dissuade you from marriage; for it will be best for you, both in respect of the world and of God. As for me I am no more yours, nor you mine; Death has cut us asunder; and God hath divided me from the world, and you from me.

Remember your poor child, for his father's sake; who chose you and loved you in his happiest time. Get those letters (if it be possible) which I writ to the Lords, wherein I sued for my life. God is my witness, it was for you and yours that I desired life: but it is true that I disdain myself for begging it, for know it, dear wife, that your son is the son of a true man, and one who, in his own respect, despiseth death, and all his mis-shapen and ugly forms. I cannot write much; God he knoweth how hardly I steal this time, while others sleep; and it is also high time that I should separate my thoughts from the world. Beg my dead body, which living was denied thee; and either lay it at Sherburne (if the land continue) or in Exeter Church by my father and mother; I can say no more, time and death call me away.

The everlasting, powerful, infinite and omnipotent God; who is goodness itself; the true Life and true Light, keep thee and thine, have mercy on me, and teach me to forgive my persecutors and accusers, and send us to meet in his glorious Kingdom. My dear wife, farewell, bless my poor boy, pray for me, and let my good God hold you both in his

arms.

Written with the dying hand of sometime thy husband, but now (alas) overthrown.-Yours that was, but now not my own, WALTER RAleigh.

I

LORD HERBERT OF CHERBURY

THOUGHT fit to entreat Sir William Herbert, now Lord Powis, to go to Sir John Ayres, and tell him that I marvelled much at the information given me by these great persons, and that I could not imagine any sufficient ground hereof; howbeit, if he had anything to say to me in a fair and noble

way, I would give him the meeting as soon as I had got strength enough to stand upon my legs.

Sir William hereupon brought me so ambiguous and doubtful an answer from him, that whatsoever he meant, he would not declare yet his intention, which was really, as I found afterwards, to kill me any way that he could, since, as as he said, though falsely, I had seduced his wife. Finding no means thus to surprise me, he sent me a letter to this effect that he desired to meet me somewhere, and that it might so fall out as I might return quietly again. To this I replied that if he desired to fight with me upon equal terms, I should, upon assurance of the field and fair play, give him meeting when he did any way specify the cause, and that I did not think fit to come to him upon any other terms, having been sufficiently informed of his plots to assassinate

me.

After this, finding he could take no advantage against me, then, in a treacherous way, he resolved to assassinate me in this manner. Hearing I was to come to Whitehall on horseback, with two lackeys only, he attended my coming back in a place called Scotland Yard, at the hither end of Whitehall, as you come to it from the Strand, hiding himself here with four men armed, on purpose to kill me.

I took horse at Whitehall Gate, and passing by that place, he being armed with a sword and dagger, without giving me so much as the least warning, ran at me furiously, but instead of me, wounded my horse in the brisket, as far as his sword could enter for the bone. My horse hereupon starting aside, he ran him again in the shoulder, which, though it made the horse more timorous, yet gave me time to draw my sword. His men thereupon encompassed me, and wounded my horse in three places more; this made my horse kick and fling in that manner as his men durst not come near me; which advantage I took to strike at Sir John Ayres with all my force, but he warded the blow both with his sword and dagger; instead of doing him harm, I broke my sword within a foot of the hilt. Hereupon some passenger that knew me, and

observing my horse bleeding in so many places, and so many men assaulting me, and my sword broken, cried to me several times, "Ride away, ride away;" but I, scorning a base flight upon what terms soever, instead thereof, alighted as well as I could from my horse.

I had no sooner put one foot upon the ground, but Sir John Ayres pursuing me, made at my horse again, which the horse perceiving, pressed on me on the side I alighted, in that manner that he threw me down, so that I remained flat upon the ground, only one foot hanging in the stirrup, with that piece of a sword in my right hand. Sir John Ayres hereupon ran about the horse, and was thrusting his sword into me, when I, finding myself in this danger, did with both my arms reaching at his legs, pull them towards me, till he fell down backwards on his head. One of my footmen hereupon, who was a little Shropshire boy, freed my foot out of the stirrup; the other, which was a great fellow, having run away as soon as he saw the first assault. This gave me time to get upon my legs, and to put myself in the best posture I could with that poor remnant of a weapon.

Sir John Ayres by this time likewise was got up, standing betwixt me and some part of Whitehall, with two men on each side of him, and his brother behind him, with at least twenty or thirty persons of his friends, or attendants of the Earl of Suffolk. Observing thus a body of men standing in opposition against me, though to speak truly I saw no swords drawn but by Sir John Ayres and his men, I ran violently against Sir John Ayres; but he, knowing my sword had no point, held his sword and dagger over his head, as believing I could strike rather than thrust; which I no sooner perceived but I put a home-thrust to the middle of his breast, that I threw him down with so much force, that his head fell first to the ground, and his heels upwards. His men hereupon assaulted me; when one, Mr Mansel, a Glamorganshire gentleman, finding so many set against me alone, closed with one of them; a Scotch gentleman also closing with another, took him off also. All I could well do to those two which

remained was to ward their thrusts, which I did with that resolution, that I got ground upon them.

Sir John Ayres was now got up a third time, when I making towards him with the intention to close, thinking that there was otherwise no safety for me, put by a thrust of his with my left hand, and so coming within him, received a stab with his dagger on my right side, which ran down my ribs as far as my hip, which I feeling, did with my right elbow force his hand, together with the hilt of the dagger, so near the upper part of my right side, that I made him leave hold. The dagger now sticking in me, Sir Henry Cary, afterwards Lord of Faulkland, and lord deputy of Ireland, finding the dagger thus in my body, snatched it out. This while I, being closed with Sir John Ayres, hurt him on the head, and threw him down a third time, when, kneeling on the ground and bestriding him, I struck at him as hard as I could with my piece of a sword, and wounded him in four several places, and did almost cut off his left hand.

His two men this while struck at me; but it pleased God even miraculously to defend me; for when I lifted up my sword to strike at Sir John Ayres, I bore off their blows half a dozen times. His friends now finding him in this danger, took him by the head and shoulders, and drew him from betwixt my legs, and carried him along with them through Whitehall, at the stairs whereof he took boat. Sir Herbert Croft (as he told me afterwards) met him upon the water, vomiting all the way, which I believe was caused by the violence of the first thrust I gave him. His servants, brother, and friends being now retired also, I remained master of the place and his weapons; having first wrested his dagger from him, and afterwards struck his sword out of his hand.

This being done, I retired to a friend's house in the Strand, where I sent for a surgeon, who searching my wound on the right side, and finding it not to be mortal, cured me in the space of some ten days, during which time I received many noble visits and messages from some of the best in the kingdom. Being now fully recovered of my hurts, I desired

Sir Robert Harley to go to Sir John Ayres, and tell him, that though I thought he had not so much honour left in him, that I could be any way ambitious to get it, yet that I desired to see him in the field with his sword in his hand. The answer that he sent me was, that I had seduced his wife, and that he would kill me with a musket out of a window.

FROM

LADY FANSHAWE

ROM hence we went to the Lady Honor O'Brien's, a lady that went for a maid, but few believed it; she was the youngest daughter of the Earl of Thomond. There we stayed three nights. The first of which I was surprised by being laid in a chamber, when, about one o'clock, I heard a voice that wakened me. I drew the curtain, and, in the casement of the window, I saw, by the light of the moon, a woman leaning into the window, through the casement, in white, with red hair and pale and ghastly complexion: she spoke loud, and in a tone I had never heard, thrice, "" a horse"; and then, with a sigh more like the wind than breath, she vanished, and to me her body looked more like a thick cloud than substance. I was so much frightened, that my hair stood on end, and my night clothes fell off. I pulled and pinched your father, who never woke during the disorder I was in; but at last was much surprised to see me in this fright, and more so when I related the story and showed him the window opened. Neither of us slept any more that night, but he entertained me with telling me how much more these apparitions were usual in this country than in England; and we concluded the cause to be the great superstition of the Irish, and the want of that knowing faith, which should defend them from the power of the Devil, which he exercises among them very much. About five o'clock the lady of the house came to see us, saying she had not been in bed all night, because a cousin O'Brien of hers, whose ancestors had owned that house, had desired her to stay with him in his chamber, and