thrown in, to increase the destructive effects of the explosion, and the whole was carefully covered up with fagots of wood. In attempting to pierce the wall of the Parliament House, the conspirators found that they had engaged in a task beyond their strength, owing to the immense thickness of the barrier. With an energy, however, befitting a better cause, they continued their toilsome labours; labours the more toilsome to them, that the whole of the confederates were, without exception, gentlemen by birth and education, and totally unused to severe manual exertion. To avert suspicion while they occupied the house hired by Percy, they had laid in a store of provisions, so that all necessity for going out to buy these was obviated. Whilst in silence and anxiety they plied their task, they were startled one day by hearing, or fancying they heard, the tolling of a bell deep in the ground below the Parliament House. This cause of perturbation, originating perhaps in a guilty conscience, was removed by an appliance of superstition. Holywater was sprinkled on the spot, and the tolling ceased. Then a rumbling noise was heard directly over their heads, and the fear seized them that they had been discovered. They were speedily, however, reassured by Fawkes, who, on going out to learn the cause of the uproar, ascertained that it These preparations were completed about the month of May 1605, and the confederates then separated till the final blow could be struck. The time fixed for this was at first the 3d of October, the day on which the legislature should meet; but the opening of parliament having been prorogued by the king to the 5th of November, the latter date was finally resolved on. Extensive preparations had been made during the summer months, both towards carrying the design into execution, and arranging the course to be followed after the destruction of the king and legislative bodies had been accomplished. New confederates were assumed as participators in the plot, and one of these, Sir Everard Digby, agreed to assemble his Catholic friends on Dunsmore Heath, in Warwickshire, as if for a hunting-party, on the 5th of November. On receiving intelligence of the execution of the scheme, they would be in full readiness to complete the revolution thus inaugurated, and settle a new sovereign on the throne. The proposed successor to James was Prince Charles, afterwards Charles I., seeing that his elder brother Henry, Prince of Wales, would, it was expected, accompany his father to the House of Lords, and perish along with him. In the event of its being found impossible to gain possession of the person of Prince Charles, then it was arranged that his sister, the Princess Elizabeth, should be seized, and carried off to a place of security. Guy Fawkes was to ignite the gunpowder by means of a slow-burning match, which would allow him time to escape before the explosion, and he was then to embark on board a ship waiting in the river for him, and proceed to Flanders. The fatal day was now close at hand, but by this time several dissensions had arisen among the conspirators on the question of giving warning to some special friends to absent themselves from the next meeting of parliament. Catesby, the prime mover in the plot, protested against any such communications being made, asserting that few Catholic members would be present, and that, at all events, THE GUNPOWDER PLOT. rather than the project should not take effect, if they were as dear unto me as mine own son, they also must be blown up.' A similar stoicism was not, however, shared by the majority of the confederates, and one of them at least made a communication, by which the plot was discovered to the government, and its execution prevented. Great mystery attaches to the celebrated anonymous letter received on the evening of 26th October by Lord Mounteagle, a Roman Catholic nobleman, and brother-in-law of Francis Tresham, one of the conspirators. Its authorship is ascribed, with great probability, to the latter, but strong presumptions exist that it was not the only channel by which the king's ministers received intelligence of the schemes under preparation. It has even been surmised that the letter was merely a blind, concerted by a previous understanding with Lord Mounteagle, to conceal the real mode in which the conspiracy was unveiled. Be this as it may, the communication in question was the only avowed or ascertained method by which the king's ministers were guided in detecting the plot. It seems also now to be agreed, that the common story related of King James's sagacity in deciphering the meaning of the writer of the letter, was merely a courtly fable, invented to flatter the monarch and procure for him with the public the credit of a subtle and far-seeing perspicacity. The enigma, if enigma it really was, had been read by the ministers Cecil and Suffolk, and communicated by them to various lords of the council, several days before the subject VAULT BENEATH THE OLD HOUSE OF LORDS-FROM AN ORIGINAL DRAWING. was mentioned to the king, who at the time of the letter to Lord Mounteagle being received was absent on a hunting-expedition at Royston. Though the conspirators were made aware, through a servant of Lord Mounteagle, of the discovery which had been made, they nevertheless, by a singular infatuation, continued their preparations, in the hope that the true nature of their scheme had not been unfolded. In this delusion it seems to have been the policy of the government to maintain them to the last. Even after Suffolk, the lord chamberlain, and Lord Mounteagle had actually, on the afternoon of Monday the 4th November, visited the cellar beneath the House of Lords, and there discovered in a corner Guy Fawkes, who pretended to be a servant of Mr Percy, the tenant of the vault, it was still determined to persist in the undertaking. At two o'clock the following morning, a party of soldiers under the command of Sir Thomas Knevett, a Westminster magistrate, visited the cellar, seized Fawkes at the door, and carried him off to Whitehall, where, in the royal bedchamber, he was interrogated by the king and council, and from thence was conveyed to the Tower. It is needless to pursue further in detail the history of the Gunpowder Plot. On hearing of Fawkes's arrest, the remaining conspirators, with the exception of Tresham, fled from London to the place of rendezvous in Warwickshire, in the desperate hope of organising an insurrection. But such an expectation was vain. Pursued by the civil and military authorities, they were overtaken at the mansion of Holbeach, on the borders of Staffordshire, where Catesby and three others, refusing to surrender, were slain. The remainder, taken prisoners in different places, were carried up to London, tried, and condemned with their associate Guy Fawkes, who from having undertaken the office of firing the train of gunpowder, came to be popularly regarded as the leading actor in the GUY FAWKES'S DAY. conspiracy. Leniency could not be expected in the circumstances, and all the horrid ceremonies attending the deaths of traitors were observed to the fullest extent. The executions took place on the 30th and 31st of January, at the west end of St Paul's Churchyard. Some Catholic writers have maintained the whole Gunpowder Plot to be fictitious, and to have been concocted for state purposes by Cecil. But such a supposition is entirely contrary to all historical evidence. There cannot be a shadow of a doubt, that a real and dangerous conspiracy was formed; that it was very nearly successful; and that the parties who suffered death as participators in it, received the due punishment of their crimes. At the same time, it cannot be denied that a certain amount of mystery envelops the revelation of the plot, which in all probability will never be dispelled. Guy Fawkes's Day. Till lately, a special service for the 5th of November formed part of the ritual of the English Book of Common Prayer; but by a recent ordinance of the Queen in Council, this service, along with those for the Martyrdom of Charles I., and the Restoration of Charles II., has been abolished. The appointment of this day, as a holiday, dates from English juveniles, who still regard the 5th of November as one of the most joyous days of the year. The universal mode of observance through all parts of England, is the dressing up of a scarecrow figure, in such cast-habiliments as can be procured (the head-piece, generally a paper-cap, painted and knotted with paper strips in imitation |