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tlemen of Munster can witnesse.”” Now, Sir Walter wrote to an English 
public; and if the Countess had appeared at the English court to claim 
the restoration of her jointure-lands, her person and her history would 
have been known, not only to all the noblemen and gentlemen, but to 
all the public of London, to whom, and not to those of Munster, Sir 
Walter would have more naturally and confidently appealed. His not 
doing.so, in my opinion, establishes a clear ‘‘ alibi” for the Countess 
not having been at the English court between 1589, when Sir Walter 
left her at Inchiquin, and her death in 1604. 
We have now to call up Sir Francis Bacon, who will establish as 
clear an ‘‘alibi’”’ as Sir Walter, that the Countess was not m London 
subsequent to 1589. Bacon sought public employment, and was never 
absent from court, until sacrificed by James I. to screen Buckingham ; 
and he became a member of the House of Commons in 1593. It 
was, therefore, impossible for the Countess to have been in London 
and Bacon not to have seen her. Remember, also, that Bacon’s induc- 
tive philosophy requiring the test for the credence, cost him his life. 
Though the circumstance is so well known, I give it from Bohn’s edi- 
tion of his Essays, &c., London, 1854. ‘‘It struck him (Bacon), when 
examining the subject of antiseptics, that snow might preserve flesh 
from corruption, and he resolved to try the experiment. One frosty 
morning, in the spring of 1626, he alighted at Highgate, and proceeded 
to stuff a fowl, which he had bought at a neighbouring cottage, with 
snow, which he had gathered from the ground. At the end of the ope- 
ration he felt in his limbsa sudden chill, a fever ensued, and he lingered 
only a week.” 
If this man of facts had ever had the opportunity of seeing the 
Countess, he would have spoken of her from his own certain knowledge 
and conviction; but in retailing the information given by the people 
about Youghal to Fynes Moryson, in the first instance, his language is 
—‘‘ They say for certain ;”’ he himself knows nothing on the subject, nor 
expresses any belief in what has been told him. In the second instance 
we descend considerably —‘‘ They tella tale.” Words can scarcely usher 
in anything more contemptuously. The Countess’s patriarchal age was 
a possibility, and we have the lavation of old salt butter before a 
blazing pile of turf suggested. But dentiring at the period of possible 
second childhood is left as a nursery tale. 
We have, therefore, the testimony of two persons residing at the 
court of Elizabeth that they were ignorant of the Countess having been 
there. And we now pass over to Youghal with Fynes Moryson, to 
learn that no one there knew anything of the Countess ever having been 
absent from Inchiquin. é 
I should feel quite content to leave the decision of this question to a 
careful consideration and comparison of these two authorities—my Lord 
Leicester in 1640, and Fynes Moryson in 1613. The latter was an old 
and experienced traveller, at a time when travelling was accompanied 
with difficulties and dangers, of which we in these days can only form — 
an idea by reading of what he encountered in his ten years’ wandering 
