at bowls together[6]. The family of Carew was however allied in
blood to that of Courtney, of which the marquis of Exeter was the head.

[Note 6: See Fuller's Worthies in Surry.]

But the attempt to extirpate all who under any future circumstances
might be supposed capable of advancing claims formidable to the house of
Tudor, must have appeared to Henry himself a task almost as hopeless as
cruel. Sons and daughters of the Plantagenet princes had in every
generation freely intermarried with the ancient nobles of the land; and
as fast as those were cut off whose connection with the royal blood was
nearest and most recent, the pedigrees of families pointed out others,
and others still, whose relationship grew into nearness by the removal
of such as had stood before them, and presented to the affrighted eyes
of their persecutor, a hydra with still renewed and multiplying heads.

Not content with these inflictions,--sufficiently severe it might be
thought to intimidate the papal faction,--Henry gratified still further
his stern disposition by the attainder of the marchioness of Exeter and
the aged countess of Salisbury. The marchioness he soon after released;
but the countess was still detained prisoner under a sentence of death,
which a parliament, atrocious in its subserviency, had passed upon her
without form of trial, but which the king did not think proper at
present to carry into execution, either because he chose to keep her as
a kind of hostage for the good behaviour of her son the cardinal, or
because, tyrant as he had become, he had not yet been able to divest
himself of all reverence or pity for the hoary head of a female, a
kinswoman, and the last who was born to the name of Plantagenet.

It is melancholy, it is even disgusting, to dwell upon these acts of
legalized atrocity, but let it be allowed that it is important and
instructive. They form unhappily a leading feature of the administration
of Henry VIII. during the latter years of his reign; they exhibit in the
most striking point of view the sentiments and practices of the age; and
may assist us to form a juster estimate of the character and conduct of
Elizabeth, whose infant mind was formed to the contemplation of these
domestic tragedies, and whose fame has often suffered by inconsiderate
comparisons which have placed her in parallel with the enlightened and
humanized sovereigns of more modern days, rather than with the stern and
arbitrary Tudors, her ba