DIPLOMATISTS, WARRIORS, COURTIERS, AND POETS.

THE KILLIGREWS;

'Fuimus.'

A little ploughed field in the parish of St. Erme, about five miles north of Truro, on a farm still called Killigrew, is the site of the old residence of this distinguished family. Their place knows them no more; and even their own name is, with the sole exception just referred to, and in one or two instances where it appears as a Christian name of some of their remote descendants, 'clean blotted out.' Yet it was once—as the old Cornish word implies—'a grove of eagles'; for we shall find that their race soared high, and produced examples of each of the distinguished classes noted above; and that their memory is worthy of their tombs in Westminster Abbey, and of a local monument—the pyramid which one who married into the family and assumed the name, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, erected at Falmouth in 1737-38.[51] There is some reason to believe that the family was of royal descent. The first of the name whom I have been able to trace, is one Ralph Killigrew, said to have been a natural son of Richard, Earl of Cornwall, and King of the Romans, by his concubine Joan de Valletort. Hence, so it is said, the double-headed spread eagle and the 'border bezanty' of the family arms.[52] Henry, Otho, Simon, Thomas, John, and Maugan are other Christian names of very early Killigrews.

Lysons gives the following instances of their being at an early date possessors of lands in Cornwall: John de Killigrew, of Killigrew, had £20 a year or more in land in 1297; Henry de Killigrew held a military feu in Orchard Marries (? Marrais) in the hundred of Stratton in 3rd Henry IV. (1402); Rad. de Killigrew held a 'feod. parv.' at some place in the hundred of Powder; Henry, son of Maugi de Killigrew, had a similar tenure in Trewyn, in the same hundred—and they retained the Manor of Killigrew till 1636, so Lysons says. I may add, as an early instance of the name being mentioned, that there was a Richard (or Michael) Killigrew, one of a riotous lot of junior scholars at Merton College, Oxon, about the year 1350.

After the lapse of about a century and a half from the time of Ralph, one of the Killigrews married the heiress of Arwenack, near Falmouth—a lady of broad lands, for her estates extended, it is said, from Arwenack (an old Cornish name which is said to signify either 'the beloved, still cove,' or 'upon the marsh') to the mouth of the Helford river, a distance along the coast of some five or six miles. To this place, overlooking the beautiful waters of Falmouth Haven, then a deeper and far more important harbour than it is at present, the Killigrew of the day, Simon by name, moved from his ancestral abode in St. Erme sometime during the reign of Richard II., probably about 1385; and here the Killigrews remained for nearly four centuries, acting as governors of Pendennis Castle for a great part of that period, intermarrying with many of the oldest Cornish families, and attending at the Courts of Henry VIII., Elizabeth, the first and second James, the first and second Charles, and William III.—loyal, able, and trusted adherents.

The earliest monument to any member of the family is, so far as I can ascertain, the brass in Gluvias Church, near Penryn, to Thomas Killigrew and his two wives Joan and Elizabeth, and all their children.[53] On the brass Thomas Killigrew is described as a gentleman ('generosus'); he is represented in the costume of the latter part of the fifteenth century, in a long handsome robe trimmed with fur, and carries on his right shoulder his hat, after the fashion of the time—a wealthy merchant, in all probability. Thus far and no further, I regret to say, can I trace anything of interest respecting the early Killigrews.

But we now approach comparatively modern times, and are soon bewildered by the number of more or less illustrious names from which to select examples. A genealogical table, which I compiled for my guidance, offers at least fifty names not unknown in history, and of whose possessors accounts, not without interest, might be given.[54] But to do this would be to write a book instead of a chapter; and a far smaller number must suffice.

The Killigrew family seems naturally to divide itself into two classes, roughly speaking, complementary to each other: viz., the elder branch, which was on the whole the steadier and the more prosperous, whose present representative (by marriage) is the Earl of Kimberley, Secretary of State for India; and the younger branch (now also extinct in the male line) more fertile than the former in statesmen, soldiers, and wits. This division it is proposed to adopt in the following notices of both branches of the family.

Seniores priores. Let us commence with the first John Killigrew, of importance, upon record. His brass, like that of the first Thomas, is to be found in another little village church—St. Budock by name—near Falmouth. Evidently a grim warrior, covered cap-à-pied with plate armour, and associated in the representation with his wife—one of another good old Cornish family (now also extinct)—Elizabeth, daughter of James Trewinnard of St. Erth. This John was a rich man, his estate being worth no less than £6,000 a year; and he was the first Captain of Pendennis Castle, built on his own ground, under his own superintendence, and with the co-operation of Thomas Treffry of Place (who, by the way, married Elizabeth Killigrew, John's sister), in the reign of our castle-building King, Henry VIII. The same John Killigrew was appointed in 1551, together with Sir William Godolphin and Francis Godolphin, to survey the Islands of Scilly, and to build a fort there; no doubt that which stands on St. Mary's Isle, and is now known as Elizabeth Castle, with its inscription, 'E.R. 1593,' over the principal entrance. He was, moreover, sheriff for the county, and in that capacity wrote a letter, dated at Truro, to Cardinal Wolsey, on the subject of a threatened French invasion. Not content with building a castle for his King, John built (or rather rebuilt) for himself (about 1571, according to Hals), Arwenack House, in such a style that it was reputed the finest and most costly in the county at that time. Little did he think that one of his descendants was to see it almost entirely destroyed, either by Waller, or by the owner himself, to prevent its falling into the enemy's hand, nearly a century later. Some part of the structure still stands, and is used as a manor-office; and here is preserved a conjectural restoration of Arwenack House in its long-since-departed glory.

To him succeeded his son, Sir John Killigrew, Knight, as second captain of the fortress. I find nothing further recorded of him, save that he married one Mary Wolverston,[55] and that when he died on the 5th March, 1584, he too was buried at St. Budock.

His son John—third of the name—seems to have been, according to some contemporary accounts, a man of no very high character; in fact, he has been stigmatized as 'a pirate,' an 'avoider of his debts,' 'a gamester,' and 'spendthrift.' Amongst the Lansdowne MSS., in the British Museum, are preserved accounts of his misconduct. One, dated 7th March, 1588/9, is a 'Complaynte against John Killigrew of y^e County of Cornwall, of many of his ill demeners.' First comes a list of his 'knowen debtes' to Her Majesty and others. Then the document sets forth that, notwithstanding many judgments obtained against him, he 'satisfieth no man;' but rides abroad, attended by armed servants, defies the bailiffs, and commits all sorts of high-handed irregularities. It concludes with the statement that he endeavours to satisfy his wealthier creditors with vain promises, and the poorer ones with blows and threatening words; and in fact, the complainants say it would require 'a hole quire of pap^r' to sum up all his misdeeds. His boarding and pillaging a Danish ship, and some similar acts of violence, are set forth by Sir Julius Cæsar in other documents of this series; and our hero, together with one William Ewens, are set down as 'notorious pirates.' That he did not obtain the honour of knighthood under such circumstances is hardly to be wondered at.

I cannot, however, help thinking that he has been debited with many of the misdeeds of one Peter Killigrew, who lived a century before him, but whose exact connexion with the family I have been unable to trace satisfactorily. Perhaps the one mentioned in Strype's 'Memorials of Edward VI.,' of whom it is observed, in 1552, that one 'Strangwich' (? Restronguet), 'and two Killigrews with him, were such notable sea-rovers, that, in the month of February of that year, the King sent a letter to the French King, that he would do his endeavour for the apprehension of them.' And yet, in 1592, a Mr. Killigrew, according to the same authority, was appointed, at Sir Walter Raleigh's request, on a commission to inquire into the matter of the distribution of the spoil of a certain richly-laden Spanish carrack, 'The Mother of God' taken by some of Sir Walter's ships on her return from the East Indies. Indeed, there is considerable difficulty in identifying some of the Killigrews of the sixteenth and early in the seventeenth centuries. But the fact is, that not only were the Killigrews concerned in exploits of this nature, but there were many others amongst the west-countrymen who, under Sir Peter Carew, slipped over to France, and did a little privateering against Spain on their own account, being anxious to do all in their power to prevent the marriage of Mary with Philip of Spain. A Killigrew of this date had three ships under his command, according to the Calais MSS. 'Wild spirits of all nations,' says Froude—'Scots, English, French, whoever chose to offer—found service under their flag. They were the first specimens of the buccaneering chivalry of the next generation, the germ out of which rose the Drakes, the Raleighs, the Hawkinses, who harried the conquerors of the New World.' Ultimately the Godolphins and Killigrews were threatened with prosecution, but nothing came of it. By his wife Dorothy, daughter of Thomas Monck of Potheridge, Devon, John is said to have had nine sons and five daughters, though I can only trace ten children altogether. She was the sister of General Monck, Duke of Albemarle, whose exploits on behalf of his royal masters, and especially the prominent part he took in the restoration of Charles II., are well-known matters of history. I have referred somewhat more fully to this in the chapter on the Grenvilles.

This John (whom we have called the third) had two brothers, Thomas and Simon, both of whom were Court favourites. Some other Cornish gentlemen of the time seem to have been equally popular with the Queen, as Elizabeth said of them that they were all 'born courtiers, and with a becoming confidence.' Queen Elizabeth sent Thomas on an embassy to the Count Palatine of the Rhine; and I find that he was also commissioned to seize a certain ship of Brittany at 'Pensans' (Penzance), and to 'distribute the spoil among such as by certain Britaines have been heretofore spoiled of their goods and wronged.' Rough and ready justice this, seemingly, and a lesson from which some subsequent Killigrews, as we shall find, did not fail to take a hint. John's younger brother, Simon, was, to some extent, a herald, as appears by a letter from him on the subject of the Manaton coat of arms, preserved amongst the Harleian MSS. (1079), in the British Museum. The two younger brothers added to the family estates by purchases of a property, with a town-house at Lothbury; a country seat at Kineton (? Kempton) Park, near Hampton Court; besides sundry lands and manors in East Cornwall, Devon, and Lincolnshire. Of their two sisters, Mary and Katherine, I can learn nothing, except that the latter married twice.

To return, therefore, to the main line—Sir John, the fourth and last of that name (for Sir William, the eldest son, who was made a baronet in 1661, and was buried in Westminster Abbey in 1665, would seem to have led an uneventful life, and need not detain us), was knighted at Whitehall on 8th November, 1617; he was 'a good, sober man,' and was likewise, I fancy, a Captain of Pendennis. He seems, moreover, to have been the chief promoter, at great pecuniary loss, of the first beacon-light on the Lizard, for which he obtained a patent from King James I., in 1619.[56] But he had the misfortune to marry an unsuitable partner—Jane, the daughter of Sir George Fermor—about whom Hals tells the following story (the credibility of which Davies Gilbert thought was at least questionable; but the tradition is still locally extant).[57]

Towards the close of Elizabeth's reign, two Dutch ships of the Hanse Towns League, and therefore under special protection, sailed into Falmouth Harbour, driven there either by the Spaniards or by stress of weather. They had scarcely arrived before Dame Killigrew, accompanied by some ruffians, boarded the Dutch ships, slew the owners, and seized two hogsheads of pieces of eight, which she took 'for her own use.' This high-handed proceeding of course produced remonstrances on the part of the rightful proprietors of the money, and led to the trial, conviction, and execution of all the offenders, save the lady herself, at Launceston. She barely escaped, and not without the utmost interest having been made for her with the Queen by Sir John Arundell, of Tolverne, and Sir Nicholas Hals, of Pengerswick.

Nor was this the only irregularity for which the authorities of Pendennis were complained of. In 1631 the Castle guns were fired upon the King's ships! and on the 2nd November in that year a Captain Kettleby writes thus: 'None disturb the free trade in those parts more than the Captain of Pendennis Castle—he is at peace with neither King's ships, nor others—both the Admiral and the writer have been twice shot at by him in going in and out. The last shot fell in the town of St. Mawes, but only hurt one woman.' Possibly the explanation of such apparently wanton mischief as this is to be found in the rivalry which existed for precedence between the two castles, Pendennis and St. Mawes, on opposite sides of the harbour mouth—a rivalry so intense as to have finally rendered a compromise indispensable.

Whether the details of the story of Dame Mary, or Dame Jane (an 'old Jezebel,' as her enemies called her) be true or not; whether it be a distorted reproduction of some of the misdeeds of her father-in-law, the third John; or whether the real cause of the misunderstanding between her husband and her faithless self was the now fast-growing rivalry between the ports of Penryn and Falmouth—this much at least is certain: that in the year 1633 Dame Jane gave to the mayor of 'Permarin,' and his successors in office for ever, a handsome silver chalice, still used as a loving-cup at the mayor-choosings, on which it is recorded that the Penryn mayor succoured her when she was 'in greate miserie.'[58] The unhappy pair were divorced, without issue; the husband dying in 1632 or 1636, and his wife twelve years afterwards.

A few words may be added here on the subject of the harbour. Penryn, the more ancient port, lies at the head of a long, tortuous creek; more secure, doubtless, from its position, and its once stockaded channel, from an enemy's ships than Falmouth was before the erection of Pendennis and St. Mawes Castles; and to Truro the same remark applied with still greater force. The rivalry between the two more ancient ports, Penryn and Truro, and the comparatively modern Falmouth, was, as may be supposed, of the keenest; but the natural advantages of Falmouth—at length defended by two forts, and aided by the powerful interest of the Killigrews—prevailed; and Falmouth, too, became 'a port.' A town—now one of the largest, busiest, and gayest of the quiet towns of Cornwall—accordingly sprang up around the once lonely site of Arwenack.[59]

Failing issue of the eldest brother, Sir William, the first baronet—and also of Sir John—Sir Peter, first knight of that name, now becomes the representative of this, the elder branch of the family: 'a merry youth, bred under the Earl of Bristol,' says one authority—and known as 'Peter the Post,' as another tells us, from the alacrity with which he despatched 'like wild-fire' all the messages and other commissions entrusted to him in the King's cause. On him was laid the important duty of conveying from Oxford the King's proposals to the Parliament in January, 1645. Like Rupert himself, he seems to have been in perpetual motion; and on one occasion, during 'Oliver's usurpation,' Sir Peter rode from Madrid, through France, and having passed the sea, got to London in seven days. Like Sir Tristram in the 'Monks and Giants,'

'From realm to realm he ran, and never staid.'

He was one of those who very nearly succeeded, it is said, in enabling Charles I. to effect his escape into France; and it was in his time that (as it is said) in revenge for his attachment to the Stuart cause, the mansion of Arwenack was ruined by Waller during the memorable operations of the siege in the time of the Civil War. It is, however, not improbable that its destruction was commenced by its patriotic owner in order to prevent its occupation by the enemy. Pendennis was the last castle (except Raglan) which held out for the King's cause;[60] but on the 16th August, 1646, it too was forced to surrender (though with flying colours, and all the honours of war) to Fairfax, after a terrible five months of siege 'and famine and harsh wounds,' endured gallantly by old John Arundell of Trerice, then nearly eighty years of age.

'Lady Penelope, fair Queen, most chast,
Pendennis, of all Royall Forts the last,
The last, the only, Fort ne'er conquered was,
Ne'er shall be; who in constancy doth passe
The rest of all thy sisters, who to thee
(The eclipse of all thy kinde) but strumpets be.'

The author of these verses, after the surrender, significantly, and not unnecessarily, added the ensuing note:

'Penelopen ipsam (persta modo), tempore vinces,
Capta vides sero Pergama; capta tamen.'

The family estates, worth, at one time, £6,000 a year, had sadly dwindled away by the time they came into the second Sir Peter's possession; indeed, they are said to have been worth no more than about £80 a year; yet he contrived to become elected M.P. for Camelford, and by 1630 had married Mary, the sister of Lord Lucas, of Colchester, Earl Pembroke giving the marriage portion of 'a good £300 a year;' and the Mercurius Politicus for 15th March, 1660, informs us that in that month he was made Governor of Pendennis by General Monk. This Sir Peter continued, like his predecessors, a sturdy champion of Falmouth. He got the Custom House removed from its old place at Penryn, to his own more modern town; carved the parish of Falmouth out of that of St. Budock (15 Charles II.); and, with the assistance of the King and others, built and endowed the church, dedicated to the memory of King Charles the martyr,[61] where his own bones first, and then those of other Killigrews after him, were laid. Some accounts give 1670 as the date of his death; others say—probably more accurately—that he died on the road to Exeter, in 1667: possibly killed on one of his break-neck rides; for, as we have seen, he was a man of no common energy and daring. He left three children: Peter, William, and Elizabeth.

Of the sister it seems unnecessary to say more than that she married a Count de Kinski, a title which, I believe, still survives. William, who died unmarried in 1678, became a soldier of fortune, and ultimately a general officer; and he was commander-in-chief of some Danish forces, sent by the Spaniards against the Swedes. After one of his successful engagements, he sold certain captured horses (his share of the spoil) to His Majesty of Denmark for some £3,000. But failing to get his money from his royal employer, the general executed the military movement known as 'right-about-face,' and transferred his sword to the Dutch, by whom his valour was more honourably rewarded. I have failed to trace the details of his career; but he seems to have been recalled to England at the Restoration, and had a regiment of foot. His nephew succeeded to his estate, which Martin Lister says was 'composed more of honour than of substance.'

It is, however, with the elder son of this generation that we have chiefly to deal, for through him the succession was kept up. Sir Peter, the second baronet (inheriting that title from his uncle, the foregoing Sir William, the first), was born in 1634, and was educated, notwithstanding his father's reduced estate, first at Oxford, and afterwards in France. Whilst he was at Oxford, the horrible execution of Anne Green, for murdering her infant illegitimate child, took place. After hanging for half an hour, she recovered her life in consequence of judicious medical treatment; and full particulars of the event are given in a rare little volume published at Oxford in 1651, and entitled 'News from the Dead.' To this work many of the members of the university contributed short sets of verses, some in Latin, some in English. The following lines were those supplied by the Cornish baronet:

'Death, spare your threats, we scorne now to obey;
If Women conquer thee, surely Men may.
How came this Champion on I cannot tell,
But I nere heard of one come off so well.

'Pet. Killigrew, Eq. Aur. fil. Coll. Reg.'

And here is a specimen of his powers as a writer of Latin verse, on a very different subject:

[Pro Rege Soteria.]

'Funera funeribus commiscens, bustaq; bustis
Ira avidæ, nato Principe, pestis abit.
Filius an regis potuit dum vagijt infans
A tôta rabidam gente fugare luem?
Nec valet, Antidotas sibi Rex, depellere varos
Cujus Apollinea est tarn benè nota manus?
Tantane Carolidæ potuêre crepundia? plebem
De tumulo redimet qui modò natus erat?
Et res usque; nova est? morbum miramur abortum,
Depulsum sceptro, Carole magne, tuo?'

In 1662, Sir Peter, who had been made Governor of Pendennis on the Restoration, married the handsome, virtuous, and accomplished Frances Twysden, daughter of Sir Roger, the well-known judge of that name;[62] and the union appears to have been a happy one in every respect, save as to the offspring. Peter, the eldest, died young; George, the second son, was killed in a tavern brawl at Penryn (at the house of a Mr. Chalons, says Tonkin), by 'a stab in the back' from a barrister named Walter Vincent. Another account states that the skull, which was found in 1861, showed that the hole made by the rapier was clearly visible in the forehead. Frances, the elder daughter, married a Cornish gentleman named Richard Erissey,[63] who 'cast her off' three years after their marriage. Ann, the youngest, who died without issue, married Martin Lister, a Staffordshire gentleman and soldier of fortune, who assumed the name of Killigrew, and managed the estates for many years. Clearly the main stem of the great race of Killigrew was rapidly decaying!

On the death, or murder, of his son George, old Sir Peter, who had gone to live at Arwenack in 1670, disappointed at having no male issue, and sick of the innumerable squabbles in which he found himself involved with the Falmouth folk, retired, first to London, and then, in 1697, to Ludlow, where he passed his time in scientific pursuits of a speculative character, the results of which appear to have died with him. His portrait, by Sir Godfrey Kneller, now in the possession of Mrs. Boddam Castle, of Grove House, Clifton (a descendant of the Killigrews), fully harmonizes with what we know of his character. One practical thing, however, he did: viz., to build the public quay at Falmouth; and to that old town, endeared to him by so many pleasant memories of the past, were his remains conveyed to be interred in the parish church, among those of his more immediate ancestors. The monuments are not, at present, to be seen; perhaps they are hidden under the raised floor of the chancel: but there were laid, in 1704, the remains of Sir Peter Killigrew,—the last male in the main [64] line.

George, his son, though, as we have seen, he died young, was not unmarried. He gained for his wife an offshoot of another old Cornish family, Ann, daughter of Sir John St. Aubyn, Bart., by whom he had issue one daughter (Ann), married to a Major John Dunbar. To the heiress of the ill-starred Erissey match—Sir Peter's youngest grand-daughter, Mary—the bulk of the remaining Killigrew property seems to have descended; and through her the present representative of the family (the Earl of Kimberley) holds it. She married, in 1711, a Colonel John West.[65]

There are few things more amusing in its way than the account which Mr. R. N. Worth has preserved for us in the Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall, of the arrangements which Martin Killigrew (Lister) requested should be made for Colonel West's reception at Arwenack. They are as follows:

'Mr. Abrm. Hall,

* * * * *

'It is but by guess I have to tell you that you are not to expect to see ye Colⁿ. till about ye end of ye first week in May, who bringing with him ye young gentleman [66] in question, must add considerably to ye flurry you will be put in from his being a person of great consideration as I hear, tho' I know not so much as his name and as Little any particular of his circumstances. But suppose you must be advised by the Colⁿ. as to your providing accommodation for their Retinue: Two bed chambers for ye gentlemen you will put in ye best order you can; a room for ye servants to Eat in: The best Cook your Town affords; some choise good Hambs and a provision of fatt chickens: Wine you must leave Mr. James to provide; and if any fine green Tea [67] be to be had, you must secure some of it, as what ye Colⁿ. is most Nice in, and drinkes much off. Two of ye largest Tea potts you can borrow, He using them both at a time. Nice and knowing beyond ye comon in providing a Table, so that your Mother will only have to receive his orders every morning on that head. The stable put in ye best order you can, provided with Hay and Corne.

'If I do not greatly mistake, this flurry cannot continue above three weeks, for that their impatience will be greater to get back to Bath than it is to see Falmouth.

'You are still in time to see that your Closett and Books be put in ye best Order you can, and nothing to be seen there belonging to other people's business, but only to ye Estate. You will finde ye Colⁿ. quick of comprehention and as ready at figures as can be supposed.

'At ye same time you observe to them ye great sums I have raised from ye Estate you will do me Justice to note ye improvements I have made upon it. And that tho' times are now dead as thro'out ye kingdome, yet as they have been good it may reasonably be hoped they will be so again, & that in ye main you doubt not of giving a yearly demonstration (by ye Rentall) of ye increase of ye Estate; when Diner is over you get back to your Closet, and as you see it proper, you returne with your pen in your ear, making ye Colⁿ. sensible he is wanted above, whereby he may git rid of impertinant Compⁿ. if such be with him. Nor can I see in respect to time ye Colⁿ. can do more in business than from day to day, he giving you orders which you will take in writing, and at parting take his hand to them, you giving him a duplicate.

'You will be able to borrow glasses, knives, forks, and spoons, with some handsome pieces of plate, in everything to make ye best figure you can; and if you can borrow a better horse than your own, you ought to do it. Relying upon ye Colⁿ. generosity (His greatest fault), you will be nothing out of pocket upon this occasion. As from me pray your Mother to trouble ye Colⁿ. with as Little of her conversation as her business will admit off. I thinke enough at a time to a man of your accute parts—

'Yours

'Mart. Killigrew.

'St. James's, 16th April, 1737.'

It will be seen from the above that Martin was a man of some mettle, and able to manage the affairs of his stewardship adroitly, though far away from the scene. He was always at war with the Corporation of Falmouth, of which borough he was for some time Recorder, and he died in St. James's Square, London, on 7th March, 1745.[68]

Amongst the latest notices of any member of the family that I have met with, one is contained in the sprightly pages of Mrs. Delany's 'Life and Correspondence;' the subject of her remarks seems to have been a true Killigrew, at least so far as his dramatic talent affords any indication. On the 26th January, 1752, at Mr. Bushe's (near Dublin), at a dinner-party, she met a Mr. Killigrew, who was 'a very entertaining, charming man, well-bred, good-humoured, and sings in a most extraordinary manner; has a fine voice, fine taste, no knowledge of music, but the exactest imitation of Senesino and Monticelli that you can imagine. He sings French songs incomparably, with so much humour that in spite of my gloom he made me laugh heartily.'

Of another, the last male of his name, Thomas Guildford Killigrew, I find from Notes and Queries, 1873, p. 224, and also from other sources, including information [69] with which I have been favoured by Mrs. Boddam Castle, that he married Miss Catharine Chubb, a distant relative, after having much impoverished himself in the Stuart cause in 1745, and that he settled in Bristol for the sake of economy. He died in 1782 without issue. At his death Mrs. Killigrew adopted her great niece, Mary Iago, afterwards married to Daniel Wait, Mayor of Bristol, in 1805. On the death of Mrs. Killigrew, in 1810, the family plate and portraits (one of the latter, Sir Peter Killigrew, by Sir Godfrey Kneller, and another, of Thomas Guildford Killigrew himself) passed to Mrs. Wait by will, and from her to Mrs. Boddam Castle, wife of Mr. Boddam Castle, barrister-at-law, now residing at Clifton. Some of the plate is more than 150 years old; the crest a demi-griffin, with 'T.C.K.' over it.

The last who bore the surname of Killigrew was Frances Maria (daughter of George Augustus Killigrew, of Bond Street), who died in Portman Street, London, on 20th July, 1819, aged seventy-one.

And here let us pause, after having exhausted (so far as I am aware) all the sources of information, and having, I believe, at least set down all that was noteworthy, of the elder branch of the Killigrews.

THE SECOND BRANCH.

John Killigrew, the first Captain of Pendennis, had three brothers, James, Thomas, and Bennet, of whom I can learn nothing of interest. And he also had other sons than John the second knight, his successor at Pendennis Castle, of whom we have already heard. One son—Thomas—died young. Another, the fourth son, was the famous Sir Henry Killigrew, Knight, who sat as Member of Parliament for Launceston in 1552-53, and for Truro about twenty years later. Him let us take as our first representative of the younger branch of the family. He is described as a Teller of the Exchequer, Commander of 'Newhaven' (Nieuwport), and Ambassador to Germany, France (where he temporarily relieved Sir Francis Walsingham), Scotland, the Palatinate, Frankfort, and the Low Countries.[70] Of a man of such mark—one whom Emerson would have called 'a bright personality'—traces would assuredly be forthcoming; and we do not seek them in vain amongst the Lansdowne, the Cottonian, the Egerton, and the 'Additional' Manuscripts in the British Museum; amongst the Scotch MSS.; and in the Public Record Office. Moreover, the Yelverton MSS. contain references to him, as also do the collections in Lambeth Palace Library. Most of these are Letters, Instructions, and Memorials, referring to the diplomatic functions which he was called upon to discharge, and partaking rather too much of the 'Dryasdust' character to be interesting to the general reader. There are some verses by him to 'My Ladye Cecylle' (his wife's sister), preserved in the Cambridge University Library; but I propose to omit these in favour of some Latin lines addressed to the same lady by Sir Henry's wife; not only because of the courteous maxim, 'Place aux dames,' but also because the lady's verses are really charming. In lieu of any specimen of Sir Henry's poetic vein, an extract from a letter which he wrote from Edinburgh, on 6th October, 1572, descriptive of John Knox—towards the close of his life—and some other fragments of his prose, will probably be more acceptable. 'John Knox,' he says, 'is now so feeble as scarce can he stand alone, or speak to be heard of any audience, yet doth he every Sunday cause himself to be carried to a place where a certain number do hear him, and preacheth with the same vehemency and zeal that ever he did.' This account is fully confirmed by another contemporary description of him, which is so graphic that I cannot refrain from giving it.

From May, 1571, to August, 1572, Knox lived in St. Andrews, and frequently preached there. 'I haid my pen and my little book,' says James Melville, 'and tuk away sic things as I could comprehend. In the opening upe of his text he was moderat the space of an halff houre; bot when he enteret to application, he maid me sa to grew & tremble, that I could nocht hald a pen to wryt.... He was verie weak. I saw him everie day of his doctrine go hulie and fear, with a furring of martriks about his neck, a staff in the an hand, and guid godlie Richart Ballanden, his servand, halding upe the uther oxtar, from the Abbay to the paroche kirk; and be the said Richart and another servant, lifted upe to the pulpit, whar he behovit to lean at his first entrie; bot or he haid done with his sermont, he was sa active and vigorus that he was lyk to ding that pulpit in blads, and fly out of it!' But his work was nearly done; weary of the world, and 'thirsting to depart,' in a few months he entered into his rest.

We learn of Sir Henry, from Heppe, that Queen Elizabeth being very desirous of concluding a sincere alliance, or 'Common League,' between herself and the Evangelical Princes of the Empire, sent to the Elector Palatine and other the Electors of the Holy Roman Empire and the States, Henry Killigrew—her 'approved and faithful servant'—and her 'orator,' Dr. Mount, with a view to counteracting 'the pernicious and sanguinary plots of certain persons against all the professors of the Holy Gospel in every place.' The Congress to which they were accredited met at Frankfort, in April, 1569, but Killigrew and Mount arrived too late for it.

These, and other of his diplomatic missions are referred to in the following extract from a memorial in Leonard Howard's 'Collection of Letters of Princes, Great Personages, and Statesmen.' After recounting his many [71] diplomatic missions for his Queen to France, 'to discover theire intents there against this Realme;' to Germany, 'to sound the Princes of Germanye touching a League defensive for Religion' (for which he had 'but Fortye Pounds allowance for all manner of Chardges; which coste me as muche more with the least'); and again several times to those Countries, as well as to Scotland in 1573, and to Newhaven, where he was hurt and imprisoned—Sir Henry thus concludes:

'Now for all these Journeys, Chardges, Daungers, Hurtes and Losses, in the meanwhile, and the Tyme used only in her Majesties' service, without any Proffitt of my owne, I have only to lyve by, of Her Majesties' Goodness, the Tellershippe, which was given me before I went to Newehaven....' In consideration of all which—by way of a provision for his family—he prefers a 'Suite for the said Firme of the Manor of Sarrake (?) in Cornwall ...'; adding, 'The Rent is somewhat great, I confess; but truly the Profitt nothinge equall.'

Let us hope that services so long, so faithful, and so important, at length received their reward. That they probably did may be surmised from the following account of the close of his active career, given by the Cornish historian Carew: 'After ambassades and messages, and many other profitable employments of peace and warre, in his prince's service, to the good of his country, (Sir Henry Killigrew) hath made choyce of a retyred estate, and, reverently regarded by all sorts, placeth his principal contentment in himselfe, which, to a life so well acted, can no way bee wanting.'

Lord Burleigh's instructions to him,[72] on the subject of his Scotch mission, written with his own hand, dated 10th September, 1572, especially as to getting Mary Queen of Scots out of the kingdom, and delivering her to the Regent's party, form a most interesting document. The letter closes thus: 'Herein yow shall, as Comodite shall serve yow, use all good Spede, with the most Secresy that yow can, to understand their Mynds; and yet so to deale to your uttermost, that this Matter might be rather Oppened to yow, than yourself to seme first to move it....'

Another object of his momentous mission to Scotland, as to which Elizabeth gave him her instructions with her own mouth, was to impress upon Mary Queen of Scots a sense of her faults, her duties, and her danger—a vain task! Froude gives an account of the interview, which took place after Darnley's murder. 'The windows at Holyrood were half-closed, the rooms were darkened, and in the profound gloom the English Ambassador was unable to see the Queen's face, but by her words she seemed very doleful.' And at length, having extorted from her a promise that Bothwell should be put upon his trial, Killigrew went back to London in less than a week, after having carried out his difficult and delicate duty 'like a loyal servant.'

The 'Cabala' states that when Henry Killigrew went to France, he was considered 'in livelihood much inferior to Walsingham;' but Leicester's opinion of him was subjected to revision. He says he found our hero 'a quicker and stouter fellow than he tooke him for.' I have often wondered whether this impression was derived from Sir Henry's bearing when the question of his pay was mooted. '60/ a pece, per dyem' had been set down, complains Leicester, writing to Walsingham on 15th December, 1585, as the pay of Killigrew and his colleague, whereas he had understood it was to be only 40s. The Earl's impression proved to be correct, and heart-burnings doubtless arose; with what result I know not, but Leicester's revised estimate of his man may point to the event. Sir H. Killigrew was at the siege of St. Quentin, in 1557; and Sir James Melville says how he met at La Ferre (? La Frette) 'Maister Hary Killygrew, an Englis gentleman, my auld frend, wha held my horse till I sate down in ane barbour's buith, to be pensit of the hurt in my head.'[73] He is found described, amongst the strangers resident in London in 1595 ('Nichols' Collections,' viii. 206), as living then in 'Broad Street Warde;' and he died on the 16th March, 1602/3. The character of this 'Admirable Crichton' has been so well drawn by David Lloyd in his 'State Worthies,' that I cannot refrain from giving it, in the words of Whitworth's translation.

'Travellers report, that the place wherein the body of Absalom was buried is still extant at Jerusalem, and that it is a solemn custome of pilgrims passing by it to cast a stone on the place; but a well-disposed man can hardly go by the memory of this worthy person without doing grateful homage thereunto in bestowing upon him one or two of our observations.

'It's a question sometimes whether diamond gives more lustre to the ring it's set in, or the ring to the diamond; this gentleman received honour from his family, and gave renoun to it. Writing is the character of the speech, as that is of the mind. From Tully (whose orations he could repeat to his dying day) he gained an even and apt stile, flowing at one and the selfsame height. Tully's Offices, a book which boys read, and men understand, was so esteemed of my Lord Burleigh, that to his dying day he always carried it about him, either in his bosome or his pocket, as a compleat piece that, like Aristotle's rhetorick, would make both a scholar and an honest man. Cicero's magnificent orations against Anthony, Catiline and Verres; Cæsar's great Commentaries that he wrote with the same spirit that he fought; flowing Livy; grave, judicious and stately Tacitus; eloquent, but faithful Curtius; brief and rich Salust; prudent and brave Xenophon, whose person was Themistocles his companion, as his book was Scipio Affricanus his pattern in all his wars; ancient and sweet Herodotus; sententious and observing Thucidides; various and useful Polybius; Siculus, Halicarnasseus, Trogus, Orosius, Justine, made up our young man's retinue in all his travels where (as Diodorus the Sicilian writes) he "sate on the stage of human life, observing the great circumstances of places, persons, times, manners, occasions, etc, and was made wise by their example who haue trod the path of errour and danger before him." To which he added that grave, weighty and sweet Plutarch, whose books (said Gaza) would furnish the world, were all others lost. Neither was he amazed in the labyrinth of history, but guided by the clue of cosmography, hanging his study with maps, and his mind with exact notices of each place. He made in one view a judgement of the situation, interest, and commodities (for want whereof many statemen and souldiers have [74] failed) of nations; but to understand the nature of places, is but a poor knowledge, unless we know how to improue them by art; therefore under the figures of triangles, squares, circles and magnitudes, with their terms and bounds, he could contrive most tools and instruments, most engines, and judge of fortifications, architecture, ships, wind and water-works, and whatever might make this lower frame of things useful and serviceable to mankinde; which severer studies he relieved with noble and free Poetry-aid, once the pleasure and advancement of the soul, made by those higher motions of the minde more active and more large. To which I adde her sister Musick, wherewith he revived his tired spirits, lengthened (as he said) his sickly days, opened his oppressed breast, eased his melancholy thoughts, graced his happy pronunciation, ordered and refined his irregular and gross inclinations, fixed and quickened his floating and dead notions; and by a secret, sweet and heavenly Vertue, raised his spirit, as he confessed, sometime to a little less than angelical exaltation. Curious he was to please his ear, and as exact to please his eye; there being no statues, inscriptions or coyns that the Vertuosi of Italy could shew, the antiquaries of France could boast off, or the great hoarder of rarieties the great duke of Tuscany (whose antic coyns are worth £100,000) could pretend to, that he had not the view of. No man could draw any place or work better, none fancy and paint a portraicture more lively; being a Durer for proportion, a Goltzius for a bold touch, variety of posture, a curious and true shadow, an Angelo for his happy fancy, and an Holben for works.

'Neither was it a bare ornament of discourse, or naked diversion of leisure time; but a most weighty piece of knowledge that he could blazon most noble and ancient coats, and thereby discern the relation, interest, and correspondence of great families, and thereby the meaning and bottom of all transactions, and the most successful way of dealing with any one family. His exercises were such as his employments were like to be, gentle and man-like. Whereof the two most eminent were riding and shooting that at once wholesomely stirred, and nobly knitted and strengthened his body. Two eyes he said he travelled with; the one of wariness upon himself, the other of observation upon others. This compleat gentleman was guardian to the young Brandon in his younger years, agent for Sir John Mason in king Edward the sixth's time, and the first embassador for the state in Queen Elizabeth's time. My Lord Cobham is to amuse the Spaniard, my Lord Effingham to undermine the French, and Sir Henry Killigrew is privately sent to engage the German princes against Austria in point of interest, and for her majesty in point of religion: he had a humour that bewitched the elector of Bavaria, a carriage that awed him of Mentz, a reputation that obliged them of Colen and Hydelberg, and that reach and fluency in discourse that won them all. He assisted the Lords Hunsdon and Howard at the treaty with France in London, and my Lord of Essex in the war for France and Britain. Neither was he less observable for his own conduct than for that of others, whose severe thoughts, words and carriage so awed his inferiour faculties, as to restrain him through all the heats of youth, made more than usually importunate by the full vigour of a high and sanguine constitution; insomuch that they say he looked upon all the approaches to that sin, then so familiar to his calling as a souldier, his quality as a gentleman, and his station as a courtier, not onely with an utter disallowance in his judgement, but with a natural abhorrency and antipathy in his very lower inclinations. To which happiness it conduced not a little, that though he had a good, yet he had a restrained appetite (a knife upon his throat as well as upon his trencher) that indulged itself neither frequent nor delicate entertainment; its meals, though but once a day, being its pressures, and its fast, its only sensualities; to which temperance in diet, adde but that in sleep, together with his disposal of himself throughout his life to industry and diligence, you will say he was a spotless man, whose life taught us this lesson, (which, if observed, would accomplish mankinde; and which King Charles the first would inculcate to noble travellers, and Dr. Hammond to all men), viz.: To be furnished always with something to do; a lesson they proposed as the best expedience for innocence and pleasure; the foresaid blessed man assuring his happy hearers, "That no burden is more heavy, or temptation more dangerous, then to have time lie on one's hand: the idle man being not onely" (as he worded it) "the Devil's shop, but his kingdome too; a model of, and an appendage unto Hell, a place given up to torment and to mischief."'

He left four daughters only, Anna, Dorothy, Elizabeth, and Mary, by his wife Katherine, fourth of the erudite daughters of Sir Anthony Cooke, of Giddy Hall, Essex, the accomplished Preceptor of Edward VI.—'vir antiqua serenitate,' according to Camden—from whom (as Strype tells us) his 'daughter Killigrew' inherited, amongst other things, 'a nest of white bowls.'

Dame Katherine was skilled, after the manner of the learned ladies of her time, in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, and in poetry; and both Sir John Harrington and Thomas Fuller commend and quote her compositions. But that, with all her learning, she had, what was even better, a devotedly affectionate heart, let the following lines testify, which she addressed to her sister Mildred, who had married Cecil, Lord Burghley.[75] The Lord Treasurer was about to send his young relative on a diplomatic mission to France, at a dangerous juncture—whether before or after the death in that country of Thomas Hobby, who married her sister Elizabeth, and who also went to France as an ambassador, I am uncertain—while the loving Katherine thought her husband would be safer and happier with her in Cornwall—probably either at Arwenack, or at Rosmeryn in Budock, or at Trevose in Mawgan, or at Penwerris, at all of which places were estates of the Killigrews. The dauntless wife thus threatens Elizabeth's solemn First Minister:

'Si mihi quem cupio cures Mildreda remitti
Tu bona, tu melior, tu mihi sola soror:
Sin male cessando retines, et trans mare mittis,
Tu mala, tu pejor, tu mihi nulla soror.
Is si Cornubiam, tibi pax sit et omnia læta,
Sin Mare, Ciciliæ nuncio bella. Vale.'

Of which, for the benefit of (some few at least of) my lady readers in these later days, I have appended Fuller's harsh translation:

'If, Mildred, by thy care, he be sent back whom I request,
A sister good thou art to me, yea better, yea the best.
But if with stays thou keep'st him still, or send'st where seas may part,
Then unto me a sister ill, yea worse, yea none thou art.
If go to Cornwall he shall please, I peace to thee foretell;
But, Cecil, if he set to Seas, I war denounce. Farewell.'

Fortunately, thanks to the poetic skill of my friend Mr. H. G. Hewlett, I am able to give his smoother and more classical rendering of the lines:

'Mildred! if truly my sister, the best, the one of all others,
Make it thy care to send back him whom I love to my arms.
If by neglect thou withholdest thine aid, and art cause of his exile,
Wicked, the worst, wilt thou be, sister in nowise of mine.
Should he to Cornwall return, all is peace with the Cecils and kindness;
If o'er the sea he depart, count on my hatred! Farewell!'

I do not know the exact date of Dame Katherine Killigrew's death; but she was alive on the 22nd May, 1576. She was buried in the Church of St. Thomas the Apostle, in the Vintry Ward of the City of London, where there is—or rather was, for the church is destroyed—'her elegant monument;' and many Greek and Latin verses were addressed to her memory by her sister Elizabeth and others. She thus wrote her own epitaph:

'Dormio nunc Domino, Domini virtute resurgam;
Et σωτῆρα meum came videbo meâ.
Mortua ne dicar, fruitur pars altera Christo:
Et surgam capiti tempore tota meo.'

By his second wife, Jael de Peigne, the friend and hostess of Isaac Casaubon, our Sir Henry left two sons, Sir Joseph and Sir Henry Killigrew, and one daughter; but nearly all traces of Sir Joseph and his sister Jane are lost, save what is interesting to the genealogist alone.

But Henry was a man of some mark. He was one of those loyal Members of the House of Commons who refused to join the Parliament against the Crown, and is described by Clarendon as 'a person of entire affections to the King,' and as commanding a troop of horse on Charles I.'s march from Shrewsbury to London in 1642.[76] The Lords Capel and Hopton were particular friends of his; and with such Royalist connexions and predilections, one is not surprised to learn that, together with Messrs. Coryton, Scawen, and Roscarroth, he was elected one of the Royal Commissioners for the County of Cornwall; and that, when Pendennis Castle was besieged, he was one of its stout defenders, remaining in it to the very last, and striving, both by sword and pen, to shake off the grip of the Roundhead bulldogs; all in vain, as we have already seen. The following letter from Lord Jermyn, who had married his cousin Katherine, serves to show, at once how sore were the straits of the besieged, and how highly their efforts were rated by Queen Henrietta Maria. (It will be remembered that Harry Jermyn was commander-in-chief of the army which marched from York to Oxford for the relief of Charles I., under the Queen, who used to style herself, 'She Majesty Generalissima over all.' It is believed that relations of too intimate a character existed between the Queen and her commander-in-chief.)

'My dear Cousin Harry,

'I have received yours, and truly do, with all the grief and respect that you can imagine to be in any body, look upon your sufferings and bravery in them; and do further assure you that the relief of so many excellent men, and preservation of so important a place, is taken into all the considerations that the utmost possibility, that can be in the Queen to contribute to either, can extend to. The same care is in the prince, from whose own hand you will particularly understand it.

'I have now only time to tell you, that I am confident those little stores that will give us and you time to stay and provide for more, will be arrived with you; and I do not so encourage you vainly, but to let you know a truth that cannot fail, that if you, as I do no way doubt, have rightly represented the state of the place, and of the minds that are in it, you shall be enabled to give the account of it you wish beyond your expectations; and already some money is at the sea-side for this purpose, and more shall daily be sent. I entreat most earnestly of you that the Governor, Sir John Digby, and those other gentlemen that did me the honour to write to me, may find here that I shall not fail to give them answer by the next. In the mean space, God of heaven keep you all, and give us, if he please, a meeting with you in England. I have no more to add.

'I am, most truly,

'Your most humble and most faithful Servant,

'He. Jermyn.'

On the surrender of the Castle,[77] Sir Henry appears to have gone to St. Malo, where he died on 27th September, 1646, from splinter-wounds received in the forehead by the explosion of a firearm whilst he was discharging it in the air after the capitulation of Pendennis. Clarendon sums up his character for us as being 'a very gallant gentleman, of a noble extraction, and a fair revenue in land; he was of excellent parts and great courage, and was exceedingly beloved. He was a passionate opposer of the extravagant proceedings of the Parliament;' and, when it came to blows, though he 'was in all actions, and in those parts where there was most danger, yet he would take no command in the army, yet he was always consulted; he was of great courage, and of a pleasant humour, but was a sharp reprover of those who neglected their duty. His loss was much lamented by all good men.' The Rev. Lionel Gatford (who acted as chaplain to the Royalists during the siege of Pendennis) preached Sir Henry Killigrew's funeral sermon, which is described in a MS. in the possession of S. Elliott Hoskins, M.D., F.R.S., Guernsey, as 'une perle de grand prix, lequel ravissoit le cœur de ses auditeurs.'

Whilst he lay dying of his wound at St. Malo, some priests tried to convert him to the Roman faith; but he would have nothing to say to them, and sent for a clergyman of his own Communion forthwith. By his own wish his body was taken across to Jersey. It lay in state at the Constable's house at St. Helier's, guarded by his exiled soldiers. The funeral was performed with all military honours, on 3rd October, 1646, and the corpse was laid in a vault in the church or 'Temple' of St. Helier's, near that of Maximilian Norys. His income had been about £800 a year before the troubles of the Civil War; but he had lost it all.

Sir Henry married a lady named Jemima Bael, and by her had one son, Henry. He too was a warrior; and fell, a Major in the King's army, at Bridgewater in 1644, whilst defending a magazine of provisions against an attack by the Parliamentary troops: 'a very hopeful young man,' says Clarendon, 'the son of a gallant and most deserving father.'

As we have already seen, three daughters only were the fruit of old Sir Henry's first marriage with Katherine Cooke.

Sir William Killigrew, Knight, the first Sir Henry's next brother, now claims a short notice. He too—Killigrew-like—was about the Court, for he was a Groom of the Privy Chamber to James I., and was sworn in Chamberlain of the Exchequer on 28th November, 1605. He married Margaret Saundars of Uxbridge, a widow lady; and they seem to have been a steady-going old couple, to whom, it may be mentioned, John Fox and Robert Some dedicated a volume of their sermons. There is some correspondence about Sir William in the Lansdowne MSS. touching his 'farming' the Seals of the Queen's Bench and Common Pleas, to which the Chief Justice of the latter court objected; and Sir William, who was appointed to his post by Burghley, seems to have ultimately compromised matters by receiving the sum of £3,000. The Additional MSS. contain other references to him; but hardly anything of sufficient interest to warrant our lingering over his share in the family history. He died at Lothbury on 23rd November, 1622; and his portrait, with that of Thomas Carew, by Van Dyck, is preserved in the collection of Her Majesty Queen Victoria. Richard Carew says that he was 'the most kind patron of all his country and countrymen's (county) affairs at Court.'

But from this Sir William and 'Mystresse Margarye' descended Killigrews who have made some noise in the world, as we shall presently find. Besides two daughters, Katherine and Elizabeth—both of whom married, but make no figure in our story—they had a son, Sir Robert Killigrew of Hanworth, a wealthy man, and Chamberlain to two Queens of England, viz., Elizabeth and the hapless consort of Charles I. He too kept up the old family connexion with Pendennis Castle—of which he was made Governor in succession to Sir John Parker, on 11th June, 1632, towards the close of his life; and he further served the Crown by going, in 1625, as an Ambassador to the United Provinces. Sir Robert was an original shareholder in the New River Company (incorporated in 1619); and was a great stickler for his rights in the matter of the reclaimed lands in Lindsey Level, Lincolnshire (as to which, see Dugdale's 'History of Embanking'); moreover, Farnaby, the celebrated schoolmaster, dedicated to him the 1624 edition of his translations of 'Martial's Epigrams.' He was once 'sequestered' for a manual scuffle in the House, in 1614, as appears in Spedding's 'Works of Francis Bacon;' and he was mixed up in the story about the poisoned powder administered to Sir Thomas Overbury, though it was clearly proved that Killigrew was not to blame in that matter; but it is nevertheless true that he was sent from the Council Table to the Fleet Prison for talking with Overbury at his prison-window, after having paid a visit to Sir Walter Raleigh in the Tower of London.

Sir Robert gave Whitelocke 'a place for Helston,' whereupon Whitelocke caused his brother-in-law Bulstrode to be returned for that place. He must have had a fine seat at Hanworth; for Conway, writing to Buckingham on 3rd May, 1623, says that on that day the King passed Sir Robert Killigrew's, 'and there saw the designment of a fine ground: a pretty lodge, a gracious lady, a fair maid, the daughter, and a fine bouquet. He saw the pools, the deer, and the herondry; which was his errand.'

When he took to himself a wife, he went to a good stock, for he selected Mary Wodehouse, a daughter of Sir Henry Wodehouse, of Kimberley, Norfolk,[78] known as the 'young' or the 'French' Lady Killigrew. She was a niece of one whose name (erroneously as we apply it) is familiar to every Englishman—I mean Lord Bacon. Of Sir Robert himself, little more need be said here than that he died on the 26th November, 1632; but his offspring will detain us much longer.

Sir Robert had six daughters and five sons; and it may be as well to offer first the slight result of my inquiries into the careers of the former.

They were about the Court of Charles II.; and one of them, Elizabeth, who married Viscount Shannon, became one of the dissolute King's mistresses. She died at her house in Pall Mall on 28th July, 1684, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, 'having no Coat-of-arms of her own, as the King had assigned her none.' Mary married Sir John James, Knight; and has a monument at the east end of the north choir aisle in Westminster Abbey. Of the others, I can only learn that they married men of title—one the Earl of Yarmouth; another Berkeley, Lord Fitz-Hardinge; and one married into a grand old Cornish family—the Godolphins. Another, Anne, 'a beauty and a poetess,' was the first wife of George Kirk, and the unhappy lady was drowned at London Bridge, in the Queen's barge, in July, 1641; like so many others of her race, she was interred in Westminster Abbey.

Robert, the eldest son, died young. The only trace I can find of him is the following college exercise on the birth of Charles II.:

'Dum Solis radios abscondit Luna, videmus
Reginæ ex utero surgere Solem alium:
Quid tu, Phœbe, redis? et cur te pœnitet umbræ?
Non deerit, vel te deficiente, dies.'

His brother William, next in age, succeeded him as the representative of the family—a position which he must have held for about seventy years; for he was nearly ninety when he died, in or about 1694. When a Gentleman Commoner of Oxford he wrote some verses, which Henry Lawes thought good enough to set to music; he also wrote four plays; and when he left the University (where he afterwards took the degree of D.C.L.), he was forthwith welcomed at Court, and became a Gentleman Usher of the Privy Chamber, and afterwards Vice-Chamberlain to Queen Katherine. About 1661 he was made a Baronet, probably on account of his loyal attachment to the late King, whose body-guard he often commanded. At York, when the Civil War broke out in 1642, he commanded a troop of cavalry, composed of servants and retainers of the 1st troop of Life Guards, under Lord Bernard Stuart; and at Edgehill he was one of the foremost in Prince Rupert's fiery charge—a charge which at once began and had almost ended the battle.

Old Sir William kept up the Killigrew connexion with the West-country, by being, in his turn also, made Governor of Pendennis; but he is best known and remembered by two little books which he wrote very late in life, and especially by his 'Artless Midnight Thoughts,' written when he was eighty-two years old, and described by himself as the reflexions 'of a gentleman at Court, who for many years built on sand, which every Blast of Cross Fortune has defaced; but now he has laid new Foundations on the Rock of his Salvation, which no Storms can shake; and will outlast the Conflagration of the World, when Time shall melt into Eternity.'[79]

This curious little work is full of pious reflexions and thoughts, both in prose and verse. It was dedicated first to Charles II., and afterwards to James II., who had made his old age much happier than ever his youth was, 'when I shared in all the glories of this Court, and splendour of Four great Kings for three score years.' He himself describes the book as 'a small parcel of such fruit as my little cell in White Hall doth naturally produce from the barren brains of 82 years old.' He also wrote some plays of a very different stamp from those of his younger brother, as may be judged from the following lines:

'COMMENDATORY VERSES BEFORE THREE PLAYS [80] OF SIR WILLIAM KILLIGREW.—(By T. L.)

'That thy wise and modest Muse
Flies the Stage's looser use;
Not bawdry Wit does falsely name,
And to move laughter puts off shame:—

'That thy theatre's loud noise
May be virgin's chaste applause;
And the stoled matron, grave divine,
Their lectures done, may tend to thine:—

'That no actor's made profane,
To debase Gods, to raise thy strain;
And people forced, that hear thy Play,
Their money and their souls to pay:—

'That thou leav'st affected phrase
To the shops, to use and praise;
And breath'st a noble Courtly vein,—
Such as may Cæsar entertain,

'When he wearied would lay down
The burdens that attend a crown;
Disband his soul's severer powers,
In mirth and ease dissolve two hours;—

'These are thy inferior arts,
These I call thy second parts;—
But, when thou carriest on the plot,
And all are lost in th' subtle knot,

* * * * * 'Th' easy and the even design;
A plot, without a God, divine!—
Let others' bold pretending pens
Write acts of Gods, that know not men's;
In this to thee all must resign;
Th' Surprise of th' Scene is wholly thine.'

He was buried at the Savoy some time between 1693 and 1695, and left by his wife, Mary Hill, a Warwickshire lady, one son, Sir Robert, Vice-Chamberlain to Queen Anne of Denmark, and some time Lord of the Manor of Crediton, in Devon, whose only son Sir Henry died in St. Giles'-in-the-Fields, without issue. Of his two daughters, one, Elizabeth, married Sir Francis Clifton; the other, Mary, married Frederic de Nassau, Lord of Zulestein. Their son William Henry was in great favour with our William III., who, in 1695, created him Baron Enfield, Viscount Tonbridge, and Earl of Rochford; but, as we have seen, the descent, in the male line, from old Sir William became extinct.

The venerable author of the 'Artless Thoughts' had, however, two brothers—Thomas [81] and Henry—and of these we have now to speak. Of the former, 'Tom Killigrew, the King's jester,' as he is sometimes inaccurately styled—probably more persons have heard than of any other member of this family; and for his fame he is indebted, perhaps, in as great a degree to his being enshrined in the pages of that delightful gossip, Samuel Pepys, as to his printed plays.

Tom was Sir Robert's fourth son, and was born in 1611. Very early he became, through the family influence, a Page of Honour to Charles I.; and he followed into exile that monarch's dissolute son, to whom, on the Restoration, he became a Groom of the Bedchamber and Master of the Revels, with a salary of £400 per annum. He seems to have added to his income by taking fees from those who were silly enough to offer them for using his interest in procuring for the gullible candidates the post of 'King's physic-taster,' or His Majesty's 'curtain-drawer.' Doubtless Killigrew was sometimes a minister to the profligacies of the 'merry' monarch; yet he was also one who could venture to tell a home-truth to the King when it was absolutely necessary, and when no one else durst do it. The following story may serve as an example. One day, Tom Killigrew came into the King's presence, clothed in pilgrim's weeds, and with a staff in his hand, evidently prepared for some long journey. 'Whatever are you about now, Killigrew?' cried the King; 'where are you going?' 'To hell, sir!' replied Tom, 'to fetch back one Oliver Cromwell to this unfortunate country; it was governed badly enough in his time, but infinitely better then than it is now.' An engraved portrait of him, dressed as a pilgrim, and another after Wissing, representing him with a beard, and armed with a sword, are preserved in the Print Room of the British Museum. Another instance of his adroitness in recalling Charles to a sense of his duty may be mentioned. The King found councils tedious; and would often leave them before the business was concluded,

To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neæra's hair,

greatly to the disgust of (amongst others) Lauderdale. Accordingly, on a certain day, Tom Killigrew—between whom and the Chancellor no love seems to have been lost—offered to bet £100 that he could bring the King to the council, though the minister himself could not. The bet was concluded, and Killigrew started off after His Majesty, knowing probably better than anyone else where he was likely to be found. At once he disclosed to Charles what had happened, and urged the King to let him win the bet, whereby he, Tom Killigrew, would be £100 (sorely wanted, perhaps) in pocket; whilst Lauderdale, who was remarkable for the tight grip with which he held his money, would be mulct in that amount. Charles could not resist the double pleasure of annoying Lauderdale and gratifying Killigrew, and so granted the latter's request, and won his bet for him.

Thomas Killigrew was sent—not without some misgivings, as it would seem—by Charles II., whilst in exile, as 'Resident' to Venice; and his instructions from the King (with many other papers, some of which are in Killigrew's own writing, are preserved among the Harleian MSS., in the British Museum) throw an amusing light upon the circumstances of the Ambassador and his Royal Master. They were, amongst other things, 'to presse the Duke to furnish Us with a present Some of Money and We will engage Ourself by any Act or Acts to repay with Interest, and so like wise for any Armes and Ammunition hee shalbe pleased to furnish Us withall. The summe you shall moue him to furnish Us with shall be Ten thousand Pistolls.'

Killigrew's first paper was presented to the Duke and Senate in Venice, 14th February, 1649-50. It consists of five closely-written folio pages in Latin, and he quotes in it King James's saying of 'Sublato Episcopo tollitur Rex,' in support of his arguments against the cause of 'the Rebels,' who, Charles feared, might be sending an ambassador of their own, on a similar errand, to that Court.

This mission does not seem to have proved very successful; and Tom Killigrew and his servants got into sad disgrace at Venice with the Doge, Francis, Erizzo, and other authorities, for their riotous behaviour, the result being that the whole party were dismissed; deservedly perhaps, but somewhat informally. On Thomas Killigrew's return to the English Court, Sir John Denham addressed him in these lines:

'Our Resident Tom
From Venice is come,
And has left all the statesmen behind him;
Talks at the same pitch,
Is as wise, and as rich,
And just where you left him you'll find him.

'But who says he's not
A man of much plot
May repent of this false accusation;
Having plotted and penned
Six plays, to attend
On the farce of his negotiation.'

The last three lines naturally lead us to a consideration of the 'Resident's' dramatic works, written, as he says, to beguile the tedium of exile. Thomas Killigrew wrote eleven plays in all; and, according to Genest, strictly speaking wrote but two at Venice; but the four written at Naples, Rome, Turin and Florence, were probably completed before his return to Paris. Dibdin, in his 'History of the Stage,' points out that these plays are by no means original, tracing some of them to their sources, and calling them 'paste-and-scissors' affairs. But this is not their chief defect. I have, as I thought myself in duty bound, read one of them, and intend never to read another. How it was possible, even in that dissolute age—'never to be recalled,' as Macaulay says, 'without a blush'—for a man to sit down and deliberately write such obscene buffoonery, and dedicate it to ladies—some of whom were his own relations—I cannot imagine. Plays too, of which one, at least, 'The Parson's Wedding,' was to be performed wholly by women! and in which the words assigned to those who played the women's parts are scarcely less offensive than those supposed to be spoken by men![82] We find ourselves indeed 'surrounded by foreheads of bronze, hearts like the nether millstone, and tongues set on fire of hell.' I must add that they have scarcely a sparkle of that witty wickedness which one meets with in the writings of Sir Charles Sedley;—luckily they are dead, and they deserved to die! It is difficult to find an extract which is now presentable; and I can put my hand on no better specimen, on the whole, than this:

Walking.

'Fine Lady. I am glad I am come home, for I am weary of this walking; for God's sake whereabouts does the pleasure of walking lie? I swear I have often sought it till I was weary; and yet I could ne'er find it.'

Not all of the plays were performed; though 'The Parson's Wedding' certainly was, at the King's House, and Luellin told Pepys that it was 'an obscene, loose play.' 'Claracilla,' a 'tragi-comedy,' Pepys himself went to see on 4th July, 1661; he merely says, however, that when he first saw it, it was 'well acted.' On a second occasion, when he saw it performed at the Cockpit, he thought it 'a poor play.' He might, in my opinion, have said the same of them all; but they were nevertheless sumptuously printed. King Charles II.'s own copy is in the British Museum (644, m. 11), and a portrait of the author contemplating the huge pile of his precious productions is prefixed to the volume. The original of this portrait was painted by W. Sheppard, and splendidly engraved by William Faithorne; another portrait (also by Sheppard, according to Redgrave) is in the possession of Mr. J. Buller East, to whom it was presented, shortly before her death in 1819, by Frances Maria Killigrew, the last of her name. There is yet another portrait of Thomas Killigrew, which represents him, not, as Walpole says in his 'Anecdotes of Painting,' 'in a studious posture,' but stooping, worn out with his vicious life, with a gibbering monkey at his side, and clad in a tawdry dressing-gown, on which are represented the portraits of a host of the wantons of his acquaintance. The lines at the foot of this rare engraving by Bosse (British Museum, {669. f. 4}/90) are an even more savage caricature than the picture itself.

Of Tom Killigrew's early fondness for plays, Pepys' story will serve as an illustration. 'I would not forget,' he writes, 'two passages of Sir J. Minne's at yesterday's dinner, one being Thomas Killigrew's way of getting to see plays when he was a boy. He would go to the Red Bull, and when the man cried to the boys, "Who will go and be a devil, and he shall see the play for nothing?" then would he go in, and be a devil upon the stage, and so get to see plays.' Would it be going too far to say that throughout his connection with the stage he stuck to his youthful part? He talked, however, much better than he wrote; with Cowley the case was the reverse; hence Denham's epigram:

'Had Cowley ne'er spoke, Killigrew ne'er writ,
Combined in one they'd make a matchless wit.'

Pepys describes him as 'a merry droll, but a gentleman of great esteem with the King; he told us many merry stories;' again, that Killigrew was 'a great favourite with the King on account of his uncommon vein of humour;' though on one occasion, when the King went to the Tower of London, to see the Dunkirk money, the conversation of Killigrew and the others was but 'poor and frothy.' More than once, however, Tom Killigrew, to his credit, spoke out, and to the point, in a tone of which we have already heard something; and Pepys himself has thus chronicled it:

'Mr. Pierce did also tell me as a great truth, as being told it by Mr. Cowley (Abraham Cowley the poet), and who was by and heard it, that Tom Killigrew should publickly tel the King that his matters were coming into a very ill state; but that yet there was a way to help all. Says he, "There is a good, honest, able man that I could name, that if your Majesty would employ, and command to see all things well executed, all things would soon be mended; and this is one Charles Stuart, who now spends his time in employing his lips about the Court, and hath no other employment; but if you would give him this employment, he were the fittest man in the world to perform it."'

On another occasion, when even Charles reproached the 'chartered libertine' with his many 'idle words,' Killigrew did not shrink from retorting, with special significance, on the King, that, after all, 'idle promises and idle patents' were even worse.

But something should be said of the domestic affairs of the subject of these observations. He lived, I believe, near that part of the old Court of Whitehall where Scotland Yard now stands; and, whilst there, married his first wife, Cecilia, daughter of Sir James Croft—a maid of honour to Henrietta Maria, and a lady whose portrait by Vandyck is in her present Majesty's collection.

The weather was rude and boisterous on the wedding-day, which gave rise to the following lines by Thomas Carew:

'Such should this day be; so the sun should hide
His bashfull face, and let the conquering bride
Without a rivall shine, whilst he forbeares
To mingle his unequall beames with hers;
Or if sometime he glance his squinting eye
Betweene the parting clouds, 'tis but to spye,
Not emulate her glories; so comes drest
In vayles, but as a masquer to the feast.'

I fear their wedded life must have been stormy throughout; the very first thing we hear of their courtship is a dispute in which they became engaged; and by-and-by we hear of Madam Killigrew's 'Case,' which sets forth that she brought her husband a fortune of £10,000, which Tom, writing from the Hague in 1654 [83] (the year in which his wife died of small-pox), solemnly promised not to waste or otherwise dispose of. Two houses in Scotland Yard were built with the money, or part of it. Francis Quarles thus bemoaned the hapless lady's fate: 'Sighes at the contemporary deaths of those incomparable Sisters—the Countesse of Cleaveland and Mistrisse Cicily Killegreue.' (They appear to have been buried in the same tomb, and to have died within twice two days of each other.) The little poem ends thus:

'My pen,
Thou hast transgrest;
Archangels, and not Men
Should sing the story of their Rest:
But we have done, we leave them to the trust
Of heaven's eternall Towre, and kisse their sacred Dust.'

About this time we come across a characteristic little story about Tom Killigrew in Evelyn's 'Diary.'

Sir Richard Browne, writing from Nantes, 1st November, 1653, to Hyde, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, says that he has sent to him, carriage paid, three barrels of canary wine to Mr. Thomas Killigrew's care. But Hyde does not seem to have got them, at any rate for a very long time. He heard of the arrival of the consignment at Paris, and that it was there 'conceaved to be Mr. Killigrew's own wyne'!—very possibly, it may be feared, from the use to which the consignee was putting it.

Thomas Killigrew was associated with Dryden, Sir William Davenant, and others, in obtaining a license (which, by the way, Sir Henry Herbert, his predecessor in the office of Master of the Revels, vainly endeavoured to get revoked) for a company of players, and a playhouse which was called the Theatre Royal, and which was situated somewhere between Drury Lane and Bridge Street.[84]

In fact, Killigrew was playhouse mad, as may be further seen by this extract from Pepys, date 1664:

'To King's playhouse: saw Bartholomew Fayre. I chanced to sit by Tom Killigrew, who tells me that he is setting up a nursery: that is, is going to build a house in Moorefields, wherein he will have common plays acted. But four operas it shall have in the year, to act six weeks at a time, where we shall have the best scenes and machines—the best musique, and everything as magnificent as is in Christendome, and to that end hath sent for voices and painters, and other persons from Italy.'

'It might naturally have been supposed' (observes Genest in his 'History of the Stage') 'that Killigrew, on becoming patentee of the Theatre Royal, would have brought out some of his own plays; it does not, however, appear that any of them were ever acted, except "The Parson's Wedding" and "Claricilla." On the contrary, the silence of Langbaine and Downes does not amount to a proof that none were acted; as Langbaine did not frequent the theatres till several years after the Restoration, and Downes's account of the Theatre Royal is very imperfect. "The Pilgrim" is a good T. (theatre) play, with judicious alterations it might have been made fit for representation. "Cicilia" and "Clarinda," "Thomaso" and "Bellamira's Dream," are, each of them, rather one play in ten acts, than two distinct plays. When a play is written in two parts, there ought to be some sort of a conclusion at the end of the fifth act, but in these plays there is no more conclusion at the end of the fifth act than at the end of the first; improprieties occur in numberless plays, but perhaps no author ever made such strange jumbles as Killigrew has made in "The Princess," and "Cicilia" and "Clarinda." All his plays are in prose—most of them are of an enormous and tiresome length—verbosity is his perpetual fault—there is scarcely a scene in which the dialogue might not be shortened to advantage.'

But to return to Killigrew's domestic affairs. Tom married a second time—one Charlotte Van Hess, who is described as first Lady of the Queen's Privy Chamber in 1662, and as also holding the apparently delectable appointment of Keeper of Her Majesty's Sweet Coffer. By this marriage there were three sons—Thomas, Robert, and Charles, of whom more hereafter.

Tom Killigrew must have been nearly sixty years old when he narrowly escaped assassination in St. James's Park. He had had an intrigue with Lady Shrewsbury, but found a dangerous and more successful rival in the Duke of Buckingham; whereupon the disappointed rake turned upon the lady a stream of foul and venomous satire. The result was that one evening, on his return from the Duke of York's, some ruffians, probably hirelings of the inconstant fair one, set upon Tom's chair, through which they made no less than three passes with their swords, one of them wounding him in the arm. The assassins fled, leaving Tom Killigrew in danger of death, and his man quite dead.[85] This brings nearly to a close all that needs be said about Thomas Killigrew, who died thirteen or fourteen years after the foregoing event, on the 19th March, 1682/3, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Notwithstanding his vices, it may at least be recorded to his credit that he was faithful to the Stuart cause which he adopted; was never ambitious, or avaricious; and that it was said of him when he died, that 'he was bewailed by his friends, and truly wept for by the poor.'

His will is dated on the 15th March, and was proved in the Prerogative Court on the 19th of the same month by his son Henry, his executor, and residuary legatee. He left some houses in Scotland Yard, and he mentions a pension from the King. 'In the will,' says my authority, 'there is no jest.' That his pecuniary affairs were not in a very satisfactory condition would seem to be the case from a statement of 'Secret Money Services Charles II. and James II.,' 'Payd to several persons for the respective causes, uses and purposes und^r-menc'oned, as by divers acquittances & a particular accompt signed & allowed in the like manner on the 14th day of June, 1683, doth appear, several sumes amounting to £4,743 4½d.—amongst others To James Gray, for and towards the funeral charges of Tho^s. Killigrew, deceased, £50.' This supposition would also appear to be confirmed by the following autograph letter, written when Tom Killigrew must have been about seventy years old (Harl. MSS. 2, 7005, art. 42):—

'For Mrs. Francesse Frecheville, Thes:

'Dear Mrs. Frecheuille,

'You may imagen your letter was very well come to me for I receved it att a time when I needed all the kindnes you expresse to me in it and all the consolation it brought me, for I was halfe dead, but I am of the opinion that the greatest cordiall in the world, and that which will bring one allmost from death to life, is the kindnes of a person for whome one has a great estime, and I am sure you cannot doubt but I have as much for you as it is possible, since I could never desemble in my life nor neuer make an expressione that I did not meane sencerly from my hart, I hope you doe beleeue this and that you will allwayes continue affectione to me since you can bestow it upon nobody that is more sencible of it and that will more reioyce in it than my selfe pardon this most horible scribble and beleeve I am with as much trewth as tis possible

'Dear Mrs. Frechevill

'Your most affectionate

'humble Servant,

'T. Killigrew.

'My Lady Anne is Your humble Servant.'

Of his three sons by his second marriage, Thomas, generally known as Tom Killigrew the younger, was Gentleman of the Bedchamber to George II., when Prince of Wales, and was somewhat of a playwright, like his father. He wrote a piece called 'Chit-Chat' (in which, by the way, the mercurial Colley Cibber played the principal part—'Alamode, a fop'). It was produced at Drury Lane shortly before the author's death, an event which took place at Kensington, in July, 1719. This play is said to have been very successful—was one of 'the four taking plays of the season'—and on its production the Prince made Killigrew a present of 100 guineas, to which the Princess added another fifty. As far as I can make out—though the matter is involved in great obscurity—the lady to whom reference has already been made as the possessor of the elder Tom Killigrew's portrait, and as dying, the last of her name, in 1819, must have descended from this branch of the family.

Robert, brother of the foregoing Thomas the younger, was a soldier. 'Militavit annos 24' is recorded on his monument in the north aisle of the nave of Westminster Abbey;[86] and he had risen to the rank of Major-General, when he fell on the plains of Almanza, near Chinchilla, on 25th April, 1707, being then forty-seven years old. This battle was fought, during the Spanish war of succession, between the Spanish and French, commanded by the Duke of Berwick (a natural son of James II.), and the allied English and Dutch forces under the incompetent General Ruvigny, Earl of Galway; on which occasion the latter were defeated; the fate of Spain was decided; and the Bourbon line was practically restored to the Spanish throne, in the person of Philip V.

Galway—

'Deep versed in books, but shallow in himself'

(a red-tapeist general, who fought always according to rule),—'drew up his troops agreeably to the manner prescribed by the best writers, and, in a few hours, lost 18,000 men, 120 standards, all his baggage, and all his artillery.' 'Do you remember, child,' says the foolish woman in the Spectator to her husband, 'that the pigeon-house fell the very afternoon that our careless wench spilt the salt upon the table?' 'Yes, my dear,' replies the gentleman, 'and the next post brought us an account of the battle of Almanza.'[87]

This battle is further remarkable as having been the first occasion on which the Union Jack was used as the British Ensign; and from its being almost the first time when British troops used the bayonet; it is also noteworthy, because at Almanza English and Dutch troops, commanded by a Frenchman, were defeated by French and Spaniards, commanded by a British General. The battle was fought on a plain about a mile in front of the town; and, I believe, an obelisk still marks the site.

Colonel Townshend Wilson, in his 'Memoir of the Duke of Berwick' (1883), gives a vivid description of the stubbornly contested three hours' conflict—in which 'never did Briton and Dutch face the foe more steadily.' They were however out-numbered and out-generalled—and on this day the old Das Minas might have been seen, accompanied by a young lady, his mistress, in a gay riding-habit, cantering to and fro among the allied troops under fire; but an unmannerly shot emptied her saddle. The end of the battle is thus described:

'From stern resistance the cosmopolitan infantry suddenly changed to brilliant attack. With a tremendous effort they beat down all opponents. Two battalions, irresistible in might, trampled down the enemy's double line, pressed even to the walls of Almansa. Superb audacity in front of well-led soldiers is sometimes foolishness. Don José de Amezaga, with two squadrons, charging the enemy, blown and in disarray, cut them to pieces.... Then the wondrous English and Huguenot foot, quite en l'air, deprived of support, most of their superior officers laid low, thought of retreat. The manœuvre was impracticable. Hundreds of men were trampled under the hoofs of exulting cavaliers. Six battalions, crushed into a crowd, had to lay down their arms. But thirteen battalions (five of which were English), holding grimly together, under Count Dhona, and Major-General Shrimpton of the Guards, retired in fine order to a hill about a league from the field.'

Being, however, without provisions, these gallant fellows were compelled on the following day to surrender to their antagonists. The Spanish loss was 2,000; that of the Allies double that number, and eighty-eight British officers, including Brigadier Killigrew and Colonels Dormer and Roper, were amongst the slain.

Among Brigadier Robert's small effects were twenty-two pistoles, a bay horse, a pair of gold buttons, and his watch and seal—as appears from some family letters preserved among the 'Additional MSS.' in the British Museum. He seems to have found life a 'fitful fever,' for in his very last letter to his brother—as 'T. K.' has endorsed it—he says that he is 'verre wery of sarvin in this Hott Contre.' But he was a courageous soldier; for his nephew, Major Henry Killigrew, of the Irish Carabineers, who seems to have also been present at the battle, writes that 'no man there gave up his life with greater bravery' than his uncle did. General Robert Killigrew, in fact, appears to have deserved the place which he attained amongst the Worthies of England at Westminster.

Charles, the third brother, was born in 1650, and was buried in the Savoy in 1725. He succeeded his father in the post of Master of the Revels [88] in 1680, with a fee of £10 per annum; and he was made a Commissioner of Prizes in 1707. J. T. Smith tells us that he used to license, 'in black and red print,' all ballad-singers, mountebanks, rope-dancers, prize-players, 'and such as make shew of motions and strange sights.' He also succeeded to the ownership of the play-house in Drury Lane; and is said to have done much to correct the profaneness of the stage.

Amongst the Lord Chamberlain's Records of the Reign of Charles II. is a volume marked 'Players Booke,' which contains many curious entries, such as regulations against persons forcing their way into the theatre without payment at the beginning of the last acts of the piece. No actor to leave the theatre without giving three months' warning. No visitor to come between the scenes, or sit or stand upon the stage during the time of acting. It also appears that certain of the actors had entered into a bond of £500 with Charles Killigrew for the theatrical properties, and a regulation was made that thenceforth none of the actors or actresses should 'presume to go out of the House in theire acting Clothes.' The well known Mohun, who was one of the parties to this bond, had served as Major of a regiment in Flanders.

But Harry, who seems to have been a son of Tom the elder, by his first wife Cecilia Crofts, took most after his father. He was Groom of the Chamber to James II., when Duke of York; and was the scapegrace of the family. Pepys was more than once shocked at his conduct, and speaks of him as a 'rogue newly come out of France.' Before he did this he had earned a bad character abroad; for on 21st July, 1660, the Prince Palatine wrote of a duel which Master Harry fought at Heidelberg, and adds, 'He will never leave his lying as long as his tongue can wagg.' There were ugly suspicions of his having, in a drunken fit, stabbed his own servant; and of his having committed other outrageous misdeeds. In 1666 he was banished from the Court, 'for raw words spoken against a lady of pleasure.' Yet he seems to have contrived to find his way back again; for in 1667 occurred the memorable squabble between him and Buckingham, which Pepys thus relates, and to which Charles II. also referred in a letter to Prince Rupert:

'Creed tells me of the fray between the Duke of Buckingham at the Duke's play-house the last Saturday (and it is the first day I have heard that they have acted at either the King's or Duke's houses this month or six weeks), and Henry Killigrew, whom the Duke of Buckingham did soundly beat and take away his sword, and make a fool of, till the fellow prayed him to spare his life; & I am glad of it, for it seems in this business the Duke of Buckingham did carry himself very innocently & well, & I wish he had paid this fellow's coat well.'

The quarrel seems to have originated in some insulting words used by Harry Killigrew towards the Duke from an adjoining box, and to these the Duke replied in like fashion; whereupon a quarrel ensued, which ended in a challenge from Killigrew. This the Duke refused to accept, and a personal encounter was the consequence—the two combatants chasing each other round the house, to the great annoyance of the rest of the audience, as may be supposed. Killigrew seems to have lost his character as a man of courage—whilst the Duke lost—his wig! as well as his temper. I have not been able to discover what became afterwards of this 'ne'er-do-weel,' except that in 1698 he contrived to get a free grant of £200 from the Treasury. He married Lady Mary Savage, had two sons (Henry and James), and was buried on 16th December, 1705, at St. Martin's-in-the-Fields.

We have thus completed, so far as seemed desirable, our sketches of all the sons and grandsons of Sir Robert Killigrew of Hanworth, except that of his fifth son, Henry; to him and to his career and progeny we now turn. He was born at Hanworth the year after his brother Tom, viz. in 1612; and was at first educated, as Wood tells us, by that celebrated schoolmaster, Farnaby, at St. Giles's, Cripplegate. Thence he went to Christ Church, Oxford, when sixteen years of age, and at that University obtained his degrees of M.A. in 1638, and D.D. four years afterwards. Of his Latinity when at college, the following example, amongst others, has been preserved:—

ΠΡΟΤΈΛΕΙΑ.

ANGLO-BATAVA.

'Lævis adhuc, nec dum Vir constituende Marite;
Tuque Uxor Virgo, Virgo futura diu;
Tam Castos Dilatus Hymen colit ipse Pudores,
Nec tantum Cœlis Pinus Adulta placet.
Ne jactet plures Amor hoc ex Fœdere Tædas,
Et ludat Ritus, Pronuba Diva, Tuos
Præcipitata celer diffundat Tempora Currus,
Hanc Matrem facias, Hunc citò, Juno, Virum.

'Hic Fratri Lucem, dedit hic Tibi, Sponsa, Maritum,
O Quantum Mensis Munus Utrumq; juvat!
Quære Mihi Niveos, Puer Officiose, Lapillos
Ut Gemmâ Festum Candidiore notem.
Si tamen has vincant magè Lactea corpora gemmas,
Pulchrior Ipse Suum Signet, et Ipsa Diem.'

He, too, received a Court appointment, and was Preceptor to James II. and a Chaplain to the King's Army and to the Duke of York. In 1660, he was made Prebendary of the Twelfth Stall at Westminster, and about the same time Rector of Wheathampsted, where are some of the family tombs. But it was not until 1667, when he was between fifty and sixty years of age, that he obtained the post in connexion with which his name is most generally known-that of 'Master of the Savoy and Almoner to His Royal Highness.'

Whilst still a youngster of seventeen, he wrote a tragedy which he called 'The Conspiracy,' intended for performance at the celebration of the 'Nuptialls of the Lord Charles Herbert and the Lady Villers.' It was played at the Blackfriars Theatre in 1638, and was received with great applause—obtaining high praise from 'rare Ben Jonson' himself. One critic, indeed, objected that the sentiments expressed by the hero of the piece, Cleander, were far beyond his age—seventeen—until he was reminded that that was the age of the author himself. Here is a specimen of the youthful writer's powers:

'(The Rightful Heir to the Crown kept from his inheritance: an angel sings to him sleeping.)

'SONG.

'While Morpheus thus does gently lay
His powerful charge upon each part,
Making thy spirits ev'n obey
The silver charms of his dull art;

'I, thy Good Angel, from thy side—
As smoke doth from the altar rise,
Making no noise as it doth glide,—
Will leave thee in this soft surprise;

'And from the clouds will fetch thee down
A holy vision, to express
Thy right unto an earthly crown;
No power can make this kingdom less.

'But gently, gently, lest I bring
A start in sleep by sudden flight,
Playing aloof, and hovering,
Till I am lost unto the sight.

'This is a motion still and soft,
So free from noise and cry
That Jove himself, who hears a thought,
Knows not when we pass by.'

The play appears to have been printed without the writer's consent, in 1638, in an imperfect form; but it was not until fifteen years afterwards that he published an amended copy of it under the title of 'Pallantus and Eudora.' He also wrote another play, 'The Tyrant King of Crete,' which was never acted. Many of his sermons too were printed; one of them, Pepys—who seems to have gone almost everywhere, and heard almost everything—listened to in 1663: 'At Chapel I had room in the Privy Seale pewe with other gentlemen;' but he has left no record of the impression produced. Probably, therefore, it was not very deep or lasting; and, in fact, the sermons have no special excellence: yet there is something true and pathetic in this saying: 'Misery lays stronger bonds of love than Nature; and they are more than one, whom the same misfortune joined together, than to whom the same womb gave life.'

The Rev. W. J. Loftie, in his 'History of the Savoy,' tells us that Henry Killigrew succeeded Sheldon as Master, and that he was no more careful and economic in the management of the decaying establishment than was his predecessor; yet King William III.'s Commissioners tell a somewhat different story, and describe him as 'a man of generous and public spirit, as his expenses in the Chapel of the said Hospital, and of King Henry VII. at Westminster, who was the founder of the said Hospital, do sufficiently testify.'

In the Savoy itself Henry Killigrew lived, paying £1 a year for his lodgings. No pleasant neighbourhood was that 'Sanctuary'[89] which Macaulay thus describes:

'The Savoy was another place of the same kind as Whitefriars; smaller indeed, and less renowned, but inhabited by a not less lawless population. An unfortunate tailor, who ventured to go thither for the purpose of demanding payment for a debt, was set upon by the whole mob of cheats, ruffians, and courtezans. He offered to give a full discharge to his debtor, and a treat to the rabble, but in vain. He had violated their "franchises," and this crime was not to be pardoned. He was knocked down, stripped, tarred, and feathered. A rope was tied round his waist. He was dragged naked up and down the street amidst yells of "A bailiff! a bailiff!" Finally he was compelled to kneel down, and curse his father and mother—and then "to limp home without a rag upon him."'

The Master of the Savoy married twice, it is said; but I have failed to trace the maiden name of either of his wives. It would have been interesting to know who the first was, especially; for she was the mother of the fairest and brightest of all the Killigrews—Mistress Anne. The second wife continued to live in the Savoy after her husband's death, which took place the 14th March, 1699.

He had two sons and two daughters. The sons, both of whom were sailors, were Henry and James; and the daughters, Elizabeth and the incomparable ANNE. Clutterbuck, in his 'History of Hertfordshire,' says that Elizabeth married Dr. J. Lambe, Dean of Ely, who succeeded to the Rectory of Wheathampstead; and that they had five sons and five daughters. Her epitaph records that she was 'a most intirely beloved wife,' and that 'to menc̄on some of her virtues only (though very great ones) would lessen her character, who was a most eminent example of all those virtues whatsoever that adorn her sex.'

Henry, the elder son, appears to have been, on the whole, a successful man in his profession; he entered the navy in 1666, and for the next twenty years sailed in almost as many different ships; he was made Vice-Admiral of the Blue in 1689, and finally was created a Lord of the Admiralty under King William III. He died at his seat at St. Albans (for which place he had been elected M.P.) on the 9th November, 1712, eighteen years after his retirement from the Admiralty. Many MS. letters by him are in the Bodleian Library, and at All Souls' College, Oxford. In the British Museum is preserved a broadside entitled—

'Good News from the English Fleet:

being an Account of a great and bloody Engagement which happened yesterday between Their Majesties' Fleet commanded by Admiral Killigrew, and the French Fleet near the Beachy—with a particular account of the Taking Six of their Ships, and Sinking Three.'

It was printed 17th September, 1690; on which date the final result was not known, but enough had been learnt to describe the engagement as a victory; the battle was fought three leagues off the shore, and lasted from 10 a.m. till night.

Macaulay does not refer to this exploit; but, writing of the year 1693, he tells us that 'Killigrew and Delaval were Tories, and that the Whigs carried a vote of censure upon the Government in consequence of the late naval miscarriages, but failed to fix it on Killigrew and Delaval themselves, the Admirals.' The facts seem to have been that Killigrew and Delaval were appointed to convoy seventy ships of the line and thirty smaller vessels—the richly-freighted Smyrna fleet—past Brest to the Mediterranean; Rooke was to take them on afterwards. But the French fleet lay in wait for them near Gibraltar, and Rooke fell into the trap, with dire results. Macaulay thinks that Killigrew and Delaval ought to have been sharper, and not to have returned to England so soon. On hearing of the news in England, many of the merchants went away from the Royal Exchange 'pale as death.' There is, however, in the British Museum a rare ballad which somewhat conflicts with Macaulay's views, and I am tempted to refer to it, without being able to reconcile the discrepancy. It is entitled—

'The Seamen's Victory, or Admiral Killigrew's glorious conquest over the French Fleet, in the Streights, as they were coming from Thoulon towards Brest. With the manner of Taking Three of their French Men of War, and sinking Two more; although the French Admiral vainly boasted he would recover Brest or Paradice, yet he shamefully run from the English Fleet. (To the Tune of The Spinning Wheel.)'

The ballad is illustrated with rough wood-cuts, three of which represent ships, and a fourth, it is to be presumed, the Admiral himself. It begins thus:

'Here's joyfull news came late from Sea,
'Tis of a gallant Victory,
Which o'er the French we did obtain,
Upon the throbbing Ocean Main.
As soon as e'er they found our Rage,
The Rogues was glad to disengage.'

The defeat of the attempt made by the Toulon fleet to join that at Brest is then described, in the same rude sort of lines eminently adapted for the roystering choristers who frequent seaside taverns; and the poet thus continues:

'Now while we did maintain the Fight,
Two French Ships there we sunk down right,
And likewise have we taken Three,
This Crown'd our Work with Victory;
The noble, valiant Killegrew,
After the rest do's still pursue.'

And the ballad concludes with the hope—

'That we hereafter may advance
To shake the very Crown of France.'

Possibly it refers to an episode of the fight which may have escaped the notice of the illustrious historian. This much, however, is certain, that the exploits of the British Admiral were caricatured in a street play, probably got up for political purposes.

Admiral Killigrew has been described in the following terms by one G. Wood, his clerk, who sailed with him to the Mediterranean:

'A young man in the flower of his age but a man of great experience and to add to his experience he's a man of undaunted Courage Prudence and Conduct, making it his study in all his actions to doe nothing (though never so much to his own advantage) but that which is truely honorable and altogeither tending to the honor and advantage of his King and Country. Hee likewise carry'd his com̄and w^th so much gravity and wisdome that he was both belov'd and fear'd by all y^e squadⁿ from y^e highest to y^e lowest; and for his Prudence and Dilligence in managing of his Ma^tie's affairs.... I might inlarge much more and speak nothing but truth of this hono^ble comand^s yett fear I should be look't upon as a flatterer by those y^t knows him not.'

Whilst serving in the Mediterranean, in chase of a Salletine frigate, he was severely wounded by the bursting of a gun in his own ship, the splinters breaking both bones of his right leg, and frightfully wounding his head.

I have been unable to ascertain whom Admiral Henry married; but he had a son who bore the same name as himself, and who settled at St. Julian's in Hertfordshire. I think it must have been he who was a Major in Lord Strafford's Royal Regiment of Dragoons, the composition of which corps and the pay of its members are set forth in the Add^l. MSS. 22,231 in the British Museum. It would, however, be uninteresting to trace farther the descent of this branch of the family.

James, the younger brother, when only twenty-one years of age, and unmarried, was killed in a sea engagement off Leghorn, in January 1694/5, on board the Plymouth; like Nelson, 'in the arms of victory.'[90] His ship was a fast sailer, and outstripped her companions, so that when Captain James Killigrew came up with the French he had to engage two ships at once, both bigger than his own, one of which, however, he sunk, and the other he took. He sustained the unequal combat, it is said, for four hours. Besides losing his own life, fifty of his men were killed and wounded when the remainder of the British ships at length came up to his assistance. 'Characters like his need no encomium,' observes Charnock. Some accounts attribute cowardice to his comrades on this occasion.

We have now nearly completed our task, and have come to the last of the Killigrews whose history is likely to be entertaining, or instructive. ANNE,

'quæ stabat ubique victrix forma, ingenio, religione,'

as her epitaph (now destroyed) in the chancel of St. John the Baptist, in the Savoy Chapel, once described her;[91] and most gratifying it is to close our account of the Killigrews with the story of this admirable woman.

She was born in 1660, in St. Martin's Lane; and, the Restoration not having then been effected, was (according to Cibber's 'Lives of the Poets') christened in a private chamber, the offices of the Common Prayer-book not being at that time publicly allowed. Early distinguished for her skill in poetry and in painting, and for her learning, taste, and purity of life, for her fame she is not indebted to that which alone would have been sufficient to perpetuate it—I mean Dryden's renowned ode. This, exaggerated as its terms may appear, is nevertheless said, by those who knew her, to be hardly too strongly expressed. Even the ascetic Anthony Wood wrote of her the well-known line,

'A Grace for beauty, and a Muse for wit;'

and he assures us that 'there is nothing spoken of her which she was not equal to, if not superior.' That she was an accomplished artist Dryden's verse records, and that this was a talent possessed by at least one of her ancestors we have seen in the account of Sir Henry Killigrew, the diplomatist; but I am not aware that any of her paintings remain to us; but Walpole saw her portrait by herself, and thought more highly of her painting than of her poetry. The portrait has been admirably engraved in mezzotint by Becket and by Blooteling. She painted James II. and his Queen, as well as several 'history-pieces,' landscapes, and still-life subjects, which Dryden mentions in the poem that Dr. Johnson pronounced 'the noblest ode that our language has produced.' I am aware that Warton somewhat differs from the great critic as to this; but it would be difficult to point to a finer English threnody; and, notwithstanding the probability of its being familiar, if not to all, yet to most of my readers, I venture to think that the reproduction here of such parts as particularly refer to Anne Killigrew may not be unacceptable. The noble strain thus opens:

'Thou youngest virgin daughter of the skies,
Made in the last promotion of the blest:
Whose palms, new plucked from Paradise,
In spreading branches more sublimely rise,
Rich with immortal green, above the rest;
Whether, adopted to some neighbouring star,
Thou roll'st above us in thy wandering race;
Or, in procession fixed and regular,
Mov'st with the heaven's majestic pace;
Or, call'd to more superior bliss,
Thou tread'st, with seraphims, the vast abyss:—
Whatever happy region is thy place,
Cease thy celestial song a little space;
Thou wilt have time enough for hymns divine,
Since heaven's eternal year is thine.
Hear then a mortal muse thy praise rehearse,
In no ignoble verse,[92]
But such as thy own voice did practise here,
When thy first fruits of poesy were given,
To make thyself a welcome inmate there;
While yet a young probationer
And candidate of heaven.'

Exaggerated language perhaps, but sincerely meant. And the master of the 'long-resounding line' concludes:

'When in mid-air the golden trump shall sound,
To raise the nations under ground;
When in the Valley of Jehoshaphat,
The judging God shall close the book of fate,
And there the last assizes keep
For those who wake, and those who sleep;—
When rattling bones together fly
From the four corners of the sky;
When sinews o'er the skeletons are spread,
Those clothed with life, and life inspires the dead;
The sacred Poets first shall hear the sound,
And foremost from the tomb shall bound,
For they are covered with the lightest ground;
And straight, with inborn vigour, on the wing,
Like mounting larks, to the new morning sing.
There thou, sweet Saint! before the choir shalt go,
As harbinger of heaven, the way to show,
The way which thou so well hadst learnt below.'

The allusion to the grief of her brother Henry, the Admiral, then at sea, is very fine:

'Meantime her warlike brother on the seas,
His waving streamers to the wind displays,
And vows, for his return, with fond devotion pays.
Ah, generous youth! that wish forbear,—
The winds too soon will waft thee here!
Slack all thy sails! and fear to come;—
Alas! thou know'st not—thou art wrecked at home.'

Her skill as a painter he depicts in the following happy lines:

'Her pencil drew whate'er her soul designed,
And oft the happy draught surpass'd the image in her mind.
The sylvan scenes of herds and flocks,
The fruitful plains, and barren rocks;
Of shallow brooks that flowed so clear
The bottom did the top appear:
Of deeper, too, and ampler floods,
Which, as in mirrors, showed the woods:
Of lofty trees with sacred shades,
And perspectives of pleasant glades,
Where nymphs of brightest form appear,
And shaggy satyrs standing near,
Which them at once admire and fear.
The ruins, too, of some majestic piece
Boasting the power of ancient Rome or Greece;
Whose statues, friezes, columns, broken lie,
And, though defaced, the wonder of the eye;
What Nature, Art, bold Fiction e'er durst frame,
Her forming hand gave feature to the name.'

Dryden then alludes to her portraits of the royal family—and first of the King:

'For, not content to express his outward part,
Her hand called out the image of his heart.'

Of his Consort's likeness the poet gracefully observes:

'Our phœnix Queen was pourtrayed, too, so bright,
Beauty alone could beauty take so right.'

And, with a grand hyperbole, the poem ends with the above prediction that at the last day the Poets shall first awake at the sound in mid-air of the golden trump:

'For they are covered with the lightest ground.'

Mistress Anne Killigrew, as the virgin poetess and paintress was called, after the fashion of the time, was, like so many others of her family, attached to the Court. She was Maid of Honour to the Duchess of York; and, even in those loose days, was unspotted by the contaminating influences amongst which she found herself. One other taint, however, she did not escape—the contagion of small-pox, of which horrible malady this 'cynosure' died at her father's prebendal house in the Cloister of Westminster Abbey, on the 16th June, 1685, in the twenty-fifth year of her age.[93]

To her 'Poems,' now a rare book—a thin quarto, which appeared shortly after her death—are prefixed Dryden's ode, and the mezzotint by Becket, after her portrait of herself. Sir Peter Lely also painted her likeness.

It has already been said that none of her paintings remain; but of her poetical powers we may still judge from the following extracts. They will, of course, fall somewhat flat after the lofty lines which have just been cited; yet I venture to think that they will be found worthy of perusal. At any rate, Dryden writes,

'Thy father was transfused into thy blood,
So wert thou born into a tuneful strain;'

and they were at least considered at the time sufficiently good for the insinuation that they were not her own—a calumny to which the gentle Anne replied:

'UPON THE SAYING THAT MY VERSES WERE MADE BY ANOTHER.

* * * * * 'Th' envious Age, only to Me alone,
Will not allow, what I do write, my Own,
But let 'em rage, and 'gainst a Maide Conspire,
So Deathless Numbers from my Tuneful Lyre
Do ever flow; so Phebus I by thee
Divinely Inspired and possest may be;
I willingly accept Cassandra's Fate,
To speak the Truth, although believ'd too late.'

The following lines also are, I venture to think, far from commonplace:

'AN ODE.

'Arise, my Dove, from midst of Pots arise,
Thy sully'd Habitation leave,
To Dust no longer cleave;
Unworthy they of Heaven that will not view the Skies.
Thy native Beauty reassume,
Prune each neglected Plume
Till, more than Silver white,
Than burnisht Gold more bright,
Thus ever ready stand to take thy Eternal Flight.'

Notwithstanding her modesty, she was not without some confidence that her poetry would survive her, as it has, in fact, already done for two centuries; for thus she wrote her own epitaph:

'When I am Dead, few friends attend my Hearse;
And for a Monument I leave my Verse;'

a monument, perhaps, ære perennium, and which certainly remains longer than the marble cenotaph which was destroyed by the fire in the Savoy.[94]

Epitaphs, indeed, seem to have had a charm for her, as if she had a foreboding of her early death; and the following lines in praise of Mrs. Phillips may serve for a fair description of herself, and as a finish to these extracts from her compositions:

'Orinda (Albion's and her sex's grace)
Owed not her glory to a beauteous face,
It was her radiant soul that shone within;
Which struck a lustre through her outward skin;
That did her lips and cheeks with roses dye,
Advanced her height, and sparkled in her eye.
Nor did her sex at all obstruct her fame,
But higher 'mong the stars it fixed her name;
What she did write, not only all allowed,
But every laurel to her laurel bowed.'

Perhaps too much has been said of the virtues and graces of this chaste and accomplished lady; but it must be remembered that women such as she were rare in the days in which she lived and wrote. Nor must we forget that we are far removed from the sphere of that personal influence, the attractions of which are so powerful, and which probably contributed in no small degree to the fame of this fair scion of the Killigrews.

It was written on her epitaph, according to Ballard:

'Abi, Viator, et plange,
Si eam plangi oporteat
Cui, tam pié morienti,
Vel Cœlites plauserint.'

Even at this distance of time, it is delightful to think that she left a wicked world and age before a single spot had dimmed the lustre of her widely admired, but unsullied, fame:

'Wearing the white flower of a blameless life.'