AN "ANCIENT MARKET-TOWNE " 183 



danger. At length the pleading of his friends was so 

 far successful that the Queen was induced to commute 

 the sentence to imprisonment for life. So in the 

 Tower the Earl languished, while his Countess re- 

 mained at Titchfield, until the death of Elizabeth, 

 when, on the order of James I., Southampton was 

 pardoned and liberated. The poets hastened to con- 

 gratulate the great patron of literature, while Shake- 

 speare greeted his " dear boy " in the words of the 

 hundred and seventh sonnet. 



Then a few years later, on "Januarye 5, 161 5," 

 the Countess lost her fourth daughter, "ye Ladie 

 Mayre Wryotheslie," at the tender age of four years 

 and four months, and the parents laid "ye bodie " 

 in the spacious vault beside the coffin of the Lord 

 Chancellor, and placed in the south wall of the chapel 

 an effigy of their little one, who is represented as 

 sleeping the sleep of death. As Shakespeare said of 

 Juliet: — 



" Death lies on her like an untimely frost 

 Upon the sweetest flower of all the field." 



Another sorrow befell the " faire Elizabeth " in 162 1, 

 when in consequence of his opposition to the Court, 

 and especially to the Duke of Buckingham, Southamp- 

 ton was again imprisoned, when we are told that "the 

 Countess of Southampton, assisted by some two more 

 countesses, got up a petition to the King, that her 

 lord might answer before himself, which they say His 

 Majesty granted." But the cruellest blow of all fell 

 upon the beautiful Countess three years later, when 

 her husband and his eldest son both died in Holland 

 — poisoned, it was said, by order of the infamous 

 Buckingham. Their bodies were embalmed, or per- 



