for charity, and she had every hour the prayers of the widow and orphan poured out to her.  It happened that one of the rebels found shelter in her house; she suffered him to be screened there; she fed and cloathed him.  The King had often declared that he would rather pardon those who were found in arms against him, than the people who harboured, or secretly encouraged them.  This miscreant, who sometimes ventured out at night to a public house, was informed, that the King had made such a declaration, and it entered into his base heart to betray his benefactress.  He accordingly went before a magistrate, and lodged an information, upon which the lady was secured, brought to a trial, and upon the evidence of this ungrateful villain, cast for her life.  She suffered at a stake with the most resigned chearfulness, for when a woman is convicted of treason, it seems, she is sentenced to be burnt[B].  The reader will easily judge what sort of bowels that King must have, who could permit such a punishment to take place upon a woman so compleatly amiable, upon the evidence of a villain so consummately infamous, and he will, we are persuaded, be of opinion that had his Majesty possessed a thousand kingdoms, he deserved to lose them all for this one act of genuine barbarity.

Lord Lansdowne. who did not consider, or was not then capable of discovering, the dangers to which this prince exposed his people, wrote the following letter to his father, earnestly pressing him to permit his entering voluntarily into king James’s service.

’Sir,

’Your having no prospect of obtaining a commission for me, can no way alter, or cool my desire at this important juncture, to venture my life, in some manner or other, for my King and country.  I cannot bear to live under the reproach of lying obscure and idle in a country retirement, when every man, who has the least sense of honour, should be preparing for the field.  You may remember, sir, with what reluctance I submitted to your commands upon Monmouth’s rebellion, when no importunity could prevail with you to permit me to leave the academy; I was too young to be hazarded; but give me leave to say, it is glorious, at any age, to die for one’s country; and the sooner, the nobler sacrifice; I am now older by three years.  My uncle Bath was not so old, when he was left among the slain at the battle of Newberry, nor you yourself, sir, when you made your escape from your Tutors, to join your brother in the defence of Scilly.  The same cause is now come round about again.  The King has been misled, let those who misled him be answerable for it.  Nobody can deny but he is sacred in his own person, and it is every honest man’s duty to defend it.  You are pleased to say it is yet doubtful, if the Hollanders are rash enough to make such an attempt.  But be that as it will, I beg leave to be presented to his Majesty, as one, whose utmost ambition is to devote his life to his service, and my country’s, after