answered them with a wonderful assurance,
That they should not trouble themselves in that enquiry; that no man
living had credit or power enough with him to have engaged or disposed
him, to such an action, that he had never entrusted his purpose or
resolution to any man; that it proceeded from himself, and the impulse
of his own conscience, and that the motives thereunto will appear if
his hat were found. He spoke very frankly of what he had done, and
bore the reproaches of them that spoke to him, with the temper of a
man who thought he had not done amiss. But after he had been in prison
some time, where he was treated without any rigour, and with humanity
enough; and before and at his tryal, which was about four months
after, at the King's Bench, he behaved himself with great modesty, and
wonderful repentance; being as he said convinced in his conscience
that he had done wickedly, and asked pardon of the King and Duchess,
and all the Duke's servants, whom he acknowledged he had offended, and
very earnestly besought the judges that he might have his hand struck
off, with which he had performed that impious act before he should be
put to death.'

This is the account lord Clarendon gives in the first volume of his
history, of the fall of this great favourite, which serves to throw a
melancholy veil over the splendor of his life, and demonstrates the
extreme vanity of exterior pomp, and the danger those are exposed to
who move on the precipice of power. It serve[s] to shew that of all
kind of cruelty, that which is the child of enthusiasm is the word, as
it is founded upon something that has the appearance of principles;
and as it is more stedfast, so does it diffuse more mischief than that
cruelty which flows from the agitations of passion: Felton blindly
imagined he did God service by assassination, and the same unnatural
zeal would perhaps have prompted him to the murder of a thousand more,
who in his opinion were enemies to their country.

The above-mentioned historian remarks, that there were several
prophecies and predictions scattered about, concerning the duke's
death; and then proceeds to the relation of the most astonishing story
we have ever met with.

As this anecdote is countenanced by so great a name, I need make no
apology for inserting it, it has all the evidence the nature of the
thing can admit of, and is curious in itself.

'There was an officer in the King's wardrobe in Windsor-Castle of a
good re