Wotton thus describes the murder: The Duke came with Sir Thomas Fryer close at his ear; in the very moment as the said knight withdrew himself from the Duke, the assassin gave him, with a back blow, a deep wound into his left side, leaving the knife in his body, which the Duke himself pulling out, on a sudden effusion of spirits, he sank down under the table in the next room, and immediately expired.'

Sir Symonds D'Ewes, who was related to the Duchess of Buckingham, in his account of the murder, says: "The Duke having received the stroake, instantlie clapping his right hand on his sword-hilt, cried out, "God's wounds! the villaine has killed me !"'

Felton had sewed in the crown of his hat, half within the lining, a written paper, which ran as follows: That man is cowardly base, and deserveth not the name of a gentleman or souldier, that is not willinge to sacrifice his life for the honor of his God, his kinge, and his countrie. Lett noe man commend me for doinge of it, but rather discommend themselves as the cause of it; for if God had not taken away or harts for or sinnes, he would not have gone so longe unpunished.-JNO. FELTON.'

At the death, the paper was not found, and what had become of it was not known for a certainty. It was long in the possession of Mr. Upcott, and had been found among the Evelyn papers at Wotton, endorsed twice over in John. Evelyn's handwriting, 'A note found about Felton when he killed the Duke of Buckingham, 23 Aug. 1628.' Sir Edward

Nicholas, Secretary of State, who had the first possession of it, was one of the persons before whom Felton was examined at Portsmouth. His daughter married Sir Richard Browne, and the learned and philosophic Mr. John Evelyn married. the only daughter of Sir Richard Browne. Lady Evelyn, the widow of his descendant, presented it to Mr. Upcott.

King Charles had parted but the day before from Buckingham, and was staying at Southwick Park, a seat of the Norton family a few miles from Portsmouth, from which place Carleton's letter is dated, he having probably posted there with the news. The King was at prayers, when Sir John Hippesly immediately went up to him and whispered the tidings in his ear. The King is reported to have heard it without visible emotion; but when the service was ended, he hastily went to his chamber, and bewailed his death passionately, casting himself on his bed with abundance of

tears.

Felton had been bred a soldier, and came of a good family in Suffolk. During his imprisonment he was visited by the Earl and Countess of Arundel and their son, 'he being of their blood.' Sir Henry Wotton terms Felton 'a younger brother of mean fortune, by nature of a deep, melancholy, silent, and gloomy constitution.' Felton stated his inducements to the crime to be the imputations thrown. out against the Duke in a pamphlet, and his denunciation by the people and Parliament. The latter was no doubt the real cause, inasmuch as, when Felton was exhorted by the royal chaplain to confess his motives, he answered, 'Sir,

I shall be brief: I killed him for the cause of God and my country.' It was this feeling which probably induced Felton to take so little interest in his own fate, when he might have escaped so easily, as is narrated in Carleton's letter.

Suspicion at first was excited towards the Frenchmen about the Duke, who were with difficulty saved from the vengeance of the Duke's attendants. Felton meanwhile walked quietly into the kitchen of the house, and remained there unnoticed until the first stupor of amazement had passed away, and the real murderer was sought for. He had expected a sudden death at the hands of the Duke's servants when he struck the blow, and it was this which induced him to fasten the written paper in his hat; he wished not to avoid the death he expected, and on the loud outcry of Where is the murderer?' he coolly confronted the enraged inquirers with 'I am the man!' His life was with difficulty saved, and he was conveyed under guard to the house of the governor of Portsmouth.

He had performed his journey to Portsmouth 'partly on horseback and partly on foot,' says Wotton; for he was indigent, and low in money.' But before leaving London,

in a bye cutler's shop on Tower Hill, he bought a tenpenny knife (so cheap was the instrument of this great attempt), and the sheath thereof he sewed to the lining of his pocket, that he might at any moment draw forth the blade alone with one hand, for he had maimed the other.'1

A different tale is told by the historians of Sheffield, who say: 'In 1626, Thomas Wild, cutler, living in the Crooked-bill Yard, High

Felton was conveyed to the Tower in September; and Charles would have had him put upon the rack to discover if he had any accomplices, but that the judges decided that ' torture was not justifiable according to the law of England.' He constantly affirmed that he did it of his own will, 'not maliciously, but out of an intent for the good of his country.' He was hanged at Tyburn, and his body conveyed to Portsmouth, and hung there in chains.

Buckingham was buried at Westminster secretly on the 17th of September, and a public funeral, with an empty coffin, paraded on the next night, guarded by soldiers with raised pikes and muskets, as if the people's well-known dislike was expected to be vented on his remains. His heart is affirmed to have been placed in the marble urn which forms the centre of the monument in Portsmouth church. It was at first, greatly in contravention of religious decorum,' erected within the communion rails, but has been removed to the north aisle of the chancel.

That Buckingham's unpopularity outlived him, is evident from the fears of the Court at his funeral; and the sympathy of the populace was more with Felton than with the murdered Minister. Such was his love of truth and rigid honour,

Street, made Lieutenant Felton the knife with which he stabbed the Duke of Buckingham. The knife was found in the Duke's body, and had a corporation mark upon it, which led to the discovery of the maker, who was immediately taken to the Earl of Arundel's house in London, when he acknowledged the mark was his, and that he had made Lieutenant Felton two such knives when he was recruiting at Sheffield, for which he charged him tenpence.'

that Felton obtained amongst his acquaintances the nickname of 'honest Jack,' one which, after his assassination, became extremely popular throughout the nation.

D'Israeli remarks: The assassination was a sort of theoretical one; so that when the king's attorney furnished the criminal with an unexpected argument, which appeared to him to have overturned his own, he declared that he had been in a mistake; and lamenting that he had not been aware of it before, from that instant his conscientious spirit sank into despair.' Meade also tells us that Sir Robert Brook and others who were present at the murder 'affirm, that when Felton struck the Duke, he exclaimed, "God have mercy upon thy soule;" which occasioned a friend of mine wittily to say, There was never man murdered with so much gospell.'

The strong public feeling in favour of Felton may be gathered from another anecdote. On the departure of the fleet, which Buckingham came to Portsmouth to command, in September 1628, after the king had made 'a gratious speech, they shouted, and, for a farewell, desired his Majestie to be good to John Felton, their once fellow-souldier.'

But it was not the rude populace and rough sailors only who lauded the act of the assassin. Meade, in a letter dated November 15, 1628, says: On Friday sennight was censured in the Star Chamber, Alex. Gill, B.D., at Oxford, and usher in Paul's school under his own father, for saying in Trin. Coll. that our king was fitter to stand in a Cheapside shop with an apron on, and say, "What lack you?" than