Five more years passed. Whether in the interval William ever ventured into Matilda's presence, or whether it may be that during the time Earl Brhitric had married, we do not know: but seven years had elapsed since his rejection of her suit, and she at length gave up all hope of his changing his mind; and accordingly, in the year 1052 she consented to wed her persistent suitor, and became Duchess of Normandy.

Fourteen more years had gone. William was a good and affectionate husband, and his wife had borne him eight children, when the Confessor died, and William determined on the struggle with Harold for the crown of England. It was on Christmas Day, 1066-the year which saw three kings of England and two great battles on English soil-that Duke William was crowned, the first of all our sovereigns crowned in Westminster Abbey (which, indeed, had only just been rebuilt by the Confessor); but it was not till Easter, 1068, that Matilda visited England. During that interval she contrived and executed a crime, which for meanness and revengeful cruelty has had few counterparts even in the annals of a jealous woman's mortified vanity.

It was one and twenty years since Earl Brhitric had declined the hand of Matilda of Flanders. She was then a girl, scarcely more than a child, but now the beloved wife of one of the most powerful princes in Europe, a mother and a queen; yet all these years she had brooded over the slight; and the first use she made of her influence was to persuade her husband to grant her the honour of Gloucester. In order to accomplish this, Brhitric was seized, and conveyed to Winchester, where he shortly after died, and ominous words was privately buried. So pitiless was this woman's vengeance, that she even deprived the city of Gloucester of its charter, possibly because they sympathized with their unhappy earl. When the deed was done, Matilda was crowned at Winchester. One would imagine that Brhitric's wraith must have come between her and her new honours. She had killed, and she now took possession. For her life she enjoyed his lands, and bequeathed them, with the rest of her private property, to her English-born son Henry; but William Rufus seized the lands, and bestowed them upon his friend and follower Robert Fitz-Hamon.

Such is the story of Brhitric, Earl of Gloucester. Whether in the agony of his deprivation and cruel death he invoked a curse upon the possessors of his lands, or whether in God's providence such dark deeds were destined to bring a curse with them, we cannot say; but this is certain, that since the days of Brhitric dark shadows of sorrow or sin have dogged the steps of the successive holders of the title. The fact is noted by Camden, and the record may be carried on to nearly our own day.

Robert Fitz-Hamon, who succeeded Queen Matilda, and was the first lord of the honour of Gloucester after the Conquest, was wounded in the head by a pike at the battle of Brenneville; he

"had his wits cracked therewith, and survived a good while after as a man bestraught and madde."

Robert Fitzroy, or Robert Rufus, illegitimate son of Henry L, succeeded; he married Fitz-Hamon's daughter Sybilla, or Mabil, and became possessed of the honour of Gloucester in her right. He was a man of a noble spirit, so that he might well have redeemed the title from the evil destiny that pursued it. For years he lived a happy and prosperous life of lettered ease; but with his father's death, and Stephen's seizure of the crown, all this was sorely changed. Stephen despoiled him of everything he could lay his hand upon; and till his death in 1147 he had neither peace nor rest, while struggling for his sister's rights. He died of fever, worn out by toil and anxiety.

To him succeeded his son William, who died broken-hearted at the loss of his heir. Still hoping to retain the title and property in his family, he had married his eldest daughter to Prince John, who, wearying of her, repudiated her upon the plea of consanguinity. The castle of Bristol, built by her grandfather, he retained; but he sold her and the title to Geoffery Mandevil, son of Geoffery FitzPeter, for 20,000 marks, who, greatly impoverished thereby, died soon after at a tournament without issue; and she was passed on to Hubert de Burgh, but died almost immediately. John then granted the earldom to Almary, Earl of Evreux, a grandson of Earl William by another daughter; but they also died without issue.

This much coveted, but disastrous, honour now fell to the lot of Earl William's youngest daughter Amice, who was married to Richard de Clare, Earl of Hertford, and the earldom descended to Gilbert, his son, who was Earl of Gloucester and Hertford, and mightily enriched the house by marrying the daughter of William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke.

His son and successor Richard lost his life in the Barons' wars in the time of Henry III., leaving his title to Gilbert, who kept his life and lands by swaying from side to side. He became obnoxious to Edward I., who deprived him, but, on his marrying his daughter, Joan of Acre, he was restored. Joan bore him a son Gilbert Clare, the last Earl of Gloucester who bore this surname; he was slain in the flower of his youth at the battle of Stirling (Bannockburn) in the sixth year of Edward II. While this Gilbert the third was in his minority, Sir Ralph de Monthermer, who by a secret contract had espoused his mother, the king's daughter, (for which he incurred the royal displeasure and a short imprisonment, but was afterwards forgiven,) was called to Parliament by the title of Earl of Gloucester and Hertford. When Gilbert was out of his minority, he was summoned among the barons by the name of Sir Ralph de Monthermer as long as he lived, "which I note the more willingly for the rareness of the example." ""*

• Camden.

After the death of Gilbert without issue, Sir Hugh le Despenser took the title because he married Gilbert's eldest sister; and when he was hanged by Queen Isabella, Sir Hugh Audley, who married the second sister, had the title granted him by Edward III. The sons of this Edward were the first who bore the title of dukes in England, and Thomas the youngest was created Duke of Gloucester.* The change of dignity from earl to duke in no way affected the ill-fortune which pursued all those who possessed the honour of Gloucester. The Duke of Gloucester was sent a prisoner to Calais by his nephew Richard II., and there, it is said, was murdered by the king's command.

The earldom of Gloucester having now passed to Thomas le Despenser in right of his great-grandmother, he was violently displaced and degraded by Henry IV., and "at Bristow by the people's fury beheaded."

Some years had passed away when Henry V. granted the title to his brother Humphry, who styled himself in an instrument "Humphry, by the grace of God, sonne, brother, and uncle to Kings, Duke of Gloucester, Earl of Henault, Holland, Zetland, and Penbroch, Lord of Friesland, Great Chamberlain of the Kingdome of England, Protector and Defender of the same Kingdome and Church of England." But all these high-sounding titles had no effect in averting the doom upon this ill-omened dignity. He died suddenly at Edmondsbury, and was supposed to have been murdered (all sudden deaths being so accounted for in the middle ages) at the instigation of his uncle and rival, Cardinal Beaufort, and Queen Margaret. He was a great patron of learning, but by no means scrupulous as to the means by which he added to his valuable library.

The next holder of the title was Richard, Duke of Gloucester, son of Richard, Duke of York, and brother of Edward IV.; he was afterwards King Richard III. He fell at Bosworth field after a reign of two years; and with him ends Camden's series of Earls and Dukes of Gloucester.

For more than one hundred and fifty years the title remained in abeyance; but the memory of the misfortunes and crimes that followed it had probably after this interval died out, two new races of sovereigns, Tudors and Stuarts, having occupied the throne. Henry of Oatlands was the young prince in whose person the title was revived. His last interview with his father, the martyred king, when only eight years old, is well known; his imprisonment, release, and residence abroad, the persecution he endured from time to time from his mother, Queen Henrietta, because he refused to forsake his father's church, his return to England with his two brothers, Charles II. and James, Duke of York, and his death of small-pox the same year, are matters of history.

The next holder of the title was William, the only surviving son

• Camden says that he was so created by Richard II.

of Princess (afterwards Queen) Anne. The title was given to him by William III., who looked upon him as his heir. Constitutionally weak in both mind and body, his brain was overtaxed by the weight of learning pressed upon him; he barely outlived his eleventh year, a cold caught at the celebration of his birthday having developed into a fever, of which he died on the 30th of July, 1700. He appears to have been in a state ready to succumb to any illness, and the finishing stroke was given by the medical treatment of the time.

Frederick, Prince of Wales, son of George II., and father of George III., was created Duke of Gloucester by his grandfather on his accession to the throne. He conferred no honour on the title, which was soon merged in that of Duke of Edinburgh, and ultimately Prince of Wales. He was buried with little ceremony, and "without either anthem or organ", in Henry VIII.'s chapel in Westminster Abbey.

The ill-omened title was finally held by the brother and the nephew of George III. The marriage of the former with Lady Waldegrave deeply offended the king, and was the occasion of the passing of the Royal Marriage Act. The Duke of Gloucester had a son, who was sincerely attached to his cousin, Princess Mary. They were born in the same year (1776), but with a cruel policy were refused permission to marry till the marriage of Princess Charlotte had taken place; the Duke of Gloucester being the only member of the royal family to whom the Princess could have been united. This singularly faithful pair remained single till they were forty years of age, when, two months after Princess Charlotte's marriage with Prince Leopold, their long deferred union took place. It lasted eighteen years, the duchess surviving her husband three and twenty years.

The train of strange and sad coincidences which for nearly eight hundred years followed the holders of this title is hard to account for, the persistency with which misfortune dogged their footsteps, shewing a very remarkable and unique record. C. G. BOGER. St. Saviour's, Southwark Bridge, S.E.

[The authorities chiefly followed in the foregoing article are Camden and Miss Strickland.]

1561.-POEM WRITTEN ON LEAVING BADMINTON, 1836.-In a 12mo volume, entitled Poems, "by E. M. Bethell, of Springfield, Pilton," and "printed for private circulation," Chippenham, 1854, these lines appear :

Home of my youth, for ever fare thee well;

Much have I loved thee in my hours of glee,
But little doth it boot that I should tell
The force of that deep love I felt for thee.

Why, fertile valley, why around my heart
Hast thou so twined thy loveliness, that I
Feel it so bitter from thee thus to part,

That it doth cause full many a tear and sigh?

I am not made for weeping, my young brow
No single trace of sorrow ever wore,
But tears unheeded fall in torrents now

From eyes that ever shone with joy before.

Where is the firmness that my pride hath been?
Why are my inmost thoughts in vain revealed?
Alas! in moments of deep trial are seen

The feelings of a heart too long concealed.

Oh! had I ever dreamt that I must part

From my sweet home and all its loveliness,
I would have taught my inexperienced heart
To dote upon and cling unto it less.

But to my view there's not a single tree

But bears a voice that speaks of past delight;
'Neath this I've played in childhood's buoyant glee,
By that I've wandered on some summer's night.

They tell me there are other scenes, by far

More lovely than the one I leave behind :
Alas! I know not, care not, what they are,
For never shall my heart thy equal find.
Farewell, a wanderer on the earth I go,

And though in after years I see thee not,
In every future scene of bliss or woe

Thy much-loved beauty shall not be forgot.

ABHBA.

CIRCA

1562.-A DOMESTIC OUTRAGE IN GLOUCESTERSHIRE, 1220.-An account of a remarkable domestic outrage which took place in this county about the year 1220, has been contributed by Sir Henry Barkly, K.C.B., to the Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society (1886-87), vol. xi., pp. 33135. A mandate (which, apparently, escaped the notice of Dugdale, though it throws light on the genealogy of the baronial family of Giffard, and supplies the name of a lord of Brimpsfield, whom he omitted from the pedigree,) was addressed on the 27th of December, 1221, to the sheriff of Gloucestershire, directing him to deliver his prisoner, Matilda, relict of Richard of Aeton, to Elyas Giffard and Osbert Giffard of Brimpsfield, who, together with William Earl Marischal, William Earl of Salisbury, Ósbert Giffard of Norfolk, Gilbert Giffard, and Elyas de Cailloue, have bound themselves that she