h the queen of Scots was now guarded,
all acknowledge that nothing less could have baffled the plans of escape
which the zeal of her partisans was continually setting on foot. Amongst
the warmest of these partisans was Leonard Dacre, a gentleman whose
personal qualities, whose errors, injuries and misfortunes, all conspire
to render him an object of attention, illustrative as they also are of
the practices and sentiments of his age.

Leonard was the second son of William lord Dacre of Gilsland, descended
from the ancient barons Vaux who had held lordships in Cumberland from
the days of the Conqueror.

In 1568, on the death without issue of his nephew, a minor in wardship
to the duke of Norfolk, Leonard as heir male laid claim to the title and
family estates, but the three sisters of the last lord disputed with him
this valuable succession; and being supported by the interest of the
duke of Norfolk their step-father, to whose three sons they were
married, they found means to defeat the claims of their uncle, though
indisputably good in law;--one instance in a thousand of the scandalous
partiality towards the rich and powerful exhibited in the legal
decisions of that age.

Stung with resentment against the government and the queen herself, by
whom justice had been denied him, Leonard Dacre threw himself, with all
the impetuosity of his character, into the measures of the malcontents
and the interests of the queen of Scots, and he laid a daring plan for
her deliverance from Tutbury-castle. This plan the duke on its being
communicated to him had vehemently opposed, partly from his repugnance
to measures of violence, partly from the apprehension that Mary, when at
liberty, might fall into the hands of a foreign and catholic party, and
desert her engagements with him for a marriage with the king of Spain.
Dacre, however, was not to be diverted from his design, especially by
the man with whom he was at open enmity, and he assembled a troop of
horse for its execution; but suspicions had probably been excited, and
the sudden removal of the prisoner to Wingfield frustrated all his
measures.

This was not the only attempt of that turbulent and dangerous faction of
which the inconsiderate ambition of the duke had rendered him nominally
the head but really the tool and victim, which he had now the grief to
find himself utterly unable to guide or restrain.

The earls of Northumberland and Westmorland, heads of the ancient and
w