ment of the royal children, and smothering them in their bed, caused them to be buried under a little staircase. This is what Tyrrel afterwards confessed, when he was executed for treason, in the reign of Henry the Seventh. This story was likewise confirmed by the two subordinate murderers, Forrest and Dighton, who were circumstantial in heir description of the crime.

Shakspeare, whose poetry never shines brighter than when it is kindled at the lamp of history, thus desribes the scene:

"Oh thus, quoth Dighton, lay the gentle babes,—
Thus, thus, quoth Forrest, girdling one another,
Within their innocent alabaster arms.

Their lips were four red roses on a stalk,

That in their summer beauty kissed each other."

Tha these ruffians confessed the truth was afterwards confirmed by a chest, containing small bones, being discovered, two hundred years afterwards, under the staircase above mentioned. King Charles the Second was so much convinced that this chest held the remains of these unhappy princess, that he caused them to be interred in the royal vault in Henry the Seventh's chapel; he likewise commanded a tablet to be inscribed, commemorating their cruel deaths and the discovery of their remains.

161

WOLSEY BRIDGE;

OR, THE BOY BACHELOR.

On the south side of the ancient passage leading from the street to the churchyard of St. Nicholas, was formerly situated the commodious house of Thomas Wolsey, a substantial butcher and grazier, of the town of Ipswich, in the sixteenth century.

This Thomas Wolsey was one of those persons with whom the acquisition of wealth appears to be the sole purpose of existence. It was his boast "that he had thrice trebled the patrimony he had derived from his father," from whom he had inherited his flourishing business, besides some personal property. Acting in direct contradiction to that injunction of the royal psalmist, "If riches increase, set not your heart upon them," his very soul appeared to dwell in his money bags, his well attended shambles, or the pleasant lowland pastures where the numerous flocks and herds grazed, the profits on which he calculated would so materially improve his store. He made no show, no figure among his fellow townsmen; never exchanging his long blue linen gown, leathern girdle, and coarse brown hose, for any other apparel, except on a Sunday, when he wore a plain substantial suit of sad coloured cloth, garnished with silver buttons, and the polished steel and huge sheath knife, which he usually wore

at his side, were exchanged for a silver hilted dagger and an antique rosary and crucifix. Satisfied with the conviction that he was one of the wealthiest tradesmen in Ipswich, he saw no reason for exciting the envy of the poor or the ill will of the rich, by any outward demonstrations of the fact, but continued to live in the same snug plain manner to which he had been accustomed in his early days, making it the chief desire of his heart that his only son, Thomas, should tread in his steps, and succeed him in his prosperous and well established business, with the same economical habits and an equally laudable care for the main chance.

The maternal pride of his wife, Joan, who was the decendant of a family that could boast of gentle blood, prompted the secret hope that the ready wit and studious habits, together with the clerkly skill and learned lore which the boy had already acquired at the grammar school, might qualify him for something better than the greasy craft of a butcher, and perhaps one day elevate him to the situation of port reeve or town clerk. But for the boy himself, his youthful ambition pointed at higher marks than the golden speculations of trade, or the attainment of lucrative offices and civic honours in his native town. From the first moment he entered the grammar school, and took his place on the lowest seat there, he determined to occupy the highest, and to this, in an almost incredible brief period of time, he had rapidly ascended; and, though only just entering his twelfth year, he was now the head boy in the

school, and in the opinion of his unlearned father, "knew more than was good for him."

As soon, indeed, as his son Thomas had learned to write a "fair clerkly hand, to cast accounts, and construe a page in the Breviary," he considered his education complete, and was desirous of saving the expense of keeping him longer at school; but here he was overruled by his more liberal minded wife, Joan, who, out of the savings of her own privy purse, paid the quarterly sum of eight-pence to the master of the school, for the further instruction of her hopeful boy, Thomas, whose abilities she regarded as little less than miraculous. Persons better qualified than the good wife, Joan Wolsey, to judge of the natural talents and precocious acquirements of her son, had also spoken in high terms of his progress in the learned languages, and predicted great things of him. These were personages of no less importance than the head master of the Ipswich grammar school, and the parish priest of St. Nicholas, the latter of whom was a frequent visitor at the hospitable messuage of master Thomas Wolsey the elder, on the ostensible business of chopping Latin with young Thomas, and correcting his Greek exercises for him; but no doubt the spiced tankards of flowing ale, and the smoking beef steaks, cut from the very choicest part of the ox, and temptingly cooked by the well-skilled hands of that accomplished housewife, Joan Wolsey, to reward him for his good report of her darling boy's proficiency, had some influence in drawing father Boniface thither so often.

The bishop of the diocess himself had condescended to bestow unqualified praise on the graceful and eloquent manner in which, when he visited the school, young Wolsey had delivered the complimentary Latin oration on that occasion. The good natured prelate had even condescended to pat his curly head on the conclusion of the address, and to say, "Spoken like a cardinal, my little man!”

From that moment young Wolsey had made up his mind as to his future destiny. It was to no purpose that his father tried the alternate eloquence of entreating, reasoning, promises, and threats, to detach him from his engrossing studies, and induce him to turn his attention to the lucrative business of a butcher and grazier. The idea of such servilely earned pelf was revolting to the excited imaginanation of the youthful student, whose mind was full of classic imagery, and intent on the attainment of academic honours, the steps by which he projected to ascend to the more elevated objects of his ambition.

The church was, in those days, the only avenue through which talented persons of obscure birth might hope to arrive at greatness, and young Wolsey replied to all his father's exordiums urging him to attend to the cattle market, the slaughter house, or the shambles, by announcing his intention of becoming an ecclesiastic.

The flush of anger with which this unwelcome declaration had clouded the brow of the elder Wolsey was perfectly perceptible when he returned home after the fatigues of the day to take his even