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?

many a proud line is this the end!

Yet, of how

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, and, like the rest of her family, was doomed to drink deep of 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

the fact in life than we are aware of till we begin to trace back effects to their causes, he was in a great degree the victim of his father's crimes and of a pernicious education. He was lineally descended from that Catesby, who was the favourite and one of the base ministers of Richard III., whose fame is still preserved in the old popular rhyme :

The Rat, the Cat, and Lovel the dog,
Rule all England, under the Hog.

He appears to have been one of the most zealous and devoted bigots that this country ever produced. He was for many years the sworn friend of Garnet, the principal of the Jesuits in England, and was supposed to be concerned, more or less, in all the plots and schemes of treason which fermented and occasionally came to the light during the reign of Elizabeth. On her death, the hopes of the Catholics rose high. James, the son of Mary Queen of Scots, a queen who had suffered so much from the heretic Elizabeth, and a queen, too, so fervently attached to the Catholic religion, was fondly expected by the Papists, when seated on the throne of Great Britain, and free to avow his own predilections, to shew that the influence of blood and of filial resentment were not unfelt. They hoped from him, if not the restoration of the ancient worship, at least a most indulgent toleration of it. James disappointed them. He shewed every disposition to put into rigorous force the laws against Popish recusants; and when, on the conclusion of a peace with the king of Spain, even that monarch was found to