"Come live with me, and be my love,"
as "that smooth song made by Kit Marlow, now at least fifty years ago." "The milkmaid's mother," he adds, "sung an answer to it, which was made by Sir Walter Raleigh in his younger days. They were old-fashioned poetry, but choicely good. I think much better than the strong lines that are in fashion in this critical age."—The Complete Angler, Edit. vi. p. 65.
[13] "A Poem on the Danger Charles I., being Prince, escaped in the Road at St. Andero."
[14] [The Jacobean and Caroline poets, especially Donne and Cowley, require considerable allowance to be made on Scott's judgment by those who are not familiar with them.—ED.]
[15] Fasti Oxon. vol. i. p. 115. Considering John Dryden's marriage with the heiress of a man of knightly rank, it seems unlikely that he followed the profession of a schoolmaster. But Wood could hardly be mistaken in the second circumstance some of the family having gloried in it in his hearing.
[16] See Collins' Baronetage, vol. ii. The testator bequeaths his soul to his Creator, with this singular expression of confidence, "the Holy Ghost assuring my spirit, that I am the elect of God."
[17] Robert Keies, executed 31st January 1606, of whom Fuller, in his Church History, tells the following anecdote:—"A few days before the fatal blow should have been given, Keies, being at Tichmarsh, in Northamptonshire, at his brother-in-law's house, Mr. Gilbert Pickering, a Protestant, he suddenly whipped out his sword, and in merriment made many offers therewith at the heads, necks, and sides, of several gentlemen and ladies then in his company. It was then taken for a mere frolic, and so passed accordingly; but afterwards, when the treason was discovered, such as remembered his gestures thought he practised what he intended to do when the plot should take effect; that is, to hack and hew, kill and destroy, all eminent persons of a different religion from himself."—CAULFIELD's History of the Gunpowder Plot.
[18] The following curious story is told to that effect, in Caulfield's "History of the Gunpowder Plot," p. 67:—
"There was a Mr. Pickering of Tichmarsh-Grove, in Northamptonshire who was in great esteem with King James. This Mr. Pickering had a horse of special note for swiftness, on which he used to hunt with the king. A little before the blow was to be given, Mr. Keies, one of the conspirators, and brother-in-law to Mr. Pickering, borrowed this horse of him, and conveyed him to London upon a bloody design, which was thus contrived:—Fawkes, upon the day of the fatal blow, was appointed to retire himself into St. George's Fields, where this horse was to attend him, to further his escape (as they made him believe) as soon as the Parliament should be blown up. It was likewise contrived, that Mr. Pickering, who was noted for a puritan, should that morning be murdered in his bed, and secretly conveyed away; and also that Fawkes, as soon as he came into St. George's Fields, should be there murdered, and so mangled, that he could not be known; upon which, it was to be spread abroad, that the puritans had blown up the parliament-house; and the better to make the world believe it, there was Mr. Pickering, with his choice horse ready to escape. But that stirred up some, who seeing the heinousness of the fact, and him ready to escape, in detestation of so horrible a deed, fell upon him, and hewed him to pieces; and to make it more clear, there was his horse, known to be of special speed and swiftness, ready to carry him away; and upon this rumour, a massacre should have gone through the whole land upon the puritans.
"When the contrivance of this plot was discovered by some of the conspirators, and Fawkes, who was now a prisoner in the Tower, made acquainted with it, whereas before he was made to believe by his companions, that he should be bountifully rewarded for that his good service to the Catholic cause, now perceiving, that, on the contrary, his death had been contrived by them, he thereupon freely confessed all that he knew concerning that horrid conspiracy, which before all the torments of the rack could not force him to do.