By the Rev. J. E. Jackson. 



269 



tensions ever so just and reasonable, he was sure to spoil all by taking 

 the law into his own hands. 



It would be satisfactory even at this great distance of time, to 

 be able to clear the name of an English nobleman of ancient line- 

 age from the stain of deliberate murder and to attribute the crime 

 to a furious passion of the moment. But it is not very easy to 

 bend the facts in that direction. Irritable enough he was, and he 

 knew it : for in a letter written, even to so high a personage as 

 the Protector Somerset, in the very first year of open quarrel with 

 Hartgill (1549) he drops a very significant hint that he was no man 

 to be trifled with and could not answer for what he might do. 

 " I humbly beseech your Grace to stand so much my good Lord 

 that I may not be subject unto such an one " (as Hartgill) " and 

 that I may not be tempted, neither any of mine, to shoiv the frail 

 work of Nature." (See No. 30). With so sensitive a temperament 

 he had but to put his hand to his side, and there, in those days, was 

 the steel rapier ready at a moment's notice to reply to an insult, 

 once for all : just as the wasp buzzing long about the ears and eyes, 

 chuses for its smart some exquisitely tender place and is rewarded 

 with a crush. But in this case there was deliberate proceeding : a 

 trap was set : and traps are not set without design. In order to 

 get the persons of his enemies into his power Lord Stourton went to 

 Kilmington by arrangement, and with the professed intention of 

 paying the damages awarded against him. The others coming out 

 to receive it were violently carried off. That this was for any other 

 than the pre-conceived purpose of putting them to death, it would 

 be difficult indeed to maintain. 



Was he then a mad man ? In his letters the reader will not 

 fail to observe a certain originality and independence of character 

 as well as some indication of a very determined and impetuous 

 spirit. But neither in his letters nor in any other remaining 

 evidence is there any token of mental derangement. 



Guilty we must pronounce him: but the French would have 

 added, " with extenuating circumstances.'' 



