ment. For this act of malignancy' the whole party were arrested and brought before the Governor. The sister took the charge upon herself. Robert Hammond, who was in command of Carisbrooke Castle, or Robin, as Cromwell, with almost affectionate familiarity, used to address him, was a young man of good parts and principles, a colonel of foot, sympathetic, and not without loyal respect for fallen majesty. A soldier and a gentleman, Hammond would inflict no punishment upon a young lady for such a small offence, and she was immediately set at liberty with her fellow-travellers. The cross-barred wooden gates of the Castle had seldom, if ever, been swung open to receive so fascinating a culprit as Mistress Osborne. The Governor's kinsman came as a spectator to her trial, saw, and was conquered. Dorothy Osborne was twenty-one. She is said to have been handsome, and there is abundant proof that she was a very charming young woman. Temple became, as was the phrase in those days, her servant, and she returned his regard. The course of their true love did not run quite smooth. When the courtship commenced, the fathers of the hero and heroine were on different sides in politics. When the civil war ended, and Sir Peter Osborne returned to his family mansion at Chicksands in Bedfordshire, the prospects of the lovers were scarcely more hopeful. Sir John Temple had a more advantageous alliance in view for his son. Dorothy Osborne had as many suitors as were drawn to Belmont by the charms of Portia. Among these was Henry Cromwell, the Protector's son. Dorothy, though loyal, did not care for the breed of spaniels favoured by the Stuart dynasty, or other toy-dogs; with the tastes of a country gentleman's daughter, she preferred dogs of a more sporting kind, and Henry Cromwell promised to use his interest in Dublin to procure her an Irish greyhound. She seems to have felt his attentions as very flattering, but love triumphed over ambition, though in after days she could not refrain from reminding Temple, with pardonable coquetry, 'how great she might have been if she had been so wise to have taken hold of the offer of H. C.' Her letters to Temple, some of which have been published, prove that she was a young woman of high moral and religious principle, modest, generous, affectionate,

and sprightly. Temple was something of an indifferentist in his religious creed, and the letters of the lady occasionally glide into a gentle and endearing rebuke of his laxity in belief. Temple, who had literary tastes, must have been delighted with these love-billets of which Lord Macaulay, no mean judge, speaks in language of high admiration. When at last the constancy of the lovers had triumphed over all the difficulties placed in the way of their union through kinsfolk and rivals, a more serious calamity befell them. Mistress Osborne fell sick of that disfiguring malady small-pox, over which medical science has since achieved one of its most beneficent victories. Though she escaped with life, the poor girl lost all her beauty. To this severe trial the affection and honour of the lovers of that age were not unfrequently subjected. Temple passed the test of his constancy and honourable feeling, as became a high-minded gentleman, and was married to Dorothy Osborne somewhere about the end of the year 1654. She was a loving and faithful wife. From the time of her marriage we hear little of her, except that her letters were greatly admired, so much so indeed that she corresponded constantly with Queen Mary, consort of William III. She died in May, 1694, not many months before the December of that same year in which her Royal correspondent, the young and blooming Queen Mary, sank under small-pox of the most malignant type, to the intense grief of her husband the King, and to the sorrow of the nation.

Though not mentioned, so far as I am aware, in the guidebooks and histories of the Isle of Wight, this little romance of real and sincere affection has, I think, a claim to a place in the annals of Carisbrooke Castle.

January 23, 1886.

JAMES HARRINGTON IN ATTENDANCE ON CHARLES I AT CARISBROOKE CASTLE, A.D. 1648.

WHEN Charles I was detained as a captive in Carisbrooke Castle, certain persons were placed by order of Parliament in attendance on the King. Of these the man of most note was James Harrington, yet his name has been generally passed over in silence by those who have told the story of the King's imprisonment. Mr. Hillier, in his Charles I in the Isle of Wight, while giving full particulars of Titus, Osborne, Rolph, Dowcett, Oudart, and others, dismisses Harrington with the bare statement, that though 'a zealous Republican he became so forcibly affected by the ability and dignity of the King as to be removed from his attendance.'

Harrington was the author of Oceana, an almost forgotten book, the memory of which has lately been revived by the title of Mr. J. A. Froude's new work. The life of this sometime inmate of Carisbrooke Castle, so full of romance, closing with a tragedy at its end, deserves further notice than it has hitherto met with, and leads me to ask a place for it in our Island local history.

James Harrington was descended from an ancient and knightly family of Rutlandshire. A kinsman and namesake, Sir James Harrington, sat in the Long Parliament as member for Rutlandshire, was one of the King's judges, and afterwards of Cromwell's Council of State. The future author of Oceana was the eldest son of Sir Sapcotes Harrington, and born in January, 1611. He was in 1629 entered as a gentleman-commoner at Trinity College, Oxford, where he had the advantage of being under the tuition of Lord Falkland's friend, the famous controversialist, Chillingworth, who, as Anthony Wood says, 'would often walk in the College Grove, and dispute with any scholar he met, purposely to facilitate and make the way of wrangling common with him. At the close of his university residence, during which his father died, he set out on a course of travel. On

going first to Holland he stayed for some time at the Hague, where he lived on terms of familiarity with Elizabeth, daughter of James I, and wife of the Elector Palatine, Frederick V, who in her life of great vicissitudes was then a fugitive in Holland. Henry Frederick, Prince of Orange, the Stadtholder of the United Provinces, which were then at the height of their power, had so favourable an opinion of Harrington that he subsequently confided to the young Englishman the management of all his affairs in England. After Harrington had returned to his native country, he was requested in 1646 by the Commissioners whom Parliament had appointed to carry Charles I from Newcastle nearer to London to undertake the duty of waiting on the King. He may have obtained this appointment through his distant cousin, Sir James Harrington, who was on the commission. 'His Majesty,' so writes Anthony Wood, 'loved his company, and finding him to be an ingenious man, chose rather to converse with him than with others of his chamber. They had often discourses concerning Government, but when they happened to talk of a commonwealth, the King seemed not to endure it.' He was associated in this attendance on the King with Thomas Herbert, who has left some touching memorials of the last days of Charles I. These same two were the King's personal attendants while he was under detention at Carisbrooke Castle. Before the King's removal from the Isle of Wight to Hurst Castle, Harrington, who had offended the Parliamentary Commissioners at Newport, was dismissed from the King's service, and on his refusing to swear that he would not assist or conceal the King's escape he was placed under arrest and detained until an application from General Ireton obtained him his liberty. He afterwards showed his attachment to the King by accompanying him when the procession was formed from St. James's through the Park to Whitehall, the King walking at his usual fast pace with a guard of halberdiers in front and behind. On arriving at Whitehall, Herbert broke down so completely that he felt he could not follow the King through the banqueting-hall, which forms the present Chapel Royal, to the scaffold, but Harrington remained till the axe of the executioner descended, severing the head from the body of Charles at one blow.

'After the King's death,' says Toland, whose writings throw some little light on the history of these times, 'Harrington was observed to keep much in his library, and more retired than usually, which was by his friends a long time attributed to melancholy or discontent.' He was in reality occupied in writing his book. When he had got some way on with its composition, making no secret of his views on Government and his republican predilections, he found that he brought himself under the suspicions of Cromwell.

Harrington was, as Hallam (Const. Hist. vol. i. p. 692) points out, a conspicuous member of the so-called Rota Club, composed chiefly of those dealers in new constitutions who there debated those plans of perfect commonwealths so cherished by theorists. The masterful Cromwell could show, when he became Lord Protector, a most despotic spirit. Though his own Latin secretary, John Milton, had published that finest production of the illustrious poet's prose, Areopagitica a speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing - Cromwell had no tenderness for the freedom of the Press. Harrington's book was seized while it was being set up in type by Cromwell's order. The author, having failed in other attempts to recover his book, bethought himself at last of an application to Lady Claypole, Cromwell's favourite daughter, who was personally unknown to him, but of whose affability and kindness he had heard much. Being ushered into her room, he found there at first only a child of three years old. 'He entertained the child so divertingly that she suffered him to take her up in his arms till her mother came, whereupon he, stepping towards her and setting her child down at her feet, said, Madame, 'tis well you are come at this nick of time, or I had certainly stolen this pretty little lady. Stolen her, replied the mother, pray what to do with her? for she is yet too young to become your mistress. Madame, said he, though her charms assure her of a more desirable conquest, yet I must confess it is not love, but revenge, that prompted me to commit this theft. Lord, answered the lady again, what injury have I done you that you should steal my child. None at all, replied he, but that you might be induced to prevail with your father to do me justice by restoring my