possession of Fotheringhay Castle and lordship; Cicely, his mother, still retaining her right in it until the ninth year of his reign, when Guy Woolston, Esq., was appointed constable of the castle and keeper of the great park, Erleswood, and Newhaugh, lying within the bailiwick of Clyve in Rockingham Forest; here the lord of the castle had housebote (timber out of the lord's wood for repairs) and heybote (thorns and other wood for hedges, gates, fences, etc.), and two leets, held yearly at Easter and Michaelmas. From Leland's account, Fotheringhay appears to have been the favourite residence of this powerful and royal house; for the Duchess Cicely, who survived her husband thirtysix years, during the greatest part of her widowhood inhabited the castle. She died in the tenth of Henry VII., 1495, in her castle at Berkhampstead, where the kings of Mercia had a palace and castle, afterwards enlarged and strengthened in the Norman times, and where Henry 11. kept his court. The Duchess Cicely was buried in the choir at Fotheringhay beside her husband. She was the youngest of twenty-one children; she survived the whole of her family the Nevilles, and by their conquering swords became the mother of kings; she saw three of her descendants kings of England, and her grand-daughter Elizabeth queen of Henry VII. By her death she was saved the additional affliction of the loss of her grandson Edward Earl of Warwick, the last male of the princely house of Plantagenet, who was cruelly put to death by a tyrannical monarch in 1499. After the death of Edward IV., the castle continued in the Crown, and by Act of Parliament 1 Henry VII. was declared to be part of the royal possessions. Henry settled it upon his queen Elizabeth, the only representative of the House of York. Reverting to the king on her death, it continued in the Crown till Henry VIII. gave it in dower to Catharine of Aragon, who seems to have been much attached to the castle. Leland records that she did great cost of refreshing it.' He describes it as being at that time a castle fair and neatly strong, with very good lodgings in it, defended by double ditches, with a very ancient and strong keep.' Queen Catharine removed from Fotheringhay to Ampthill Castle whilst the process of her divorce from Henry VIII. was going on at the neighbouring Priory of Dunstable; after her divorce she resided some time in Kimbolton Castle. 'I pity Catharine of Aragon,' says Walpole, for living at Kimbolton; I never saw an uglier spot.' The queen died there in 1536. 1 1 Ampthill Park, on the site of the old castle, has a grove of firs, in the centre of which, in 1773, Lord Ossory erected an octagonal shaft, raised on four steps, surmounted by a cross, bearing a shield, with Queen Catharine's arms of Castile and Aragon. On a tablet in the base of the cross is the following inscription, by Horace Walpole : In days of yore, here Ampthill's towers were seen, Yet Freedom hence her radiant banner wav'd, And Love avenged a realm by priests enslav'd: From Catharine's wrongs a nation's bliss was spread, And Luther's light from lawless Henry's bed.' Close to Ampthill is Houghton Park, with a pear-tree under which Sir Philip Sidney is said to have written part of his Arcadia. C Such is an outline of the history of the Castle of Fotheringhay, until it was converted to a prison of state. This seems to have taken place in the reign of Mary, when, 25th May 1554, according to Stow, Edward, the last of the Courtneys, Earls of Devonshire, was removed from the Tower of London, to which he had been committed on suspicion of his having consented to Sir Thomas Wyat's conspiracy, by Master Chamberlayne of Suffolk, and Sir Thomas Tresham, Knt., and conveyed to Fotheringhay, to remain under their custody at the queen's pleasure. The Earl's confinement here was of short duration; for in the Easter of the year following, 1555, he again appeared at court. The next and last person who entered the castle as a prisoner, and from whose fate it is noted in English history, was the unfortunate Queen of Scots, who was closely confined here, in the custody of Sir William Fitzwilliam of Milton, during the last six years of her life. When Fuller the historian visited the castle, he read in one of the windows the following distich, written on the glass with a diamond by the royal captive: 'From the top of all my trust Mishap hath laid me in the dust,' which is taken from an old ballad preserved in Ellis's Specimens. It will be recollected that the indictment against Babyngton and his companions charged them not only with intending to kill Elizabeth, but also to rise in arms to favour an invasion from Spain, and to release the Queen of Scots. This last was probably the chief object with most of them, but the project terminated as fatally for her as for themselves. Babyngton had been recently in France, and had brought letters for Mary; and, in return, she is stated in his indictment to have written letters to him, 'in which she not only signified that she allowed and approved of such intended treasons, but therein also urged Babyngton and his confederates, by promises of great reward, to fulfil the same. The truth of this assertion, at least as regards any design on the life of Elizabeth, is very doubtful; but it answered the purpose of the framers of the Association, and it was forthwith resolved to proceed to the judicial murder of the unhappy prisoner. Her secretaries (Nau and Curle) and her papers were seized, and both subjected to rigid examination; and Mary was removed to Fotheringhay Castle preparatory to her so-called trial. On October 11, 1586, the commissioners assembled at Fotheringhay; Sir Thomas Bromley, Lord Chancellor, and the Earls of Kent and Shrewsbury, being the leading members. Three days after, the presence-chamber of the castle was fitted up for the trial. The court sat two days. Mary at first refused to plead; then acknowledged negotiating with foreign powers to obtain her freedom; but earnestly disdained any intention against the life of Elizabeth. She also charged Walsingham with forging letters (which he denied), and desired to be confronted with her secretaries, one of whom (Nau) she accused of treachery. Her de mand was refused. The commissioners adjourned, and, October 25, re-assembled in the Star Chamber at Westminster, and pronounced a sentence, that Babyngton's conspiracy was with the privity (cum scientiâ) of Mary;' as also, that she had herself compassed and imagined within this realm of England divers matters tending to the hurt, death, and destruction of the royal person of our sovereign lady the queen.' On October 28 the Parliament met, their principal business being the attainder of Babyngton and his associates, and applications to the queen to consent to the execution of Mary. Elizabeth desired them to reconsider their request; they again urged it, and then she dismissed. them with an ambiguous speech, which she herself termed 'an answer without an answer.' The sentence against Mary was confirmed by the queen and her council at Richmond. The proclamation was made in seven different places, 'to the great and wonderful rejoicing of the people of all sorts,' says Stow, 'as manifestly appeared by ringing of bells, making of bonfires, and singing of psalms in every one of the streets and lanes of the city.' Stow adds, that the proclamation was made with serjeantsat-arms and by sound of trumpets: it was witnessed by several of the nobility, the Lord Mayor and aldermen in their scarlet dresses, the city officers, the principal part of the gentry of London, and the most eminent citizens habited in velvet, with gold chains, all mounted on horseback. The sentence was next communicated to the prisoner, who wrote to Elizabeth, praying that she might not be put privately |