He served as a volunteer against Oliver Cromwell at the battle of Dunbar, and heartily joined and concurred with the Royalists in every measure for the Restoration; but when he, with others of the royal party, had a meeting in Angus to concert matters for their future conduct, General Monk, who then besieged Dundee, having got intelligence of their meeting, sent a strong party in the night, surprised and took them prisoners at Alyth, in Angus, and transferred the veteran Leven, with several others, prisoners to London, where they were confined in the Tower. The Earl remained incarcerated there, and suffered sequestration and many other hardships, till, by the mediation of the Queen of Sweden, he obtained his liberty; and was so sensible of the service her Majesty had done him, that he went over to Sweden to make his acknowledgments, and was there received and entertained with great respect in honour of his former services. He at last returned to his own country, retired to his seat, Balgony, in Fife, and died there at a very advanced age in 1662.

FYNDERN AND THE FYNDERNES.

HE picturesque little village of Fyndern, about five miles south-west of Derby, was for many centuries the seat of the Fyndernes, probably from the time of the Norman Conquest. There they continued until the family became extinct in the middle of the sixteenth century, when the sole heiress, Jane Fynderne, became the wife of Chief-Justice Harpur of Swarkestone, the ancestor of the present owner of the estates, Sir John Harpur Crewe, Bart., of Calke Abbey. The name of Walter Fynderne occurs as one of the attesting witnesses to a charter of Ranulph sixth Earl of Chester, to Repton Priory, about 1190, which shows their early connection with this place. The Fyndernes were also of Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Essex, Berkshire, etc.

One sad episode in the history of the family of the Fyndernes-and it is not the only one-is brought to light by the singular will of Henry, the last Lord Gray of Codnor, in Derbyshire. By this document it appears that one of the daughters of this honourable house, Katherine Fynderne, had fallen from the path which the others had trodden so

virtuously and so well, and had become the mistress of this nobleman, and borne him several sons, who survived him. There is, however, reason to believe that she belonged to the Nottinghamshire branch of the Fyndernes, and was not a daughter, but a cousin, of the Fyndernes of Fynderne. By this will it appears that Henry Lord Gray of Codnor (who, being much devoted to chemistry, procured a licence for the transmutation of metals, and had grants of lands for his great services from Edward IV. and Richard III.) was thrice married first, to Margaret; secondly, to Katherine, daughter to the Duchess of Norfolk; and thirdly, to Katherine, said to be the daughter to the Earl of Devonshire. It would seem that he had a liking for the name of Devonshire, having two wives and a mistress all bearing that

name.

:

Jane Fynderne, the last of the family, in whose lovely person were brought together all the virtues and all the possessions not only of the original Derbyshire stock, but of the Nottinghamshire branch of the Fyndernes, became the wife of Lord Chief-Justice Harpur, to whom she brought the ample estates for so many generations held and enjoyed by her ancestors. She became the mother of two knights, Sir John Harpur of Swarkestone, and Sir Richard Harpur of Littleover, from the first of whom the present family of Harpur-Crewe is lineally descended; the name of Crewe having been taken in 1808, by sign-manual, by the then Sir Henry Harpur.

Mr. Llewellyn Jewitt, F.S.A., in a very interesting paper

in the Reliquary, 1863, thus sketches the sad scene of long decay, in one of his visits to the spot :

The seat of the De Fyndernes was at some little distance from the church, on rising ground, at the other side of the village green. It was once a stately mansion of great extent. In the croft where it stood the foundations of the walls may still be traced, as may also remains of terraces and outer wallings of considerable extent; while on the opposite side of the churchyard are also foundations of other buildings, of 'fish-ponds,' and other appliances, in the midst of these turf-grown remains, which are all that are left to show where the princely hospitality of the Fyndernes had been kept for generation after generation.

From the times of Edward 1. to those of Henry VIII., the house of Fyndern was one of the most distinguished in Derbyshire. Members of it had won their spurs in the Crusades, and at Cressy, and at Agincourt. The territorial possessions of the Fyndernes were large. The Fyndernes were High Sheriffs, occasionally Rangers of Needwood Forest, and Custodians of Tutbury Castle;' and they matched

1 'Stout Ferrers there kept faithless ward,
And Gaunt perform'd his castle-guard.
There captive Mary look'd in vain
For Norfolk and her nuptial train;
Enrich'd with royal tears the Dove,

But sigh'd for freedom, not for love.'—

Needwood Forest, by Mundy.

Mary Queen of Scots was a prisoner in Tutbury Castle at the time of

with some of the best families of their times. The present church, then the family chapel, had rows of monumental brasses, and altar-tombs, all memorials of the Fyndernes.

6

Of the Fynderne flowers,' and the poetic tradition which. connects them with the Fyndernes, Sir Bernard Burke thus touchingly writes in his Vicissitudes of Families :—

'In 1850 a pedigree research caused me to pay a visit to the village. I sought for the ancient hall. Not a stone. remained to tell where it had stood! I entered the church. Not a single record of a Finderne was there! I accosted a villager, hoping to glean some stray traditions of the Findernes. "Findernes !" said he ; we have no Findernes here, but we have something that once belonged to them : we have Findernes flowers." "Show me them," I replied. And the old man led me into a field which still retained faint traces of terraces and foundations. "There," said he, pointing to a bank of "garden flowers grown wild," "there are the Findernes' flowers, brought by Sir Geoffrey from the Holy Land; and do what we will, they will never die!" Poetry mingles more with our daily life than we are apt to acknowledge; and even to an antiquary like myself, the old man's prose and the subject of it were the very essence of poetry.

'For more than three hundred years the Fyndernes had been extinct, the mansion they had dwelt in had crumbled

the Duke of Norfolk's intrigues. She listened to his proposals of marriage as the only means of obtaining her liberty, declaring herself otherwise averse to further matrimonial connections.