in sterner history than this.  He was concerned in a rising in 1648, when the King was in the Isle of Wight, the object of which was to rescue and restore the royal prisoner.  This rising, like Sir Thomas Peyton’s, miscarried, and he suffered defeat at Kingston-on-Thames, on July 7th of that year.  He was pursued, taken prisoner, and kept in the Tower until after the King’s execution.  Then he was brought to trial, and, in accordance with the forms and ceremonies of justice, adjudged to death.  His head was struck off before the gate of Westminster Hall one cold March morning in the following year, and by his side died Capel and the Duke of Hamilton.  By marriage he acquired Holland House, Kensington, which afterwards passed by purchase into the hands of a very different Lord Holland, and has become famous among the houses of London.  Of his daughter, Lady Diana, I can learn nothing but that she died unmarried.  She seems to have been of a lively, vivacious temperament, and very popular with the other sex.  There is a slight clue to her character in the following scrap of letter-writing still preserved among some old manuscript papers of the Hutton family.  She writes to Mr. Hutton to escort her in the Park, adding—­“This, I am sure, you will do, because I am a friend to the tobacco-box, and such, I am sure, Mr. Hutton will have more respect for than for any other account that could be pretended unto by

“Your humble servant.”

This, with Dorothy’s praise, gives us a cheerful opinion of Lady Diana, of whom we must always wish to know more.

January 22nd [1653].

Sir,—­Not to confirm you in your belief in dreams, but to avoid your reproaches, I will tell you a pleasant one of mine.  The night before I received your first letter, I dreamt one brought me a packet, and told me it was from you.  I, that remembered you were by your own appointment to be in Italy at that time, asked the messenger where he had it, who told me my lady, your mother, sent him with it to me; then my memory failed me a little, for I forgot you had told me she was dead, and meant to give her many humble thanks if ever I were so happy as to see her.  When I had opened the letter I found in it two rings; one was, as I remember, an emerald doublet, but broken in the carriage, I suppose, as it might well be, coming so far; t’other was plain gold, with the longest and the strangest posy that ever was; half on’t was Italian, which for my life I could not guess at, though I spent much time about it; the rest was “there was a Marriage in Cana of Galilee,” which, though it was Scripture, I had not that reverence for it in my sleep that I should have had, I think, if I had been awake; for in earnest the oddness on’t put me into that violent laughing that I waked myself with it; and as a just punishment upon me from that hour to this I could never learn whom those rings were for, nor what was in the letter besides.  This is but as extravagant as yours, for it is as likely that your mother should send me letters as that I should make a journey to see poor people hanged, or that your teeth should drop out at this age.