222 The Hertford Correspondence. 
principle of confiding it to one vast homogeneous engine wielded by 
the central authority. 
It now remains to take a brief notice of the distinguished per- 
sonage whose name appears at the head of this article. (The 
subordinate characters will be noticed in the sequel). 
Sir Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, Lord Lieutenant of Wilts 
and Somerset during the reign of James I, was the eldest son of 
the Protector Somerset, by the second wife Anne Stanhope, and 
the grandfather of the loyal Marquis of Hertford, who won the 
battle of Roundway. In early life he had got into trouble with 
Queen Elizabeth, by presuming to marry without royal licence the 
sister of Lady Jane Grey. For this he languished in the Tower for 
eight or nine years, and paid a fine of £15,000, still further aton- 
ing for the rash act of his youth by a long life of devoted allegiance 
practised at a distance from the Court. At the date of the follow- 
ing letters he was in his 70th year, Jiving at Amesbury, and 
occasionally at Netley, having married his third wife, the widow 
of a London vintner, though herself of gentle blood, (a Howard) 
and the heiress of an immense estate. This was the lady for whose 
sake Sir George Rodney, having sighed in vain, repaired to Ames- 
bury after her marriage with the Earl, and writing his last 
message to her in his own blood, destroyed himself at the public 
Inn. The Earl died 1621, and was buried under a gorgeous monu- 
ment in Salisbury Cathedral, at the east end of the south aisle. 
Among the facts illustrated by the ensuing correspondence may 
be mentioned, the distinctiveness of the muster in large towns from _ 
that in the counties, the liabilities of the clergy to be separately 
assessed for the support of arms, the royal system of tax gathering 
under the name of loans, and an approximation to the value of the 
frecholders’ estates as proved by their respective contributions. 
The documents, it should be added, are only a selection from the 
original packet in the British Museum Library, with one or two 
others added from a different source. 
J. WAYLEN. 
