conscience, what could
be more natural than that the fratricide should thus shut himself from
the world in sorrow and remorse?

CHAPTER XIII

THE WICKED BARON

The British Peerage, like most other human flocks, has had many black
sheep within its fold; but few of them have been blacker than Charles,
fifth Baron Mohun of Okehampton, who shocked the world by his violence
and licentiousness a couple of centuries ago.

Charles Mohun had in his veins the blood of centuries of gallant men and
fair women, from Sir William de Mohun, who fought so bravely for the
Conqueror on the field of Hastings, to his father, the fourth Lord of
Okehampton, who took to wife a daughter of the first Earl of Anglesey, a
man who won fame in his day by his statesmanship and his pen. But there
was also in his veins a black strain which branded the Mohun 'scutcheon
with the stigma of eternal shame.

From his early youth he exhibited an unbridled temper and a passion for
low pursuits. In an age when loose morals and violence were winked at,
he soon won an unenviable notoriety by his excesses in both. Wine and
women, gambling and duelling, were the breath of life to him, and in
each indulgence he was infamously supreme. He was twice arraigned for
murder, and in the prime of life he died a murderer.

Such was the fifth Lord Mohun when our story opens, towards the close of
his shameless career; and in the first of the disgraceful episodes that
marked its close, as in so many others of his career, a beautiful woman
figures prominently--none other than the celebrated Mrs Bracegirdle, the
most fascinating actress of her day, whose witcheries made a lover of
every man who came under the spell of her charms.

Her army of lovers ranged from Congreve and Rowe, who wrote inspired and
passionate plays for her, to the Dukes of Dorset and Devonshire and Lord
Lovelace (among a hundred other titled gallants), who were ready to shed
their last drop of blood in defence of her fair fame; though each sought
in vain to besmirch it in his own person. But her virtue was reputed to
be "as impregnable as the rock of Gibraltar." Dr Doran describes her as
"that Diana of the stage, before whom Congreve and Lord Lovelace, at the
head of a troop of bodkined fops, worshipped in vain"; although, with
all her unassailable propriety, she did not escape outspoken suspicions
of being Congreve's mistress all the time.

Describing her charms, another chronicler says: