was Degory Wheare, Master of Arts, fellow of Exeter College, to whom Camden assigned twenty pounds for the first year, forty for the second, and one hundred and forty pounds for every succeeding year.

Before we close this article, we cannot deny ourselves the pleasure of copying a curious letter written to Camden, by his ancient friend and brother antiquary Dr. Francis Godwin, bishop of Hereford.

"Last Easter term I was in London, and sought you, but had not the good hap to find you. It discontented me not a little, I had no other errand but to see you. I love you, nay I honour you. We now grow old and sickly. I am afraid we shall never meet. Fiat voluntas Domini. But what becomes of your second part of Elizabetha? How fain would I see it out! Let it not die. Live you long. Faxit. You shall live the longer, if the world may see that of you, which shall make you immortal even in this world, except so far forth, as the world itself is mortal. Although, why do I put in that perhaps of that which is extra aleam? you see how delighting to talk with you, I had rather to talk idle, than to say nothing. Camdeno meo salutem plurimam. Vale. Whitborne, October 9. 1620."

Aug. 18, 1622, as Camden was sitting in his chair and very thoughtful he suddenly lost the use of his hands and fect, and fell down upon the floor, but without receiving any hurt, and soon recovering

recovering his strength got up again. The account of this accident was one of the last things that he committed to writing. It was however followed by a severe illness which lasted to the ninth of November, 1623, when he died at his house at Chislehurst, in Kent, aged seventy-three. His remains were interred with great solemnity, in Westminster Abbey, opposite the tomb of Chaucer.

In a letter from Sir Henry Bourchier to Arch-1 bishop Usher, he gives this account of the death and funeral of Mr. Camden :

"The latest [news] which I must send you, is very sad and dolorous, being of the death of our late worthy friend, Mr. Camden, whose funeral we solemnized at Westminster, on Wednesday last in the afternoon, with all due solemnity: at which was present a great assembly of all conditions and degrees; the sermon was preached by Dr. Sutton, who made a true, grave, and modest commemoration of his life: As he was not factious in religion, so neither was he wavering or inconsistent, of which he gave good testimony at his end; professing in the exordium of his last will and testament, that he died, as he had lived, in the faith, communion, and fellowship of the Church of England. His library (I hope) will fall to my share, by an agreement between his executors and me, which I much desire, partly to keep it entire, out of my love to the defunct." Near his grave a handsome monument was erected to his memory, having his effigy thereon, holding

6

holding in his hand a book inscribed BRITANNIA. Dr. Sunith, in his life of Camden, says that a certain young gentleman of a very good family, thinking the reputation of his mother hurt by somewhat that Camden has delivered of her in his history, could find no other way to be revenged, than by breaking off a piece from the nose of his statue in Westminster Abbey. A modern writer accuses Sir Walter Raleigh of this mean action, on account of Camden's having mentioned in his Annals of Elizabeth, Sir Walter's intrigue with a lady of fashion.* tale, however, stands on no authority, and is totally inconsistent with Raleigh's character. Anthony Wood again attributes the injury done to Camden's statue, to some accident that happened at the solemnity of the pompous funeral of the last Earl of Essex, general of the army raised by the Parliament against Charles the first. This is a far more probable account, and it has this at least to support it, that no writer before that time has taken any notice of the mutilation.

This last

* Mr. Seward, in the European Magazine, Vol. XVII. p. 251.

The injury done to the statue has, however, been lately repaired and the feature restored by the direction and at the expense of a friend to the memory of Camden." Hawkins's Life of Johnson, p. 519.

125

SIR EDWARD COKE.

THIS great lawyer was the son of Robert Coke, Esq. a barrister at law, of Mileham, in Norfolk, where the son, Edward, was born in 1550. He had for a tutor at Cambridge, according to Dr. Fuller, no less a man than Dr. afterwards archbishop Whitgift; and if so, it is not a little remarkable, that he and his constant antagonist, Bacon, should be indebted for their academical education to the same person.From the university, Coke removed first to Clifford's Inn, and next to the Inner Temple, where at six years standing, he was called to the bar.He acquired a great reputation in his profession, nor less so as a member of parliament for his native county. In the 35th of Elizabeth he was chosen Speaker, at which time also he was the queen's solicitor. On his being made attorneygeneral, archbishop Whitgift sent him a greek testament, with this remarkable message, "That he had studied the common law long enough, and that it was time now to study the law of God."

As attorney-general, he had a principal concern in the prosecution of the unfortunate earls of Essex and Southampton, and he conducted himself with so much asperity in the trial, that both noblemen inveighed bitterly against him.Essex interrupted him several times, and the earl

of Southampton said at the end of his defence, "Mr. Attorney, you have urged the matter very far, and you wrong me therein. My blood be upon your head."

At the beginning of James's reign, he managed the prosecution of Sir Walter Raleigh with as much eagerness as if he had thirsted for that brave man's blood. His language on that occasion will sufficiently shew the temper of the man, for he did not scruple to insult the court and humanity, by calling Sir Walter "a traitor, monster, viper, and spider of hell."

Yet it is said by an anonymous writer, that Coke having retired into a garden to take some air, and his man brought him word, that the jury had condemned Raleigh of treason, he answered Surely thou art mistaken, for I myself accused him but of misprision of treason ;" and this relation, says the author, upon the word of a Christian, I have received from Sir Edward Coke's own mouth.*"

He displayed such wonderful powers in unravelling all the dark scenes of the gunpowder trea son, that the earl of Salisbury, in his speech upon the trial of the conspirators, said, "the evidence had been so well distributed and opened by the attorney-general, that he never heard such a mass

Observations on Sanderson's History of Mary Queen

of Scots.

of