e proclamation above quoted); some "suspicious
fellows" also would carry on the highways staves of twelve or thirteen
feet long, with pikes of twelve inches at the end, wherefore the honest
traveller was compelled to ride with a case of _dags_ (pistols) at his
saddle-bow, and none travelled without sword, or dagger, or hanger.

About this time occurred what a contemporary reporter called "an unhappy
chance and monstrous;" the marriage of lady Mary Grey to the
serjeant-porter: a circumstance thus recorded by Fuller, with his
accustomed quaintness. "Mary Grey... frighted with the infelicity of her
two elder sisters, Jane and this Catherine, forgot her honor to remember
her safety, and married one whom she could love and none need fear,
Martin Kays, of Kent esquire, who was a judge at court, (but only of
doubtful casts at dice, being serjeant-porter,) and died without issue
the 20th of April 1578[58]."

[Note 58: "Worthies in Leicestershire."]

The queen, according to her usual practice in similar cases, sent both
husband and wife to prison. What became further of the husband I do not
find; but respecting the wife, sir Thomas Gresham the eminent merchant,
in a letter to lord Burleigh dated in April 1572, mentions, that the
lady Mary Grey had been kept in his house nearly three years, and begs
of his lordship that he will make interest for her removal. Thus it
should appear that this unfortunate lady did not sufficiently "remember
her safety" in forming this connexion, obscure and humble as it was; for
all matrimony had now become offensive to the austerity or the secret
envy of the maiden queen.

Sir Henry Sidney, on arriving to take the government of Ireland, found
that unhappy country in a state of more than ordinary turbulence,
distraction, and misery. Petty insurrections of perpetual recurrence
harassed the English pale; and the native chieftains, disdaining to
accept the laws of a foreign sovereign as the umpire of their disputes,
were waging innumerable private wars, which at once impoverished,
afflicted, and barbarized their country. The most important of these
feuds was one between the earls of Ormond and Desmond, which so
disquieted the queen that, in addition to all official instructions, she
deemed it necessary to address her deputy on the subject in a private
letter written with her own hand. This document, printed in the Sidney
papers, is too valuable, as a specimen of her extraordinary style and
her manne