a bargain in his purchase; but, in the
event, he narrowly escaped paying for it with his life. It seems that
the news of "Rich Spencer's" wealth had travelled as far as the
Continent, and there tempted the cupidity of a notorious Dunkirk pirate,
who conceived the bold idea of kidnapping the merchant and holding him
to a heavy ransom. How the attempt was made, and how providentially it
failed is told by Papillon.

"Rich men," says this chronicler, "are commonly the prey
of thieves; for where store of gold and silver is, there
spirits never leave haunting, for wheresoever the carcass
is, there will eagles be gathered together. In Queen
Elizabeth's days, a pirate of Dunkirk laid a plot with
twelve of his mates to carry away Sir John Spencer,
which, if he had done, L50,000 ransom had not redeemed
him. He came over the sea in a shallop with twelve
musketeers, and in the night came into Barking Creek, and
left the shallop in the custody of six of his men; and
with the other six came as far as Islington, and there
hid themselves in ditches near the path in which Sir John
came always to his house. But by the providence of God--I
have this from a private record--Sir John, upon some
extraordinary occasion, was forced to stay in London that
night; otherwise they had taken him away; and they,
fearing they should be discovered, in the night-time came
to their shallop, and so came safe to Dunkirk again.
This," adds Papillon, "was a desperate attempt."

But proud as Sir John Spencer was of his money-bags, he was prouder
still of his only child, Elizabeth, heiress to his vast wealth, who, as
she grew to womanhood, developed a beauty of face and figure and graces
of mind which pleased the merchant more than all his gold. So fair was
she that Queen Elizabeth, on one of her many progressions through the
city, attracted by her sparkling eyes and beautiful face at a Cheapside
window, stopped her carriage, summoned her to her presence, and, patting
her blushing cheeks, vowed that she had "the sweetest face I have seen
in my City of London."

That a maiden so dowered with charms and riches should have an army of
suitors in her train was inevitable. A lovely wife who would one day
inherit nearly a million of money was surely the most covetable prize in
England; and, it is said, the bewitching heiress had more than one
coronet laid at her feet b