260 Charles, Lord Stourton, fyc. 



so, apprehending some message might come to him from the Court, 

 he ordered his gates to be shut somewhat early, and not to be 

 opened till next morning. My Lord Stourton's son came down " 

 (to Wilton) " with the order : but since the gates were not to be 

 opened, he rode over" (to Salisbury) " to his father/' (in the jail) 

 " who received the news with great joy. In the night the Sheriff 

 left Wilton, and came so secretly to Salisbury that Stourton knew 

 nothing of it, and believed he " (the Sheriff) " was still at Wilton, 

 where he knew he was the night before. But when he " (Lord 

 Stourton's son) "was so far gone" (i.e. again to Wilton), "that 

 the Sheriff knew he could not come back in time to hinder the 

 execution, he brought his men together whom he had ordered to 

 attend on him that day : and so the lord was executed before his 

 son could come back with the order to stop it. I set down this 

 story upon a popular report of which I have had the pedigree 

 vouched to me, by those whose authors, upon the authority of their 

 grandfathers, did give an entire credit to it. So meritorious a 

 man as the Lord Stourton was, who had protested against every 

 thing done in King Edward's Parliament, had no doubt many 

 intercessors to plead for him in his last extremity. I leave this 

 with my reader as I found it." 



The reader will believe, or not, as he pleases, the " old men's 

 tradition " as reported (in no very lucid way) by Bishop Burnet. 

 But it is to be observed first, that the Bishop was living 130 years 

 after Lord Stourton's execution. In the next place, in one— rather 

 pathetic — article, the tradition must be false, because impossible. 

 Lord Stourton's son could never have ridden from London with 

 the reprieve, for in a Petition of Dame Anne Stourton (widow of 

 Charles) presented- immediately after her husband's death it is 

 stated that the son and heir was then " of the tender age oj four 

 years." (See Document No. 66.) Further, it is not very likely 

 that a chief nobleman and a High Sheriff of the Anti-Romanist 

 party, had they been guilty of so flagrant an evasion of the Royal 

 prerogative of mercy, would themselves have benefitted very largely 

 by that prerogative, from Queen Mary. 1 



1 A somewhat similar story is told in the oase of James Stanley 7tli Earl of 



