Curiosities of Literature Volume Ii Part 19

USURERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

A person whose history will serve as a canva.s.s to exhibit some scenes of the arts of the money-trader was one AUDLEY, a lawyer, and a great practical philosopher, who concentrated his vigorous faculties in the science of the relative value of money. He flourished through the reigns of James I., Charles I., and held a lucrative office in the "court of wards," till that singular court was abolished at the time of the Restoration.[72] In his own times he was called "The great Audley," an epithet so often abused, and here applied to the creation of enormous wealth. But there are minds of great capacity, concealed by the nature of their pursuits; and the wealth of Audley may be considered as the cloudy medium through which a bright genius shone, and which, had it been thrown into a n.o.bler sphere of action, the "greatness" would have been less ambiguous.

Audley lived at a time when divines were proclaiming "the detestable sin of Usury," prohibited by G.o.d and man; but the Mosaic prohibition was the munic.i.p.al law of an agricultural commonwealth, which being without trade, the general poverty of its members could afford no interest for loans; but it was not forbidden the Israelite to take usury from "the stranger." Or they were quoting from the Fathers, who understood this point, much as they had that of "original sin," and "the immaculate conception;" while the scholastics amused themselves with a quaint and collegiate fancy which they had picked up in Aristotle, that interest for money had been forbidden by nature, because coin in itself was barren and unpropagating, unlike corn, of which every grain will produce many. But Audley considered no doubt that money was not incapable of multiplying itself, provided it was in hands which knew to make it grow and "breed," as Shylock affirmed. The lawyers then, however, did not agree with the divines, nor the college philosophers; they were straining at a more liberal interpretation of this odious term "Usury."

Lord Bacon declared, that the suppression of Usury is only fit for an Utopian government; and Audley must have agreed with the learned Cowell, who in his "Interpreter" derives the term ab _usu_ et _aere_, quasi _usu aera_, which in our vernacular style was corrupted into _Usury_. Whatever the _sin_ might be in the eye of some, it had become at least a _controversial sin_, as Sir Symonds D'Ewes calls it, in his ma.n.u.script Diary, who, however, was afraid to commit it.[73] Audley, no doubt, considered that _interest_ was nothing more than _rent_ for _money_; as _rent_ was no better than _Usury_ for _land_. The legal interest was then "ten in the hundred;" but the thirty, the fifty, and the hundred for the hundred, the gripe of Usury, and the shameless contrivances of the money-traders, these he would attribute to the follies of others, or to his own genius.

This sage on the wealth of nations, with his pithy wisdom and quaint sagacity, began with two hundred pounds, and lived to view his mortgages, his statutes, and his judgments so numerous, that it was observed his papers would have made a good map of England. A contemporary dramatist, who copied from life, has opened the chamber of such an Usurer,--perhaps of our Audley.

---- Here lay A manor bound fast in a skin of parchment, The wax continuing hard, the acres melting; Here a sure deed of gift for a market-town, If not redeem'd this day, which is not in The unthrift's power; there being scarce one s.h.i.+re In Wales or England, where my monies are not Lent out at usury, the certain hook To draw in more.

Ma.s.sINGER'S _City Madam_.

This genius of thirty per cent. first had proved the decided vigour of his mind, by his enthusiastic devotion to his law-studies: deprived of the leisure for study through his busy day, he stole the hours from his late nights and his early mornings; and without the means to procure a law-library, he invented a method to possess one without the cost; as far as he learned, he taught, and by publis.h.i.+ng some useful tracts on temporary occasions, he was enabled to purchase a library. He appears never to have read a book without its furnis.h.i.+ng him with some new practical design, and he probably studied too much for his own particular advantage. Such devoted studies was the way to become a lord-chancellor; but the science of the law was here subordinate to that of a money-trader.

When yet but a clerk to the Clerk in the Counter, frequent opportunities occurred which Audley knew how to improve. He became a money-trader as he had become a law-writer, and the fears and follies of mankind were to furnish him with a trading capital. The fertility of his genius appeared in expedients and in quick contrivances. He was sure to be the friend of all men falling out. He took a deep concern in the affairs of his master's clients, and often much more than they were aware of. No man so ready at procuring bail or compounding debts. This was a considerable traffic then, as now. They hired themselves out for bail, swore what was required, and contrived to give false addresses, which is now called leg-bail. They dressed themselves out for the occasion; a great seal-ring flamed on the finger, which, however, was pure copper gilt, and they often a.s.sumed the name of some person of good credit. Savings, and small presents for gratuitous opinions, often afterwards discovered to be very fallacious ones, enabled him to purchase annuities of easy landowners, with their treble amount secured on their estates. The improvident owners, or the careless heirs, were soon entangled in the usurer's nets; and, after the receipt of a few years, the annuity, by some latent quibble, or some irregularity in the payments, usually ended in Audley's obtaining the treble forfeiture. He could at all times out-knave a knave. One of these incidents has been preserved. A draper, of no honest reputation, being arrested by a merchant for a debt of 200, Audley bought the debt at 40, for which the draper immediately offered him 50. But Audley would not consent, unless the draper indulged a sudden whim of his own: this was a formal contract, that the draper should pay within twenty years, upon twenty certain days, a penny doubled. A knave, in haste to sign, is no calculator; and, as the contemporary dramatist describes one of the arts of those citizens, one part of whose business was

To swear and break: they all grow rich by breaking!

the draper eagerly compounded. He afterwards "grew rich." Audley, silently watching his victim, within two years, claims his doubled pennies, every month during twenty months. The pennies had now grown up to pounds. The knave perceived the trick, and preferred paying the forfeiture of his bond for 500, rather than to receive the visitation of all the little generation of compound interest in the last descendant of 2000, which would have closed with the draper's shop. The inventive genius of Audley might have ill.u.s.trated that popular tract of his own times, Peacham's "Worth of a Penny;" a gentleman who, having scarcely one left, consoled himself by detailing the numerous comforts of life it might procure in the days of Charles II.

Such petty enterprises at length a.s.sumed a deeper cast of interest. He formed temporally partners.h.i.+ps with the stewards of country gentlemen.

They underlet estates which they had to manage; and antic.i.p.ating the owner's necessities, the estates in due time became cheap purchases for Audley and the stewards. He usually contrived to make the wood pay for the land, which he called "making the feathers pay for the goose." He had, however, such a tenderness of conscience for his victim, that, having plucked the live feathers before he sent the unfledged goose on the common, he would bestow a gratuitous lecture in his own science--teaching the art of making them grow again, by showing how to raise the remaining rents. Audley thus made the tenant furnish at once the means to satisfy his own rapacity, and his employer's necessities.

His avarice was not working by a blind, but on an enlightened principle; for he was only enabling the landlord to obtain what the tenant, with due industry, could afford to give. Adam Smith might have delivered himself in the language of old Audley, so just was his standard of the value of rents. "Under an easy landlord," said Audley, "a tenant seldom thrives; contenting himself to make the just measure of his rents, and not labouring for any surplusage of estate. Under a hard one, the tenant revenges himself upon the land, and runs away with the rent. I would raise my rents to the present price of all commodities: for if we should let our lands, as other men have done before us, now other wares daily go on in price, we should fall backward in our estates." These axioms of political economy were discoveries in his day.

Audley knew mankind practically, and struck into their humours with the versatility of genius: oracularly deep with the grave, he only stung the lighter mind. When a lord borrowing money complained to Audley of his exactions, his lords.h.i.+p exclaimed, "What, do you not intend to use a conscience?" "Yes, I intend hereafter to use it. We moneyed people must balance accounts: if you do not pay me, you cheat me; but, if you do, then I cheat your lords.h.i.+p." Audley's moneyed conscience balanced the risk of his lords.h.i.+p's honour against the probability of his own rapacious profits. When he resided in the Temple among those "pullets without feathers," as an old writer describes the brood, the good man would pule out paternal homilies on improvident youth, grieving that they, under pretence of "learning the law, only learnt to be lawless;"

and "never knew by their own studies the process of an execution, till it was served on themselves." Nor could he fail in his prophecy; for at the moment that the stoic was enduring their ridicule, his agents were supplying them with the certain means of verifying it. It is quaintly said, he had his _decoying_ as well as his _decaying_ gentlemen.

The arts practised by the money-traders of that time have been detailed by one of the town-satirists of the age. Decker, in his "English Villanies," has told the story: we may observe how an old story contains many incidents which may be discovered in a modern one. The artifice of covering the usury by a pretended purchase and sale of certain wares, even now practised, was then at its height.

In _Measure for Measure_ we find,

"Here's young Master Rash, he's in for a commodity of _brown paper and old ginger_, nine score and seventeen pounds; of which he made five marks ready money."

The eager "gull," for his immediate wants, takes at an immense price any goods on credit, which he immediately resells for less than half the cost; and when despatch presses, the vender and the purchaser have been the same person, and the "brown paper and old ginger" merely nominal.[74]

The whole displays a complete system of dupery, and the agents were graduated. "The Manner of undoing Gentlemen by taking up of Commodities," is the t.i.tle of a chapter in "English Villanies." The "warren" is the cant term which describes the whole party; but this requires a word of explanation.

It is probable that rabbit-warrens were numerous about the metropolis, a circ.u.mstance which must have multiplied the poachers. Moffet, who wrote on diet in the reign of Elizabeth, notices their plentiful supply "for the poor's maintenance."--I cannot otherwise account for the appellatives given to sharpers, and the terms of cheatery being so familiarly drawn from a rabbit-warren; not that even in that day these cant terms travelled far out of their own circle; for Robert Greene mentions a trial in which the judges, good simple men! imagined that the coney-catcher at the bar was a warrener, or one who had the care of a warren.

The cant term of "warren" included the young coneys, or half-ruined prodigals of that day, with the younger brothers, who had accomplished their ruin; these naturally herded together, as the pigeon and the black-leg of the present day. The coney-catchers were those who raised a trade on their necessities. To be "conie-catched" was to be cheated. The warren forms a combination altogether, to attract some novice, who in _esse_ or in _posse_ has his present means good, and those to come great; he is very glad to learn how money can be raised. The warren seek after a _tumbler_, a sort of hunting dog; and the nature of a London tumbler was to "hunt dry-foot," in this manner:--"The tumbler is let loose, and runs snuffing up and down in the shops of mercers, goldsmiths, drapers, haberdashers, to meet with a _ferret_, that is, a citizen who is ready to sell a commodity." The tumbler in his first course usually returned in despair, pretending to have out-wearied himself by hunting, and swears that the city ferrets are so coaped (that is, have their lips st.i.tched up close) that he can't get them to open to so great a sum as 500, which the warren wants. "This herb being chewed down by the rabbit-suckers, almost kills their hearts. It irritates their appet.i.te, and they keenly bid the tumbler, if he can't fasten on plate, or cloth, or silks, to lay hold of _brown paper_, _Bartholomew babies_, _lute-strings_, or _hob-nails_. It hath been verily reported,"

says Decker, "that one gentleman of great hopes took up 100 in hobby-horses, and sold them for 30; and 16 in joints of mutton and quarters of lamb, ready roasted, and sold them for three pounds." Such commodities were called _purse-nets_.--The tumbler, on his second hunt, trots up and down again; and at last lights on a _ferret_ that will deal: the names are given in to a scrivener, who inquires whether they are good men, and finds four out of the five are wind-shaken, but the fifth is an oak that can bear the hewing. "Bonds are sealed, commodities delivered, and the tumbler fetches his second career; and their credit having obtained the purse-nets, the wares must now obtain money." The _tumbler_ now hunts for the _rabbit suckers_, those who buy these _purse-nets_; but the _rabbit-suckers_ seem greater devils than the _ferrets_, for they always bid under; and after many exclamations the _warren_ is glad that the seller should repurchase his own commodities for ready money, at thirty or fifty _per cent._ under the cost. The story does not finish till we come to the manner "How the warren is spoiled." I shall transcribe this part of the narrative in the lively style of this town writer. "While there is any gra.s.s to nibble upon, the rabbits are there; but on the cold day of repayment they retire into their caves; so that when the _ferret_ makes account of _five_ in chase, four disappear. Then he grows fierce, and tears open his own jaws to suck blood from him that is left. Serjeants, marshalmen, and bailiffs are sent forth, who lie scenting at every corner, and with terrible paws haunt every walk. The bird is seized upon by these hawks, his estate looked into, his wings broken, his lands made over to a stranger. He pays 500, who never had but 60, or to prison; or he seals any bond, mortgages any lords.h.i.+p, does anything, yields anything. A little way in, he cares not how far he wades; the greater his possessions are, the apter he is to take up and to be trusted--thus gentlemen are _ferretted_ and undone!" It is evident that the whole system turns on the single novice; those who join him in his bonds are stalking horses; the whole was to begin and to end with the single individual, the great coney of the warren. Such was the nature of those "commodities" to which Ma.s.singer and Shakspeare allude, and which the modern dramatist may exhibit in his comedy, and be still sketching after life.

Another scene, closely connected with the present, will complete the picture. "The Ordinaries" of those days were the lounging places of the men of the town, and the "fantastic gallants," who herded together.[75]

Ordinaries were the "exchange for news," the echoing places for all sorts of town-talk: there they might hear of the last new play and poem, and the last fresh widow, who was sighing for some knight to make her a lady; these resorts were attended also "to save charges of housekeeping." The reign of James I. is characterised by all the wantonness of prodigality among one cla.s.s, and all the penuriousness and rapacity in another, which met in the dissolute indolence of a peace of twenty years. But a more striking feature in these "Ordinaries" showed itself as soon as "the voyder had cleared the table." Then began "the shuffling and cutting on one side, and the bones rattling on the other."

The "Ordinarie," in fact, was a gambling-house, like those now expressively termed "h.e.l.ls," and I doubt if the present "Infernos"

exceed the whole _diablerie_ of our ancestors.

In the former scene of sharping they derived their cant terms from a rabbit-warren, but in the present their allusions partly relate to an aviary, and truly the proverb suited them, "of birds of a feather."

Those who first propose to sit down to play are called the _leaders_; the ruined gamesters are the _forlorn-hope_; the great winner is the _eagle_; a stander-by, who encourages, by little ventures himself, the freshly-imported gallant, who is called the _gull_, is the _wood-p.e.c.k.e.r_; and a monstrous bird of prey, who is always hovering round the table, is the _gull-groper_, who, at a pinch, is the benevolent Audley of the Ordinary.

There was, besides, one other character of an original cast, apparently the friend of none of the party, and yet in fact, "the Atlas which supported the Ordinarie on his shoulders:" he was sometimes significantly called the _impostor_.

The _gull_ is a young man whose father, a citizen or a squire, just dead, leaves him "ten or twelve thousand pounds in ready money, besides some hundreds a-year." Scouts are sent out, and lie in ambush for him; they discover what "apothecarie's shop he resorts to every morning, or in what tobacco-shop in Fleet-street he takes a pipe of smoke in the afternoon;" the usual resorts of the loungers of that day. Some sharp wit of the Ordinarie, a pleasant fellow, whom Robert Greene calls the "taker-up," one of universal conversation, lures the heir of seven hundred a-year to "The Ordinarie." A _gull_ sets the whole aviary in spirits; and Decker well describes the flutter of joy and expectation: "The _leaders_ maintained themselves brave; the _forlorn-hope_, that drooped before, doth now gallantly come on; the _eagle_ feathers his nest; the _wood-p.e.c.k.e.r_ picks up the crumbs; the _gull-groper_ grows fat with good feeding; and the _gull_ himself, at whom every one has a pull, hath in the end scarce feathers to keep his back warm."

During the _gull's_ progress through Primero and Gleek,[76] he wants for no admirable advice and solemn warnings from two excellent friends; the _gull-groper_, and at length, the _impostor_. The _gull-groper_, who knows, "to half an acre," all his means, takes the _gull_ when out of luck to a side-window, and in a whisper talks of "dice being made of women's bones, which would cozen any man:" but he pours his gold on the board; and a bond is rapturously signed for the next quarter-day. But the _gull-groper_, by a variety of expedients, avoids having the bond duly discharged; he contrives to get a judgment, and a serjeant with his mace procures the forfeiture of the bond; the treble value. But the "impostor" has none of the milkiness of the "_gull-groper_"--he looks for no favour under heaven from any man; he is bluff with all the Ordinarie; he spits at random; jingles his spurs into any man's cloak; and his "humour" is, to be a devil of a dare-all. All fear him as the tyrant they must obey. The tender _gull_ trembles, and admires this roysterer's valour. At length the devil he feared becomes his champion; and the poor _gull_, proud of his intimacy, hides himself under this _eagle's_ wings.

The _impostor_ sits close by his elbow, takes a partners.h.i.+p in his game, furnishes the stakes when out of luck, and in truth does not care how fast the gull loses; for a twirl of his mustachio, a tip of his nose, or a wink of his eye, drives all the losses of the gull into the profits of the grand confederacy at the Ordinarie. And when the impostor has fought the gull's quarrels many a time, at last he kicks up the table; and the gull sinks himself into the cla.s.s of the forlorn-hope; he lives at the mercy of his late friends the gull-groper and the impostor, who send him out to lure some tender bird in feather.

Such were the _h.e.l.ls_ of our ancestors, from which our worthies might take a lesson; and the "warren" in which the Audleys were the conie-catchers.

But to return to our Audley; this philosophical usurer never pressed hard for his debts; like the fowler, he never shook his nets lest he might startle, satisfied to have them, without appearing to hold them.

With great fondness he compared his "bonds to infants, which battle best by sleeping." To battle is to be nourished, a term still retained at the University of Oxford. His familiar companions were all subordinate actors in the great piece he was performing; he too had his part in the scene. When not taken by surprise, on his table usually lay open a great Bible, with Bishop Andrews's folio Sermons, which often gave him an opportunity of railing at the covetousness of the clergy; declaring their religion was "a mere preach," and that "the time would never be well till we had Queen Elizabeth's Protestants again in fas.h.i.+on." He was aware of all the evils arising out of a population beyond the means of subsistence, and dreaded an inundation of men, spreading like the sp.a.w.n of cod. Hence he considered marriage, with a modern political economist, as very dangerous; bitterly censuring the clergy, whose children, he said, never thrived, and whose widows were left dest.i.tute. An apostolical life, according to Audley, required only books, meat, and drink, to be had for fifty pounds a year! Celibacy, voluntary poverty, and all the mortifications of a primitive Christian, were the virtues practised by this puritan among his money bags.

Yet Audley's was that worldly wisdom which derives all its strength from the weaknesses of mankind. Everything was to be obtained by stratagem; and it was his maxim, that to grasp our object the faster, we must go a little round about it. His life is said to have been one of intricacies and mysteries, using indirect means in all things; but if he walked in a labyrinth, it was to bewilder others; for the clue was still in his own hand; all he sought was that his designs should not be discovered by his actions. His word, we are told, was his bond; his hour was punctual; and his opinions were compressed and weighty: but if he was true to his bond-word, it was only a part of the system to give facility to the carrying on of his trade, for he was not strict to his honour; the pride of victory, as well as the pa.s.sion for acquisition, combined in the character of Audley, as in more tremendous conquerors. His partners dreaded the effects of his law-library, and usually relinquished a claim rather than stand a latent suit against a quibble. When one menaced him by showing some money-bags, which he had resolved to empty in law against him, Audley then in office in the court of wards, with a sarcastic grin, asked "Whether the bags had any bottom?" "Ay!" replied the exulting possessor, striking them. "In that case, I care not,"

retorted the cynical officer of the court of wards; "for in this court I have a constant spring; and I cannot spend in other courts more than I gain in this." He had at once the meanness which would evade the law, and the spirit which could resist it.

The genius of Audley had crept out of the purlieus of Guildhall, and entered the Temple; and having often sauntered at "Powles" down the great promenade which was reserved for "Duke Humphrey and his guests,"[77] he would turn into that part called "The Usurer's Alley,"

to talk with "Thirty in the hundred," and at length was enabled to purchase his office at that remarkable inst.i.tution, the court of wards.

The entire fortunes of those whom we now call wards in chancery were in the hands, and often submitted to the arts or the tyranny of the officers of this court.

When Audley was asked the value of this new office, he replied, that "It might be worth some thousands of pounds to him who after his death would instantly go to heaven; twice as much to him who would go to purgatory: and n.o.body knows what to him who would adventure to go to h.e.l.l." Such was the pious casuistry of a witty usurer. Whether he undertook this last adventure, for the four hundred thousand pounds he left behind him, how can a sceptical biographer decide? Audley seems ever to have been weak when temptation was strong.

Some saving qualities, however, were mixed with the vicious ones he liked best. Another pa.s.sion divided dominion with the sovereign one: Audley's strongest impressions of character were cast in the old law-library of his youth, and the pride of legal reputation was not inferior in strength to the rage for money. If in the "court of wards"

he pounced on inc.u.mbrances which lay on estates, and prowled about to discover the craving wants of their owners, it appears that he also received liberal fees from the relatives of young heirs, to protect them from the rapacity of some great persons, but who could not certainly exceed Audley in subtilty. He was an admirable lawyer, for he was not satisfied with _hearing_, but _examining_ his clients; which he called "pinching the cause where he perceived it was foundered." He made two observations on clients and lawyers, which have not lost their poignancy. "Many clients in telling their case, rather plead than relate it, so that the advocate heareth not the true state of it, till opened by the adverse party. Some lawyers seem to keep an a.s.surance-office in their chambers, and will warrant any cause brought unto them, knowing that if they fail, they lose nothing but what was lost long since--their credit."

The career of Audley's ambition closed with the extinction of the "court of wards," by which he incurred the loss of above 100,000. On that occasion he observed that "His ordinary losses were as the shavings of his beard, which only grew the faster by them; but the loss of this place was like the cutting off of a member, which was irrecoverable."

The h.o.a.ry usurer pined at the decline of his genius, discoursed on the vanity of the world, and hinted at retreat. A facetious friend told him a story of an old rat, who having acquainted the young rats that he would at length retire to his hole, desiring none to come near him; their curiosity, after some days, led them to venture to look into the hole; and there they discovered the old rat sitting in the midst of a rich Parmesan cheese. The loss of the last 100,000 may have disturbed his digestion, for he did not long survive his court of wards.

Such was this man, converting wisdom into cunning, invention into trickery, and wit into cynicism. Engaged in no honourable cause, he however showed a mind resolved; making plain the crooked and involved path he trod. _Sustine et abstine_, to bear and forbear, was the great principle of Epictetus, and our moneyed Stoic bore all the contempt and hatred of the living smilingly, while he forbore all the consolations of our common nature to obtain his end. He died in unblest celibacy,--and thus he received the curses of the living for his rapine, while the stranger who grasped the million he had raked together owed him no grat.i.tude at his death.

CHIDIOCK t.i.tCHBOURNE.

I have already drawn a picture of Jewish history in our country; the present is a companion-piece, exhibiting a Roman Catholic one.

The domestic history of our country awakens our feelings far more than the public. In the one, we recognise ourselves as men; in the other, we are nothing but politicians. The domestic history is, indeed, entirely involved in the fate of the public; and our opinions are regulated according to the different countries, and by the different ages we live in; yet systems of politics, and modes of faith, are, for the individual, but the chance occurrences of human life, usually found in the cradle and laid in the grave: it is only the herd of mankind, or their artful leaders, who fight and curse one another with so much sincerity. Amidst these intestine struggles, or, perhaps, when they have ceased, and our hearts are calm, we perceive the eternal force of nature acting on humanity; then the heroic virtues and private sufferings of persons engaged in an opposite cause, and acting on different principles than our own, appeal to our sympathy, and even excite our admiration. A philosopher, born a Roman Catholic, a.s.suredly could commemorate many a pathetic history of some heroic Huguenot; while we, with the same feeling in our heart, discover a romantic and chivalrous band of Catholics.

Chidiock t.i.tchbourne is a name which appears in the conspiracy of Anthony Babington against Elizabeth, and the history of this accomplished young man may enter into the romance of real life. Having discovered two interesting domestic doc.u.ments relative to him, I am desirous of preserving a name and a character which have such claims on our sympathy.

There is an interesting historical novel, ent.i.tled "The Jesuit," whose story is founded on this conspiracy; remarkable for being the production of a lady, without, if I recollect rightly, a single adventure of love.

Of the fourteen characters implicated in this conspiracy, few were of the stamp of men ordinarily engaged in dark a.s.sa.s.sinations. Hume has told the story with his usual grace: the fuller narrative may be found in Camden; but the tale may yet receive from the character of Chidiock t.i.tchbourne, a more interesting close.

Some youths, worthy of ranking with the heroes, rather than with the traitors of England, had been practised on by the subtilty of Ballard, a disguised Jesuit of great intrepidity and talents, whom Camden calls "a silken priest in a soldier's habit:" for this versatile intriguer changed into all shapes, and took up all names: yet, with all the arts of a political Jesuit, he found himself entrapped in the nets of that more crafty one, the subdolous Walsingham. Ballard had opened himself to Babington, a Catholic; a youth of large fortune, the graces of whose person were only inferior to those of his mind. In his travels, his generous temper had been touched by some confidential friends of the Scottish Mary; and the youth, susceptible of ambition, had been recommended to that queen; and an intercourse of letters took place, which seemed as deeply tinctured with love as with loyalty. The intimates of Babington were youths of congenial tempers and studies; and, in their exalted imaginations, they could only view in the imprisoned Mary of Scotland a sovereign, a saint, and a woman. But friends.h.i.+p the most tender, if not the most sublime ever recorded, prevailed among this band of self-devoted victims; and the Damon and Pythias of antiquity were here out-numbered.