In the year 1672, on a new war breaking out with the Dutch, Lord Sandwich again served under the Duke of York, as ViceAdmiral. It was during this war, in the several battles of which the gallant officer showed even more than his usual bravery, that Edward, first Earl of Sandwich, lost his life. When he saw that it was all over with his ship the Royal James, he ordered his captain, the officers, his own servants, &c., into the long boat, peremptorily refusing to leave himself in spite of every entreaty, and when the boat pushed off the brave form of the Admiral still stood erect on the quarterdeck of the burning vessel. "Thus perished

the man whose noble end to a noble life called forth eulogiums from friend and foe." The battle had been on the 28 May, 1672, and "on the 10 of June his body was found off Harwich clad in the uniform he had worn with so much honour, still adorned with the insignia of England's noblest Order, of which he had proved himself so worthy a knight, the gracious form, strange and almost miraculous as it may appear, unblemished in every part save some marks of fire on the face and hands." After a public funeral all that was mortal of Edward Montagu, first Earl of Sandwich, was interred on the North side of the altar in Henry VII.'s chapel in Westminster Abbey, on July 1, 1672.

Master Pepys' devotion to "his Lord" was extreme, but one or two amusing notes of the Diary prove that his prudent nature sometimes warred with his desire to do his Lord honour. On January 9th, 1663, he writes: "By discourse with my wife thought upon inviting my Lord Sandwich to a dinner shortly. It will cost me at least ten or twelve pounds; but, however, some arguments of prudence I have, which I shall think again upon before I proceed to that expense." The same faithful chronicler suffers great uneasiness at his Lord's predilection for play, and mentions with regret that he lost £50 to the King at my Lady Castlemaine's. Upon one occasion Lord Sandwich confided to his prudent secretary the startling fact that he was £10,000 in debt, his income being £8,000, and in the very midst of the discussion Lady Crewe came into the room to inform his lordship that another son was born to him. Poor Samuel devoutly exclaimed, "May God send my Lord to study the laying up something for it!"

Not to Lord Sandwich, but to his father,

Sir Sydney Montagu, did Sir Oliver Cromwell, uncle and godfather of the Protector, part with Hinchingbrooke, where he had constantly entertained a very costly guest, King James I. His magnificence towards his sovereign led him into financial difficulties which necessitated parting with the beautiful old place. One notable visit is recorded in 1603, when James was on his " progress to take possession of the throne of England, and is thus described by an old writer of the time: "The 27th of April the King removed from Burleigh towards Hinchingbrooke, to Sir Oliver Cromwels, and about some halfe mile ere he came there, his majesty was met by the Bayliffe of Huntingdon, who made to him a long oration, and there delivered him the sword which his highnesse gave to the Earle of Southampton to bear before him to master Oliver Cromwels House, where his highnesse and his followers, with all comers, had such entertainment as was not the like in any place before, there was such plentie and varieties of meates and diversitie of wines, and the sellars open at every man's pleasure. . . . Master Cromwell presented his majestie with many rich and acceptable gifts, as a very great and fayre wrought standing cuppe of gold, goodly horses, deepe mouthed hounds, divers hawkes of excellent wing, and at the remove gave fifty pounds amongst his majestie's officers."

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It was after this visit that King James is reported to have said to Sir Oliver at parting, Marry, mon, thou hast treated me better than ony ane syn I left Edinbro' "—a compliment which is supposed to have had the rare merit of being true. A large apartment, hung with some good bits of old tapestry, is still shown at Hinchingbrooke as James I.'s bedroom.

The young Oliver Cromwell, whose father Robert, the brewer, lived in Huntingdon, spent much of his time when a boy at Hinchingbrooke, and as children he and the baby prince Charles played together under the wide-spreading ancient limes, said to be as old as the original nunnery itself. Tradition says that the boys came to blows, as the best of children will, and that upon one occasion Oliver Cromwell caused the royal child's blood to flow, which later was to stain his own name for ever as the man who in stern fanaticism caused the death of his King.

The town of Huntingdon abounds with relics of Cromwell. The grammar school which he attended still stands; the site of the house where he was born is pointed out; he tumbled into the river Ouse one day and

would have been drowned but for the timely efforts of a curate living near Huntingdon who happened to be passing at the time. When in later years Cromwell marched through the place at the head of the Parliamentary army, he curiously enough met this same clergyman, and reminded him of the incident. The man being a strong loyalist made answer in a way little calculated to flatter the "General." "Yes, I well remember it, and wish I had put you in rather than see you in arms against your King." When a baby in his cradle, tradition also tells us that a pet monkey carried Oliver Cromwell up to the battlemented roof at Hinchingbrooke, but that despite the terror of the assembled household, ready with mattresses to catch the infant should the animal drop him, the monkey calmly took

the child back to his room and laid him again in his bed. As a boy the future ruler of England is said to have been wild and unruly, often incurring punishment by his wayward conduct and practical jokes. "One Christmas night the revels at Hinchingbrooke were interrupted by some unseemly pranks of his conceiving, which called down upon him a sentence from the Master of Misrule that Sir Oliver ordered into immediate execution, viz., that the young recreant should be subjected then and there to a severe ducking in one of the adjoining fishponds."

When in 1628 Cromwell was returned as member for Huntingdon, at which time his cousin Hampden also took his seat, his appearance on the occasion was such that the King is said to have exclaimed,

the long hair as worn at the period. Oliver considered Monk one of his best generals, but at one time had doubts of his fidelity, and when he was in command in Scotland the Protector wrote to him in the following curious language: "There be that tell me, there is a certain cunning fellow in Scotland, called George Monk, who is said to lie in wait there to introduce Charles Stuart; I pray you use your diligence to apprehend him, and send him up to me." Guizot says of Monk, "C'était un homme capable de grandes choses, quoiqu'il n'eût pas de grandeur dans l'âme." His jealousy of his noble colleague Lord Sandwich greatly bears out the French historian's opinion. Monk was created Duke of Albemarle by Charles II.

Between these portraits of Cromwell and Monk is a three-quarter length one of General Ireton, of whom it was said that he "grafted the soldier on the lawyer, and the statesman on the saint." He was a man of undoubted courage, and although a violent republican, and also the son-in-law of Cromwell, he ventured upon more than one occasion to differ from him, and expostulate boldly when he disapproved of the Protector's conduct.

To go back to a still earlier reign: Sir Henry Cromwell, father of Sir Oliver, and from the liberality of his largesses called the "Golden Knight," received Queen Elizabeth at Hinchingbrooke in August, 1564, after her visit to the University of Cambridge, but no particular account of the entertainments at the time seems to have been preserved. Henry VIII. originally granted the place to his minister, Sir Richard Williams, who assumed the name of Cromwell, and rose rapidly into favour with his imperious sovereign, obtaining from him a lion's share of rich abbey lands. Before this it was a nunnery to which the nuns of Eltesley in Cambridgeshire are said to have been removed by William the Conqueror, who is therefore reckoned to be the founder of the Priory which was of the Benedictine order, dedicated to St. James. The west side of the park still goes by the name of the nuns' meadow, and across a tributary of the river Ouse, just outside one of the park gates, is the Nuns' Bridge, a plain structure, venerable-looking, but guiltless of any attempt at architectural beauty. During some of the alterations of the place the bones of several nuns were found under the old part of the house.

The great characteristic of Hinchingbrooke, as it now is, is its brightness. Not a gloomy corner exists, save perhaps in the low buildings which were actually a part of the

nunnery itself. In all the principal rooms immense windows, both square and circular, let in floods of sunshine, in the cosy library lighting up the woodwork, all of which is of oak black with age, richly and elaborately carved by the hand of some great old master. The chimney-piece and massive frame above it are of the same dark oak, heavily carved, and bearing the date 1580 cut in the wood. These pieces were brought from Holland. No pictures are in this room, but well-filled bookshelves reach from the floor almost to the ceiling, where a bordering of heavy gold paper, relieved by a design in dark blue, runs the length of the walls above the bookcases. The upper parts of the windows, one of which is a deep bay directly facing the raised terrace which forms so charming a walk, are of coloured glass having heraldic designs and crests of present members of the Montagu family.

Unless during a total eclipse of the sun, the drawing-room, which is entered through the large folding-doors of dark carved oak separating it from the library, could scarcely fail to be bright even without actual sunshine, for one end of it is entirely formed by a wide, high window, formerly the east window of the chapel, while at one side of the room is a second great bay, even larger than that in the library. This drawing-room has not yet been renovated, as have many other parts of the house, but in it are to be found some interesting pictures. On either side of the chimney-piece are low bookshelves let into the walls, above which on the left hang portraits of the Duchesse de Berri, Elizabeth, Countess of Sandwich, and the celebrated Ninon de l'Enclos. On the right those of Hortense Mancini, Duchesse de Mazarin, Mary, Queen of James II. of England, and Henrietta Maria, Duchess of Orleans. appears odd to find the picture of an English peeress placed between two such notoriously celebrated characters as Louise d'Orleans, Duchesse de Berri, and Mademoiselle de l'Enclos; but it seems that the latter at least, together with the Duchesse de Mazarin, were the lady's chosen friends, and Elizabeth, wife of the third Earl of Sandwich, although a very brilliant member of society, was almost as distinguished for her gallantries as for her wit and cleverness. Pope writes of her :"This lady is both an honour and a disgrace to her native country." She spent much of her time in Paris, and appears to have shared with the two French ladies just referred to the admiration of the witty but profligate Abbé Charles de St. Evremond, who constantly mentions her in his writings. She

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died at Paris, at her house in the Rue Vaugirard, Faubourg St. Germain, in 1757. It was when she first went to Paris that Lady Sandwich made the acquaintance of the French beauties whose portraits now adorn the drawing-room at Hinchingbrooke, for at her return to France in 1729 they were all dead. That the pious Mary of Modena, wife of James II., who is said to have "lived a saint, and died in the very odour of sanctity," should be placed in this motley company,

mained for some years.

It was Prince Rupert who invented mezzotinto, and Horace Walpole relates the following anecdote as the way in which he did it :-"Prince Rupert, when in Holland, was one morning attracted by seeing a sentinel vehemently rubbing the barrel of his musket. On approaching and examining the gun, he found that the damp of the early morning had rusted the metal, and 'this, combined with friction, had produced a kind of arabesque or pattern on the

On either side of the end-window one finds Charles V., Emperor of Germany, by Titian, and Prince Rupert, the former of whom spent his life in warfare until his abdication, after which he secluded himself from the world in the convent of San Yuste, in Estremadura, where he died. The latter was the imprudent and unlucky, but brave, prince whom Pepys says was "wanting in patience and a seasoned head." Among the many wanderings of his adventurous life he found himself in America, where he re

numerous little dots, part of which the soldier was scraping away. This set the Prince thinking how he could produce a lasting effect of the same kind, and in combination with his friend Vaillant the painter he invented a steel roller cut with tools to make teeth in the manner of a file, or rasp, with projecting points which produced the black ground, and this being scraped away or diminished at pleasure left the gradations of light." Prince Rupert was a messmate of the first Lord Sandwich, and Pepys tells us that in Sir Peter Lely's studio he saw