THE EARL OF DEVONSHIRE.

halt; only once did he make a false step.

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"Dec.

26, 1605, Dies erat Jovis et Festum St. Stephani," says the Diary, "My cross about the Earl of Devon's marriage."

Charles Blount, who became Lord Mountjoy on the death of his elder brother, and afterwards created Earl of Devonshire, was a soldier of some repute. He put down the rebellion of the Earl Tir-owen in Ireland, at the battle of Kinsale, and in reward for his services was advanced to be Lord Deputy of that kingdom by James I.

When a younger son, without prospects, he had set his affections on the Lady Penelope Devereux, daughter of the Earl of Essex, a most sweet and attractive maiden, if we can trust contemporaries. Their troth was plighted, but her friends would have none of him, and married her out of hand to an austere uncourtly gentleman, Lord Rich, who behaved, if not cruelly, at least with great roughness towards her. Of such romances, where lover and wife are both weak and passionate, there can be but one melancholy ending-a sonnet in the 66 Arcadia" records the circumstance.

Lord and Lady Rich were divorced. She had already borne several children-to Mountjoy, it was known; for there was no attempt at disguise throughout.

D

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PENELOPE, LADY RICH.

Laud had been made Mountjoy's chaplain, living with him at Wanstead in Essex; there, being much worked upon and, it appears, threatened by the earl-for he was now Earl of Devonshire-he broke down, and married the pair, knowing that only the loosest Calvinism gave anything like a hearty assent to such a match, and that the principles that he himself adhered to, most vigorously condemned it; "serving my ambition, and the sins of others," as he sadly says. He was threatened, it seems certain, with loss of court favour if he refused; and it is not improbable that he had a great friendship for the earl, if not for his lady. It was to temptation of power that he succumbed the result was precisely the opposite of what he had expected. James, in his capacity as ecclesiastical lawyer, was so angry with the earl that he had to write an apology, and died of "the spleen," that is to say disappointment, within a year. He very nearly involved his chaplain in the disgrace, and it is not improbable that Laud's long waiting for advancement was connected with this false step.

The day was ever after a day of solemn observation and humiliation for him. Four years after there was another mysterious and similar event on the same day-" E.M. Die lunæ, 1609"-some

strange sin of which we have lost the secret. "Lapidatus non pro sed a peccato"-"Stoned (like the martyr whose day it was), not for but by my sin," he writes of it, making the enigma deeper than ever. The Latin prayer which stands first among the "Anniversaria," has reference to these two events, and is in a tone of deep, almost abject abasement. He prays that it may not prove a divorcing of his own soul from the spirit.*

I came, the other day, upon the actual petition of Lord Rich for divorce, filed among the Lambeth papers; and there is also a curious relic, attributed by tradition to the time of Laud, which has undoubtedly reference to the same event.

This is a portrait, rather stiff and Flemish in style, which hangs in the great corridor of the Palace, of a sweet-faced gentle lady, her bunches of auburn hair standing out very strongly against a pale-green background. On the back, in large old letters, are traced the words, "A Countess of Devonshire." It cannot be doubted which.

* In 1621, when Bishop of St. David's elect, by a curious chance he had to preach before the Court at Wanstead, in the very chapel where he had celebrated this fatal marriage; he preached on the peace of the Church. The following passage occurs in it: "Yet will I do the People right: for tho' many of them are guilty of inexcusable sin, as sacrilege, so too many of us Priests are guilty of other as great sins as sacrilege, for which no doubt we and our possessions lie open to waste: it must needs be so." This was part of his penance; none of his hearers can have been ignorant of what he meant.

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DEAN OF GLOUCESTER.

CHAPTER IV.

A WEARY period of waiting ensued.

Laud was so nearly disgusted with court life, that he resolved to quit it, and was only just persuaded to resume it. Dr. Neile, Bishop of Durham, a man of wonderful tact in choosing remarkable men, though without many gifts himself, except that of amiability, became his patron. He gave him chambers in Durham House. At last James began to relent. He made him a Royal Chaplain, and at last gave him the Deanery of Gloucester. Here he fell into a nest of hornets, but routed them. The cathedral church was in a dismal state. He set about a drastic reform; in fact, he had been sent there as a kind of experiment. James had no pleasure in neglect and carelessness, and Neile suggested to him that the fearless active Laud would be the very man to reform Gloucester.

Up went the altar to the east, and all the subordinates of the church were compelled to bow to

CLEANSING THE SHRINE.

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it; the organ was repaired, the dirt and cobwebs cleared away, new and unfamiliar doctrines preached by the little dauntless Dean. He had burst upon the quiet slumbering western city like a thunderbolt; the place had drowsed away into a contented Calvinism.

There is nothing like the resistance of a limited place where gossip can rage. Laud was the besthated man in Gloucester. The Bishop said that he could not possibly enter the church till that Nehushtan (meaning the altar), had been removed to some less offensive place. For eight years this worthy follower of the Prince of Peace heard the bells call to prayer from the palace study, and thought bitterly of the active Dean scraping and posturing in the well-known choir.

This was stirring enough, but there were larger events to come. In 1616 he accompanied the king to Scotland. James, with that unsympathetic clumsiness whose very naïveté disarmed offence, told the Scottish divines that he had brought them a theologian to enlighten their minds a little. Had Laud known it, on this occasion was sown that vast unintermitting Scottish hatred of the man that was so great a factor in his fall. Then he was made Bishop of St. David's, "a poor city, God wot," as Heylyn says. He also held in commendam