Sir Henry Wotton states that Felton "was a is dated from Southwick, it is probable that he had younger brother of mean fortune, born in Suffolk, by hastened thither to acquaint his majesty with the nature of a deep melancholy, silent, and gloomy murder; which the king is said to have heard with constitution, but bred in the active way of a souldier; much apparent calmness, although he deeply regretted and thereby raised to the place of lieutenant to a foot the loss of the duke. He is also stated to have company in the regiment of Sir James Ramsey." He styled Buckingham "his martyr," and independently also relates the following circumstances attending of ordering his remains to be deposited in Westminster the assassination. Abbey, he caused a sumptuous monument, or rather cenotaph, to be erected to his memory in Portsmouth church.

fident that the blood of Christ shall wash away this not to justifie his fact, but take notice it was onely and all his other sins." I the instigation of the Devil;"-for" it had been no warrant to him if the grievances had been true," &c. His body was afterwards hung in chains, at Portsmouth."

Towards the latter end of November, Felton was arraigned in Westminster Hall at the bar of the King's Bench, and he was condemned on his own confession of the fact; yet he added, "that he did The monument of the Duke of Buckingham in not do it maliciously, but out of an intent for the Portsmouth Church, which, greatly in contravention good of his country." On the Saturday following he of religious decorum, usurps the place of the altarwas hanged at Tyburn, after expressing great peni- piece, is shewn in the annexed cut, which repretence and resignation; and praying "all the people sents the interior of the Church, looking eastward.

"Original Letters," vol iii. p. 266.

On the day before his execution, he was visited, with his Majesty's leave, " by the Earl and Countess of Arundell, and the Lord Matravers their son, he being of their blood. They brought him money to give away, and a winding sheet; but the last, as it seems, in vaine."-Vide, "Original Letters," p. 282.

This monument is principally of white marble; and, in the lower division, between two female angels, beautifully wrought, is a large tablet thus inscribed:

GEORGIO VILLERIO BUCKINGHAM: DUCI,
Qui majoribus utrinq: clarissimis oriundus: Patre
GEORGIO VILLERIO DE BROOKSBY in comit. Leicestr.
Milit: Matre MARIA BEAUMONT BUCKINGHAM: COMITISSA,
Cunctis naturæ fortunæq: dotibus insignis
Duorum prudentissimorum Principum gratia, suisq: meritis
Vota suorum Supergress: rerum gerendarum moli
Par soli Invidiæ impar: dum exercitus iterum in hostem
Parat hoc in oppido cædis immaniss: fatali arena
Novo cruoris & lachrimar inundante oceano
Nefaria perditissimi Sicarii manu
Percussus occubuit

Anno Domini 1628. Mense Aug: die 23.
Viro ad omnia quæ maxima essent nato ejusq.
Et suis hic una confossis visceribus
SUSANNA Soror, DENBIGHIE COMITISSA
Cum Lachrymis et Luctu perpetuo p.
Anno Domini 1631.

Tu Viator si qua tibi pietatis viscera tam indignum
Tanti viri casum indignabundus geme.

Et Vale.

....

Over the inscription, on a pedestal, is a marble urn, in which the heart of this ill-fated nobleman is said to be deposited: the Villiers arms and other insignia surmount the whole.*

OBSERVATIONS

our English peasantry of the present day; and while the disappointed tourist too often returns from his excursion, deploring the clownish ignorance and boorish indifference prevalent in the most beautiful and picturesque of our rural districts; it is more interesting to ascertain that those habits of life considered peculiar to the husbandman and the shepherd are still to be found, most pleasingly exhibited, in one little nook of Ireland,―an Oasis in a rural waste,— and a smiling garden amid the uncultured wretchedness and naked aspect of a country, for which, as it has been most truly observed, "Heaven has done every thing, and man nothing." Such are the traits of the Baronies of Forth and Bargy, or, as they are frequently designated, "The English Baronies" of the County of Wexford.

This district extends about two miles Irish, (or nearly twelve and a half English), from east to west, along the sea shore,-stretching from thence about eight miles to the mountain of Fort, or Forth, as the natives are pleased to call a hill rising six or seven hundred feet, at the utmost, above the general level of the circumjacent country. Here, A.D. 1172, Henry of Mountmorres, or Hervè de Monte Maurisco,* and his military followers, were located, by virtue of a grant made, (according to previous contract, on the part of Dermid Mac Morrogh, King of Leinster,) in return for their good and faithful services in the field. As the aboriginal inhabitants were wholly displaced, to make way for these martial intruders, the settlement became altogether English in its character; and the situation being sequestered, and the new inhabitants, from generation to generation, intermarrying within their own boundaries, that character has been there preserved to the present day in an unsophisticated guise, which we may vainly seek from the Thames to the Tweed. A handful of brave men, in a strange land, they soon felt the necessity of close union and brotherly concord, to protect them from the inroads of the surrounding natives; and governed, ab initio, by English laws, (laws, be it observed, which beyond the limits of "the Pale," the Irish for many centuries frequently sought without success) they soon * Portsmouth Church, which is dedicated to St. Thomas à settled down into one of the most peaceable and Becket, is a spacious and handsome structure. It principally consists of a nave, transept, and chancel; with a lofty tower at orderly communities that can well be conceived of. the west end, forming a good sea-mark. The nave and tower are Respected, too, as a compact body of unmixed Engcomparatively modern, both having been rebuilt in the Italian-lishmen, or Anglo-Irish, it is probable they escaped ized manner; but the transept and chancel are nearly of the earliest period of Pointed architecture: the windows of the

ON THE SOCIAL HABITS AND DIALECT OF THE BARO-
NIES OF FORTH AND BARGY, (COMMONLY CALLED
"" THE ENGLISH BARONIES," IN THE COUNTY OF
WEXFORD.)

BY AN OFFICER OF THE LINE.

WHILE it is too generally a matter of regret that the olden simplicity of manners, which so often presents itself to the imagination, is so rarely found among

chancel are triplicated and lancet-formed. In this Church are numerous sepulchral memorials. Charles II. was married at Portsmouth to Catherine, the Infanta of Portugal, on the 21st of May 1662.

those constant prosecutions and those incessant mutations of property which so incessantly harassed the country at large, and generated that hatred among

* Nephew of Richard, Earl of Strongbow.

the body of the people to the English, transferred, | such, if deserving, never fail to receive it from their after the Reformation, to the Protestants, rather on more affluent neighbours. account of their descent than their creed.

Throughout the English Baronies, the habitations, on the whole, are very superior to any others in the south of Ireland,---often as white as lime can make them,---especially in Forth; and boasting, moreover, of much comfort and cleanliness within. The male population are a fine manly race of well fed, well dressed, English-looking rustics, civil and frank, without servility in their deportment, and extremely intelligent. The raggedness of the Irish peasant is little seen among them, at any time; and their apparel on Sundays and holidays, especially that of the women, would reflect no discredit on their British kindred of the same standing in society.

Among the most striking peculiarities of this interesting people, however, is the circumstance of their having preserved the original Anglo-Saxon dialect, until the commencement of the present century,some of the old people, in very retired nooks, still continuing to speak it. Its Tuetonic origin is obvious enough; but, as a language, it is far inferior to that of the native Irish, abounding, as the latter does, in poetical imagery, bold metaphors, and sententious force, that seem to mark its oriental descent, as they

Even in the present day, amid remote districts, the Irish peasant has but one name, Sassenach, for Englishman and Protestant; and is impressed with the idea of Protestants being a race of men who deny the doctrine of the Trinity, and fear neither God nor Such feelings of hostility do not, however, by any means exist in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy; where, unless during periods of unusual excitement, both Protestants and Catholics live on very friendly terms of social intercourse; although not, perhaps, without those little feelings of jealousy which will always prevail in the main, among men of different creeds, where tolerance is not another name for indifference. The same good disposition towards their Protestant neighbours is also manifested by the inhabitants of the Island of Raghery, or Rathlin, off the coast of Antrim; and assignable to the same cause,---the absence of that contention between the opposite parties, in former days, which prevailed on the main land, and of whose lingering effects the wrong-headed politician and crafty demagogue too frequently avail themselves to keep alive that spirit of discord which alike frustrates every plan of private benevolence and legislative amelioration. For the exemplary conduct of all parties in the favoured spot I am more particularly describing, it may suffice to observe, that scarcely a man was committed to Wexford gaol, from the Barony of Forth, for felony,-to the number of ten or twelve, with funds to convey them to between 1798 (the year of the general rebellion) and America, by their landlord; the property is thus drained of a 1830. In the parish of Bamrow,* no murder has redundant and idle population. These circumstances may apoccurred for a century; nor is there even a floating pear trivial to the English reader, but are rather peculiar in Ireland, where, as very few landlords indeed, by comparison, tradition of one handed down from times more remote; ever make any abatement in their demands, however bad the unless, indeed, as I remember in the days of my boy-season, or depressed the market, the tenant generally pursues hood, some twenty years since, when the old people were wont to tell of a petty "robber chief," who dwelt, ages ago, in the old castle, or tower of Barristown, and dispatched his victims by hurling them down a perpendicular sort of shaft, still called "the murdering hole," into a small vaulted apartment, long since converted by the present hospitable Lord of the Castle+ into a receptacle for sundry good things pertaining to the social board. In this parish, it is also worthy of observation, there has been only one pauper wholly supported by alms for many years, and that pauper is blind: others, indeed, require occasional aid; and

The tenants on the estate of Samuel Boyce, Esq. whose farms, on an average, do not exceed twelve or fifteen acres, had, some time since, two thousand pounds deposited in the find no adequate employment at home, being annually provided, Waterford Savings' Banks; and the active young men, who can

his cheerless toil, pressed down by the dead weight of old arrears. The rents on Mr. Boyce's estates are not low; but, through the indefatigable exertions of his eldest son, Thomas Boyce, Esq. aided by the co-operation of a sober industrious people, a system of agriculture has been introduced, enabling the holder to till his few acres with the greatest profit. Mr. King, of Barristown, who has resided among the people during a long life, with the exception of one excursion to England, although not in the commission of the peace, has, for the last forty years, settled half the disputes in the parish:-such are the advantages of a resident gentry, when kind and benevolent to those around them.

Where farms are not too small, it is probably far better to have ground divided among a numerous than a scanty tenantry. In Jersey and Guernsey almost every head of a family not residing in a town holds his own farm; often, by the earnings

This parish has been described at some length by the of his personal frugality, or his forefathers' industry, converted Rev. Dr. Walsh, in "the Amulet for 1830."

+ Jonas King, Esq.-(the local " Man of Ross.")

into a miniature estate: and, of course, where almost every one has something to lose, the attachment of the people in general

GEORGE HERIOT,

certainly do its antiquity. But whatever the merits import is given in modern English in the same volume, of the Hibernian tongue, the unmixed colloquial it will enable the ordinary reader to judge of the phraseology of our English ancestors of the twelfth amazing progress our language has made since the 'century, as preserved in Ireland, must claim the time of Henry II.; and furnish the more close obattention of the curious. And here it may be related, server with some data for tracing the affinities between as a singular fact, that the Rev. William Eastwood, the provincialisms of England and the yet scarcely Rector of Tacumshane, Barony of Forth, while discontinued dialect of Forth and Bargy. amusing himself one day in his field with a volume of Chaucer, fancied some of the obsolete words which met his eye resembled those which also met his ear, as his workmen conversed together: he accordingly called them around him, and commenced reading a page or two of old Geoffrey aloud, to their great delight, as they well understood the most obscure expressions, and often explained them better than the glossarial aids of Dryden and Johnson. As a specimen of their own rude but antique rhymes, we may refer to the second volume of the "Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy," in which there is a "Memoir," by General Vallancey, "on the Language, Manners, and Customs" of the Anglo-Saxon settlers in the above-named Baronies, which includes a yola zong, (an old song) "handed down," as the writer states, "by tradition, from the arrival of the colony in Ireland." The subject of the song is the game at ball called Camánn, or Hurley ;---and, as its

GOLDSMITH TO JAMES I. AND HIS CONSORT,
ANNE OF DENMARK.

"But why should lordlings all our praise engross?
Rise, honest Muse, and sing the Man of Ross."

27

POPE.

to social order and the support of good government is proportionably strong. The comfort of the labouring classes in Northumberland has often been referred to by those who advocate the setting of ground in large divisions: but although farms of one thousand acres, and upwards, are not uncommon there, the married labourer, especially on the Duke of Northumberland's estates, has, for the most part, his cottage and plot of ground. SIR WALTER SCOTT's "Fortunes of Nigel" was Some of the estates in Shropshire ought to be models to our the first work which, in any considerable degree, nobility and gentry; as the people residing on them are not directed the attention of South Britain to the fortunes only rendered exceedingly comfortable, but schools are opened, at the landlord's expense, for the useful education of their and character of "MASTER GEORGE HERIOT,"children; the neglect of which, in general, will readily account who was born at Edinburgh in June, 1563, and for the clownishness of our rustics. Fifty years since, as I am" who has left the most magnificent proofs of his informed by an elderly friend, connected with Staffordshire, benevolence and charity that the capital of Scotland the labourer there received about 1s. 6d. per diem wages, and has to display." usually had a neat cottage, paddock, garden, and little orchard. "The person so named," continues From the annihilation of the cottage system, and of the small our author, was a wealthy citizen of Edinburgh, farmer, have resulted many of the evils and much of the dis- and the king's goldsmith, who followed James to the content now prevalent in our rural districts; and it is only by English capital, and was so successful in his profescareful attention to the practical and speedy remedy of those sion as to die, in 1624, extremely wealthy for that evils that our landed proprietors can secure their influence at such a period as the present. A loyal rural population is the period. He had no children; and, after making a strength of every nation; and while all interests demand the same full provision for such relations as might have claims paternal care from a well-ordered government, short sighted is upon him, he left the residue of his fortune to estabthat policy which would sacrifice the agriculturist on the altar lish an Hospital, in which the sons of Edinburgh of immediate expediency. The experiment was tried by Col- freemen are gratuitously brought up, and educated bert, during the expensive wars of Louis XIV. with temporary increase, it is true, of the public finances; but with an ultimate for the station to which their talents may recommend failure and ruinous reaction far counterbalancing the gain of the passing moment.

Waverley Novels," vol. xxvi. Introduction, p. iii.