Sir William Waller and Malmesbury. 



171 



may have ordered to the melting-pot — -pro bono publico — Westport 

 Church bells, once the pride of Malmesbury. 



Waller was born A.D. 1597, at Knole, in Kent, possibly under 

 the famous roof -tree of the Sackvilles, whose mansion is embellished 

 by the art, if not the architecture, of four centuries. His father, Sir 

 Thomas Waller, Knt., was Constable of Dover Castle. He was also 

 Chief Butler of England, an office which conferred on his family 

 hereditary rights to certain wine duties. His mother was daughter 

 of Sampson Lennard, Lord Dacre. There appears to be no account 

 extant of how, and where, and by whom, his early education was 

 effected. At the age of 15 years (A.D. 1612) he went to reside at 

 Magdalen Hall, Oxford, which then stood close to Magdalen College. 

 This he soon left for Hart Hall, whither Magdalen Hall (now 

 Hertford College) was in after days removed, and there completed 

 his university course. 



" Afterwards," says Wood, 1 " he went to Paris and learnt to fence 

 and manage the great horse. Thence he went to the German Wars, 

 where he served in the army of the Confederate Princes against the 

 Emperor." 



Previously, as we learn from Waller's own " Recollections," 8 he 

 had been engaged in the campaign of the Venetians against the 

 Archduke (afterwards Emperor) Ferdinand, and was slightly wounded 

 at the siege of Rubia, his foot having been grazed by a ball. 

 During the same siege he had another narrow escape, when a cannon 

 shot passed between him and Sir John Yere. 



The first act of the dismal tragedy of the Thirty Years' War has 

 an undying interest for Englishmen. The acceptance of the crown 

 of Bohemia in 1619 by the Elector Frederick and his fair young 

 consort — the beloved and lovely Elizabeth, daughter of King James 

 the First, and Princess Royal of Great Britain and Ireland, " The 

 Queen of Hearts," " The Pearl of Britain," the goddess of the day — 

 followed, after a little more than a year's sovereignty, by the terrible 



1 See Wood's " Athense," vol. iii., p. 814, from which most of the above par- 

 ticulars are taken. 



2 Published with the " Poems of Anna Matilda," London, A.D. 1788. The 

 original MS. is, I believe, at Wadham College , Oxford. 



