Death shall us more truly unite.’”
“Poor Norton!” said the Vicar. “He was a man who might have lived such a different life! Well, who knows but that on Naseby Field God’s grace may, indeed, have delivered him from evil?”
“I am always glad to think that he was one of Gabriel’s first patients,” said Dr. Harford, “and that those poor imprisoned Quakers, suffering so bravely in the cause of peace, were his last. We may say truly that in helping them he gave up his own life.”
“And God be thanked that since our peaceful Revolution there are no more persecutions for opinion,” observed the Vicar. “We have passed through rough waters, doctor, yet have each of us been blessed with a loving wife, and have lived to see our children and our children’s children blessed in their career. But to my mind the noblest race was run by your son, Gabriel, who, indeed, died a hero of peace.”
THE END.
AUTHOR’S NOTE.
To the kindness of Mr. Joseph J. Green, of Tunbridge Wells, the Quaker antiquary and genealogist, and a collateral descendant of the Harfords, I am indebted for some of the particulars relating to my hero’s family. Dr. Bridstock Harford is also mentioned by the historian, Webb, and in Duncomb’s “History of the County of Hereford,” as one of the few residents in Hereford who sided with the Parliament, and there is a reference to him in the interesting old account-book of Mrs. Joyce Jefferies, of Widemarsh Street. The celebrated physician lived until 1695, surviving both his sons; the elder one is buried at Bosbury; the second son, Bridstock, was M.P. for Hereford in the reign of Charles II., and died in 1683. Dr. Bridstock Harford is buried in Hereford Cathedral, and a long Latin epitaph speaks of the ancient and honourable family from which he was descended, and of the way in which the city grieved for the loss of its greatest physician, whose skill had rescued so many from death, and who had never taken fees from the poor.
Particulars as to Sir Robert Harley and his household have been gathered from the “Letters of Lady Brilliana Harley” (Camden Society). The Archbishop’s visitation at Hereford is mentioned in Baine’s “Life of Laud,” and details of the fines and penalties, described in Chapters II. and V., are given in Dr. S. R. Gardiner’s “History of England from the Accession of James I. to the Outbreak of the Civil War,” Vols. VII.-X., and in Brook’s “Lives of the Puritans.” The words as to the proposed escape from the Tower of London in Chapter XXVI. were really spoken by Laud to his friend Pococke.