confiscation.  The youths were then placed under the care of the Earl of Northumberland, by whose permission they travelled in France and Italy, where they appeared—­their estates having been restored—­with princely magnificence.  Nevertheless, on hearing of the imprisonment of Charles I. in the Isle of Wight, the gallant youths returned to England and joined the army under the Earl of Holland, who was defeated near Nonsuch, in Surrey.

A sad episode in the annals of these eventful times is presented in the fate of the handsome, brave Francis Villiers.  His murder, for one can call it by no other name, shows how keenly the personal feelings of the Roundheads were engaged in this national quarrel.  Under most circumstances, Englishmen would have spared the youth, and respected the gallantry of the free young soldier, who, planting himself against an oak-tree which grew in the road, refused to ask for quarter, but defended himself against several assailants.  But the name of Villiers was hateful in Puritan ears.  ‘Hew them down, root and branch!’ was the sentiment that actuated the soldiery.  His very loveliness exasperated their vengeance.  At last, ’with nine wounds on his beautiful face and body,’ says Fairfax, ‘he was slain.’  ‘The oak-tree,’ writes the devoted servant, ‘is his monument,’ and the letters of F. V. were cut in it in his day.  His body was conveyed by water to York House, and was entombed with that of his father, in the Chapel of Henry VII.

His brother fled towards St. Neot’s, where he encountered a strange kind of peril.  Tobias Rustat attended him; and was with him in the rising in Kent for King Charles I., wherein the Duke was engaged; and they, being put to the flight, the Duke’s helmet, by a brush under a tree, was turned upon his back, and tied so fast with a string under his throat, ‘that without the present help of T. R.,’ writes Fairfax, ’it had undoubtedly choked him, as I have credibly heard.’[2]

Whilst at St. Neot’s, the house in which Villiers had taken refuge was surrounded with soldiers.  He had a stout heart, and a dexterous hand; he took his resolution; rushed out upon his foes, killed the officer in command, galloped off and joined the Prince in the Downs.

The sad story of Charles I. was played out; but Villiers remained stanch, and was permitted to return and to accompany Prince Charles into Scotland.  Then came the battle of Worcester in 1651:  there Charles II. showed himself a worthy descendant of James IV. of Scotland.  He resolved to conquer or die:  with desperate gallantry the English Cavaliers and the Scotch Highlanders seconded the monarch’s valiant onslaught on Cromwell’s horse, and the invincible Life Guards were almost driven back by the shock.  But they were not seconded; Charles II. had his horse twice shot under him, but, nothing daunted, he was the last to tear himself away from the field, and then only upon the solicitations of his friends.