66 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," 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 institution, 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 nobody knows what to him who would adventure to go to hell." 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 passion divided dominion with * A note to Singer's edition of "Hall's Satires," says the phrase originated from the popular belief that the tomb of Sir John Beauchamp, in old St. Paul's, was that of Humphrey Duke of Gloucester. Hence, to walk about the aisles dinnerless was termed dining with Duke Humphrey; and a poem by Speed, termed "The Legend of his Grace," &c., published 1674, details the popular idea Nor doth the duke his invitation send For, to say truth, Hunger hath hundreds brought 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 incumbrances 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 assurance-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 hoary 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 gratitude at his death. CHIDIOCK TITCHBOURNE. 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, assuredly 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 Titchbourne 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 documents 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, entitled "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 assassinations. 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 Titchbourne, 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 friendship 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. But these conspirators were surely more adapted for lovers than for politicians. The most romantic incidents are interwoven in this dark conspiracy. Some of the letters to Mary were conveyed by a secret messenger, really in the pay of Walsingham; others were lodged in a concealed place, covered by a loosened stone, in the wall of the queen's prison. All were transcribed by Walsingham before they reached Mary. Even the spies of that singular statesman were the companions or the servants of the arch-conspirator Ballard; for the minister seems only to have humoured his taste in assisting him through this extravagant plot. Yet, as if a plot of so loose a texture was not quite perilous enough, the extraor dinary incident of a picture, representing the secret conspirators in person, was probably considered as the highest stroke of political intrigue! The accomplished Babington. had portrayed the conspirators, himself standing in the midst of them, that the imprisoned queen might thus have some kind of personal acquaintance with them. There was at least as much of chivalry as of Machiavelism in this conspiracy. This very picture, before it was delivered to Mary, the subtile Walsingham had copied, to exhibit to Elizabeth the faces of her secret enemies. Houbraken, in his portrait of Walsingham, has introduced in the vignette the incident of this picture being shown to Elizabeth; a circumstance happily characteristic of the genius of this crafty and vigilant statesman. Camden tells us that Babington had first inscribed beneath the picture this verse:- Hi mihi sunt comites, quos ipsa pericula ducunt. These are my companions, whom the same dangers lead. But as this verse was considered by some of less heated fancies as much too open and intelligible, they put one more ambiguous: Quorsum hæc alio properantibus? What are these things to men hastening to another purpose? This extraordinary collection of personages must have occasioned many alarms to Elizabeth, at the approach of any stranger, till the conspiracy was suffered to be sufficiently matured to be ended. Once she perceived in her walks a conspirator; and on that occasion erected her "lion port," reprimanding her captain of the guards, loud enough to meet the conspirator's ear, that " he had not a man in his company who wore a sword."—" Am not I fairly guarded ?" exclaimed Elizabeth. It is in the progress of the trial that the history and the feelings of these wondrous youths appear. In those times, when the government of the country yet felt itself unsettled, and mercy did not sit in the judgment-seat, even one of the judges could not refrain from being affected at the presence of so gallant a band as the prisoners at the bar: "Oh, Ballard, Ballard!" the judge exclaimed, "what hast thou done? A sort (a company) of brave youths, otherwise endued with good gifts, by thy inducement hast thou brought to their utter destruction and confusion." The Jesuit himself commands our respect, although we refuse him our esteem; for he felt some compunction at the tragical executions which were to follow, and wished all the blame might rest on him, could the shedding of his blood be the saving of Babington's life!" When this romantic band of friends were called on for their defence, the most pathetic instances of domestic affection appeared. One had engaged in this plot solely to try to save his friend, for he had no hopes of it, nor any wish for its |