son, the fabricator of the Shakspeare MSS., in his "Confessions" of that curious transaction, also states that he was with his father on this visit, and saw "numbers of chambers in this antique mansion darkened to obviate the expense of the tax on window-lights; and in the cock-loft were piles of mouldering furniture of the age of Henry VII.; amongst the rest an emblazoned representation of Elizabeth, the queen of Henry VII., as she lay in state in the chapel of the Tower of London, after having died in childbed; which curious relic the then owner of Clopton gave to Mr. S. Ireland, as a picture which was in his opinion of no service, because, being on vellum it would not do to light the fire."

Mr. Ireland had been informed that many papers had been removed from Shakspeare's house in Stratford at the time of the fire, to this house; and on inquiring if any such had ever been seen, the proprietor made this answer, "By G—d, I wish you had arrived a little sooner! Why, it isn't a fortnight since I destroyed several basketsful of letters and papers, in order to clear a chamber for some young partridges which I wish to bring up alive; and as to Shakspeare, why there were many bundles with his name wrote upon them. Why, it was in this very fire-place I made a roaring bonfire of them.”

Mr. Ireland listened to this relation with feelings not to be described, and, starting from his chair, exclaimed, "My God! sir, you are not aware of the loss which the world has sustained. Would to heaven I had arrived sooner!" Williams, the then proprietor, called his wife, who made the same statement, and

lanterns were lighted, and the dark rooms of the house examined, but nothing further of the kind found. How far this story is true, considering the fabulating character of the younger Ireland, may be left to the faith of the reader, especially as the father, in his account of his visit, is silent on so remarkable a circumstance.

In its later years Clopton must have been, in its desolation, just the place for generating tales of superstition. Its old carving and decayed paintings, its ruinous windows and rotting floors, all around its fences and gates going to decay, and its mighty trees spreading higher and wider, and casting over it a brooding gloom. It will now, no doubt, soon become a goodly and splendidly-furnished mansion; but the visible traces of the ill-fated Cloptons are nearly erased, and it can only in future be said, such a family once lived there, and such were the traditions of their fate. Amongst the portraits, that of Lord Carew, already mentioned, who married Joyce, the heiress of this house, was still to be seen, bearing a striking resemblance, both in form and feature, to the effigy in the church. There were also one or two besides who exhibited lively and attractive features, but they are not by eminent masters, and therefore cannot claim a merit apart from their own identical importance, which has expired. The Cloptons have evidently been not only a powerful, but a well-featured race; but they had not their poet, they had not even their painter, who could invest them with immortality. They, therefore, now hang in the back passage of a house no longer theirs. Its master does not share

L

their blood; he has no interest in them, and how long they will be tolerated, even there, is a dubious problem.

Can any termination of the career of a once honoured and fortunate race, be imagined more melancholy? Yet, of how many a proud line is this the end!

As I returned towards Stratford, I met the new lady of the mansion driving up in her gay equipage, and I could not help wondering at what period the portraits of herself and her descendants would be displaced by some other family, and the Cloptons be exiled, even from the back passage, to make room for the Wards!

SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI.

147

VISIT TO COMBE ABBEY, WARWICKSHIRE.

THIS pleasant old mansion, the seat of the Earl of Craven, which lies about four miles from Coventry, besides its own particular attractions as a good specimen of an old monastic building, and containing a considerable number of valuable paintings, lying also in a pleasant park, and retaining its gardens in their primitive state-making it altogether a very agreeable spot to visit on a summer's day, with cheerful hearts and cheerful friends-has a great deal of interest attached to it, through its having been the scene of some of the earliest and latest fortunes of the Princess Elizabeth, the daughter of James I. and Queen of Bohemia. It was hence that the conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot endeavoured to seize and carry her off when a mere girl, and it was hither she returned after all the troubles of her most troublesome and disastrous reign, and enjoyed the only peaceful days of her existence.

Elizabeth was a Stuart, doomed to drink deep of

and, like the rest of her family, was misfortunes; but, strictly virtuous and highly amiable, Providence seemed to concede to her what so few of her family were permitted, or indeed deserved, a quiet termination of a stormy life. If ever the finger of an ill fate, laid on evil deeds,

was, however, manifest, it was not merely in her family, but in the families of those who were concerned in the attempt to carry her off from this place. Such were the singular fortunes connected with that circumstance and its great cause, the Gunpowder Plot, that, perhaps, no other spot of the strangely eventful soil of England can shew more remarkable ones. It will be curious to trace these most uncommon and melancholy facts before we make our visit to the house.

The Princess Elizabeth was, at the time of the plot, living here under the care of the Earl of Harrington, the then proprietor of the abbey. This circumstance, and the fact also that several of the conspirators were closely connected with that part of the country, drew them in their defeat in that direction, and made Warwickshire, with its neighbouring counties of Worcester and Stafford, the grand scene of the catastrophe.

It appears singular, at first view, that so many of the principal conspirators were from the midland counties; but Worcestershire, Staffordshire, and Warwickshire, were inhabited by more stanch Catholic families than perhaps any other part of England. Warwickshire, moreover, never was conspicuous for its attachment to the Stuarts, as was eminently shewn when the Parliament and Charles I. came to open rupture. Catesby, the originator of the plot, was, indeed, of Ashby St. Legers in Northamptonshire,-itself, however, not far distant from the scene of action, and he was intimately connected with the Catholics in these counties. In his case, as very remarkably in that of several others of the conspirators, and as is more often