Of the misfortunes of king Charles the Martyr we need not speak.

King Charles II. lived a stipendiary of the French crown, was in constant fear of plots, had a court that was the hot-bed of vice, was cut off in the midst of his sins, and died childless.

King James II. lost his crown, and though he left issue, they never regained their possessions. Ten of his children died in early youth. The other son of Charles, the duke of Gloucester, died young, just after the Restoration.

William was engaged in constant wars, was hated by his subjects, lived in continual fear and danger, was actually (it is said) on the point of resigning his crown, died a violent death, and left no children.

Queen Anne was the very sport of contending factions, was compelled to regard her own brother as a traitor, and had nineteen children, who all died young.

George I., one of the worst princes that ever filled the English throne, was the persecutor and gaoler of his innocent wife, was involved in deadly hatred with his son, (whom it was, in his presence, proposed to send to the plantations), in constant fear of rebellion, and deservedly hated.

George II. was all but dethroned in the rising of 1745; saw the national debt increase to a fearful extent; and died suddenly, by an unusual and awful disease. Of his children, Frederick lived in enmity with his father, and died before him. Wil

liam was surnamed the butcher: the unfortunate attachment of Elizabeth broke her heart. Mary was brutally treated by her husband, the prince of Hesse. Louisa, Queen of Denmark, was also most unhappy as a wife.

George III. was involved, with but few intervals, for fifty-five years in a sanguinary war; was in great peril from the anarchical spirit of the times; and when peace was restored, the mind of this good king was in no condition to enjoy it.

He left seven surviving sons. 1, George IV., who had issue one daughter, the Princess Charlotte, whose melancholy death is yet fresh in our memory: to his unhappy separation from Queen Caroline we need only to allude. 2, The Duke of York; married, but died without surviving issue. 3, The Duke of Clarence who succeeded as William IV.; married, but died without surviving legitimate issue. 4, The Duke of Kent; died without male issue. 5, The Duke of Cumberland, now king of Hanover; who has issue one son, blind. 6, The Duke of Cambridge, who has issue a son and two daughters. 7, The Duke of Sussex, who died without surviving legitimate issue.

So that, in the third generation, from George III., but two princes and three princesses exist.

We may remark that, whereas Queen Victoria's children are descended by five female ancestors from Henry VII. (Margaret, Mary Queen of Scots, Elizabeth of Bohemia, Sophia, and their own royal mother), Henry VIII. was descended by but two

female ancestors from William the Conqueror (the empress Maud and Margaret of Richmond).]

SECTION III.

What happened to the principal agents.

The lord Cromwell was conceived to be the principal mover and prosecutor thereof, both before and in the Parliament of 27 and 31 Hen. VIII.: and for his good service (impenso et impendendo) upon the 18th of April before the beginning of the Parliament of 31, which was on the last of the month, he was created earl of Essex, and his son Gregory made lord Cromwell, yet ere the year was past, from the end of the Parliament of 31, he fell wholly into the king's displeasure, and in July, 32 he was attainted and beheaded, professing at his death that he had been seduced, and died a catholick. His son Gregory, lord Cromwell, being, as I said, made a baron in the lifetime of his father, and invested with divers great possessions of the Church, supported that new risen family from utter ruin; but his grandchild, Edward lord Cromwell, wasting the whole inheritance, sold the head of his barony Oakham in Rutlandshire, and exchanging some of the rest (all that remained) with the earl of Devonshire for Lecale in Ireland, left himself as little land in England, as his great-grandfather left to the monasteries, and was I think the first and only peer of the realm not having any land

within it by the feudal law his barony I doubt (if it had been feudal) had likewise gone; but by the mercy of God, a noble gentleman now holds the style of it, and long may he. [His grandson, 7th baron, died without issue male: his daughter, Baroness Cromwell in her own right, married Edward Southwell; and the title lay dormant in the family of Southwell Baron de Clifford. That barony fell into abeyance in 1832; in 1833 that abeyance was terminated in favour of the present Baroness de Clifford, in whom the barony of Cromwell is supposed to be vested.]*

Having sailed thus far in this ocean, we will advance yet further, (if it please God to give us a favourable passage), and take a view of the Parliament themselves, that put the wreckful sword in the king's hands. The chief whereof was (as we have said before) that of the 27th year of his reign, touching smaller houses, and that of the 31st, touching the greater. I have sought the office of the clerk of the upper house of Parliament, to see what lords were present at the passing of the Acts of Dissolution; but so ill have they been kept, as that the names of 27 [Henry VIII.] were not then to be found: and further since I have not searched for them. The other of 31 [Henry VIII.] I did find, and doubt not but the most of them were the same which also sat in the Parliament of 27, though

* Cf. BANK'S Dormant and Extinct Peerage, II. 129, with DEBRETT'S Peerage.

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some of them of 27 were either dead or not present in 31. Those that were present at the passing of the Bill of 31, I have hereunder mentioned in such order as I therein did find them; and will, as faithfully as I can attain unto the knowledge of them, relate what after hath befallen themselves and their posterity.

SECTION IV.

The names of the Lords Spiritual who were present in the Parliament upon Friday the 23rd of May, 31 Henry VIII., being the fifteenth day of the Parliament, when the Bill for assuring the Monasteries, &c. to the King was passed.

1. The lord Cromwell, vicegerent for the king in the spiritualities, (and having place thereby both in the Parliament and Convocation-house above the archbishops,) was beheaded the 28th of July in the next year, being the 32nd of the king; confessing at his death publicly, that he had been seduced, but died a Papist.

2. The archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, D.D., was burnt in the castle ditch at Oxford, March 21, 1556, 3 Mary.

3. The archbishop of York, Dr. Edward Lee, died September 13, 1544, 36 Hen. VIII.

4. The bishop of London, John Stokesley, died within four months after, viz. September 3, 1539. 5. The bishop of Durham, Cuthbert Tonstal, was

L