he most sagacious prince since the conquest,
loaded him with honours for filling the royal coffers with wealth, which
the penurious monarch durst never enjoy: but his successor, Henry the
Eighth, enjoyed the pleasure of consuming that wealth, and _executed_
the father for collecting it! How much are our best laid schemes
defective? How little does expectation and event coincide? It is no
disgrace to a man that he died on the scaffold; the question is--What
brought him there? Some of the most inoffensive, and others the most
exalted characters of the age in which they lived, have been cut off by
the axe, as Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick, for being the last male
heir of the Anjouvin Kings; John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, Sir Thomas
Moore, Sir Walter Raleigh, Algernon Sidney, William Lord Russell, &c.
whose blood ornamented the scaffold on which they fell.

The son of this man, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, favorite of Queen
Elizabeth, is held up by our historians as a master-piece of
dissimulation, pride, and cruelty. He married three wives, all which he
is charged with sending to the grave by untimely deaths; one of them, to
open a passage to the Queen's bed, to which he aspired. It is
surprising, that he should deceive the penetrating eye of Elizabeth: but
I am much inclined to think she _knew him_ better than the world; and
they knew him rather to well. He ruined many of the English gentry,
particularly the ancient family of Arden, of Park-hall, in this
neighbourhood: he afterwards ruined his own family by disinheriting a
son, more worthy than himself.--If he did not fall by the executioner,
it is no proof that he did not deserve it.--We now behold

JOHN, DUKE OF NORTHUMBERLAND, 1537,

Lord of the manor of Birmingham; a man, who of all others the least
deserved that honor; or rather, deserved the axe for being so.

Some have asserted, "That property acquired by dishonesty cannot
prosper." But I shall leave the philosopher and the enthusiast to settle
that important point, while I go on to observe, That that the lordship
of Birmingham did not prosper with the Duke. Though he had, in some
degree, the powers of government in his hands, he had also the clamours
of the people in his ears. What were his inward feelings, is uncertain
at this distance--Fear seems to have prevented him from acknowledging
Birmingham for his property. Though he exercised every act of ownership,
yet he suffered the fee-simple to