The Nicholas Family, 89 



that there is a curtain which used to be drawn across the room to 

 separate the upper school from the lower. A youth happened, by 

 some mischance, to tear the above mentioned curtain. The severity 

 of the master (Dr. Busby) was too well known for the criminal to 

 expect any pardon for such a fault ; so that the boy, who was of a 

 meek temper, was terrified to death at the thought of his appearance, 

 when his friend who sat near him bade him be of good cheer, for that 

 he would take the fault upon himself. He kept his word accordingly. 



" As soon as they were grown up to be men, the civil war broke 

 out, in which our two friends took the opposite sides ; one of them 

 following the Parliament, the other the Royal party. As their 

 tempers were different, the youth who had torn the curtain en- 

 deavoured to raise himself on the civil list ; and the other, who 

 had borne the blame of it, on the military. The first succeeded so 

 well, that he was in a short time, made a Judge under the Protec- 

 tor : the other was engaged in the unhappy enterprise of Pen- 

 ruddocke and Grove, in the West. Every one knows that the 

 Royal party was routed, and all the heads of them, among whom 

 was the curtain-champion, imprisoned at Exeter. It happeiied to 

 be his friend's lot at that time to go to the Western Circuit. The 

 trial of the rebels, as they were then called, was very short, and 

 nothing now remained but to pass sentence on them ; when the 

 Judge, hearing the name of his old friend, and observing his face 

 more attentively, which he had not seen for many years, asked him 

 whether he was not formerly a Westminster scholar. By the 

 answer he was soon convinced that it was his former generous 

 friend ; and without saying anything more at the time, made the 

 best of his way to London, where, employing all his power and 

 interest with the Protector, he saved his friend from the fate of his 

 unhappy associates. The gentleman whose life was thus preserved 

 by the gratitude of his schoolfellow, was afterwards the father of 

 a son whom he lived to see promoted in the church, and who still 

 deservedly fills one of the highest stations in it." 



Of the two persons here alluded to, the prisoner was William 

 Wake, whose son, bearing the same name, became afterwards 

 Archbishop of Canterbury ; the Judge, who by this generosity to a 



