pardon and favour, to perform eminent services for the crown. And he pretended such an interest and sway among the fanatics, to dispose them to their fidelity, as though he had been their chosen general, and had them all entered in his muster-roll. "In short, Blood and his associates were not only pardoned and set free, but the archvillain himself had five hundred pounds per annum conferred upon him, in Ireland, and was admitted into all the privacy and intimacy of Court. Mr. Edwards had the grant of two hundred pounds, and his son one hundred pounds. "Blood had no body but his own black deeds to advocate for him; yet thus he was rewarded and although many solicited for old Mr. Edwards, and had raised their arguments from his fidelity, courage, and wounds received, yet all that could be obtained for him was a grant of two hundred pounds out of the exchequer, and one hundred pounds to his son, as before said: the payment whereof was so long delayed, and his chirurgeons calling upon him daily for satisfaction for their drugs and pains, he was forced to sell his order for one hundred pounds ready money, and the son his for fifty pounds, and lived not long to enjoy the remainder; for he died within a year and a month after the wounds received."* The protection and favour thus bestowed upon a lawless ruffian, by an unworthy monarch, did not escape the lash of satire. Rochester, in his "History of Insipids," wittily, but severely, alludes to the disgraceful circumstance, as well as the disguise which Blood assumed in his undertaking. "BLOOD, that wears treason in his face, For stealing Ormond and the Crown! Since loyalty does no man good, Let's steal the King, and out-do BLOOD." How must such royal favour, so conferred, have mortified the spirit of the few men of honour about the court! more especially, when it was publicly known and felt, that a plea could not be more effectually urged to Charles *Book i. p. 93, et infra. II., than when it was enforced by the application of such a miscreant.* SIR JEFFERY HUDSON. Diminutive as this pigmy hero was in form, he occupies so large a space in the novel of "Peveril of the Peak," that it would be a mortal affront to his manes, not to collect together all the scattered fragments of his history which we can pick up, and introduce them into our biographical illustrations of this entertaining novel. The late Lord Orford is led into a little account of Jeffery by the * Dr. Walter Pope, in his Life of Bishop Ward, informs us, that, Blood, being of a sudden become a great favourite at court, and the chief agent of the dissenters, brought the bishop a verbal message from the king not to molest them: upon which, he went to wait on his Majesty, and humbly represented to him, that there were only two troublesome nonconformists in his diocese, whom he doubted not, with his Majesty's permission, but that he should bring to their duty: and then he named them. These are the very men, said the king, you must not meddle with: to which he obeyed, letting the prosecution against them fall.Granger's Biog. Hist. v. vi. p. 16. mention of the figure of this dwarf, holding a dog by a string, in a landscape, and preserved in the palace at St James's. He informs us, from Fuller's Worthies, and Wright's Rutlandshire, that Hudson was born at Oakham, in that county, in the year 1616. When he was about the age of seven or eight, (he continues,) being then but eighteen inches high, he was retained in the service of the Duke of Buckingham, who resided at Burleigh on the Hill. Soon after the Soon after the marriage of Charles I., the king and queen being entertained at Burleigh, little Jeffery was served up at table in a cold pie, and presented by the dutchess to the queen, who kept him as her dwarf. From seven years of age till thirty, he never grew taller; but, after thirty, he shot up to three feet nine inches, and there fixed. Jeffery became a considerable part of the entertainment of the court. Sir William Davenant wrote a poem, called Jeffridos, or a battle between him and a turkey-cock;* and, in 1638, was published, a very small book, * The scene is laid at Dunkirk; and the midwife rescues him from the fury of his antagonist. called "The New-Year's Gift," presented at court, from the Lady Parvula to Lord Minimus, (commonly called Little Jeffery,) her Majesty's servant, &c. written by Microphilus, with a little print of Jeffery prefixed. Before this period, little Jeffery was employed on a negociation of great importance. He was sent to France, to fetch a midwife for the queen; and, on his return with this gentlewoman, and her Majesty's dancing-master, and many rich presents to the queen, from her mother, Mary de Medici, was taken by the Dunkirkers.* Jeffery, thus made of consequence, grew to think himself really so. He had borne, with little temper, the teasings of the courtiers and domestics, and had many squabbles with the king's gigantic porter.t * This was in 1630. Besides the present he was bringing for the queen, he lost to the value of two thousand five hundred pounds that he had recived in France, on his own account, from the queen-mother and ladies of that court. A bas-relief of this dwarf and giant is to be seen, fixed in the front of a house, near the end of Bagniocourt on the east side of Newgate-street. Probably, it was a sign. The porter's name was William Evans, |