By the Rev, J. E. Jackson. 



259 



taking any further care of him. Upon this the papists took great 

 advantage to commend the strictness and impartiality of the Queen's 

 justice, that would not spare so zealous a Catholic when guilty of 

 so foul a murder. It was also said, that the killing of men's bodies 

 was a much less crime than the killing of souls, which was done 

 by the propagators of heresy ; and therefore if the Queen did thus 

 execute justice on a friend, for that which was a lesser degree of 

 murder, they who were her enemies, and guilty of higher crimes, 

 were to look for no mercy." 



In a later part of his work, the Bishop thus refers to the subject: 1 

 " Here " (in the Council Books) " several orders are entered 

 concerning the Lord Stourton and his servants : three of them 

 were ordered to be hanged in chains at Mere. 



" I had in my former work given a due commendation to that 

 which seemed to me a just firmness in the Queen not to pardon the 

 Lord Stourton for so heinous a crime as the murdering father and 

 son in so barbarous a manner. But since I have lived long in 

 Wiltshire, I find that there is a different account of this matter in 

 that neighbourhood. The story, as it has been handed down by 

 very old people, is this. The day before the execution was 

 appointed, there was a report set about that a pardon, or reprieve, 

 was coming down : upon which the Sheriff (Sir Anthony Hunger- 

 ford) came to the Earl of Pembroke, who was then at Wilton, for 

 advice. That lord heard the report, and was much troubled at it ; 3 



history of Reformation, part 3, book v., (vol. iii, p. 391, Nares's Edit.) 

 2 In one of Charles Lord Stourton's letters (to Sir William Sherington, 

 No 41), he speaks of the Earl of Pembroke as his good friend. " Well I knowe 

 that Mr. Herbert is High Lieutenant of Wiltshire, and even as I have no vain 

 hope but certainly do know him to be mine especial friend whom I would trust for 

 my life and goods, &c." But after Mr. Herbert's rise to greatness their friend- 

 ship may have ceased, for John Aubrey says that " In Queen Marie's time there 

 was a great feud between this Lord (Stourton) and William Herbert, the first 

 Earl of Pembroke of that family, who was altogether a stranger in the West, 

 and from a private gentleman and of no estate, but only a soldier of fortune, 

 becoming a favorite of K. Hen. 8. at the dissolution of the Abbeys, in few 

 yeares from nothing, slipt into a prodigious Estate of the Church's Lands, 

 which brought great envy on him from this Baron of an ancient family and 

 great paternal estate, besides the difference in religion." (" Wilts Collect. 

 Aubrey & Jackson," p. 393.) 



