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which he claimed in right of his wife, he had an additional reason for keeping himself secluded from the world. He, therefore, retired to Woodstock, and busied himself, in revising and correcting his poems. The exact time of his final departure from Woodstock to Donnington, where he passed the last two years of his life, is not known with certainty. We have already in our account of the river Kennett given some account of these years. So, farewell, Chaucer, of whom we will say in the words of old Lydgate

"My maister Chaucer, chief poet of Britayne,
Whom all this landè shoulde of righte prefer,
Sith of our language he was the load star,
That made first to distil and raine

The gold dew drops of speech and eloquence
Into our tonguè through his excellence."

In Woodstock Palace, the Princess Elizabeth was confined by her sister, Queen Mary, for a short time, during which captivity, as we learn from Hentzner, the German traveller, she wrote the following lines with a piece of charcoal upon her window-shutter, being denied the use of pens and paper. The lines were first printed in Hentzner's book, and afterwards at the private press of Horace Walpole, at Strawberry Hill, from whence they were

transferred into Percy's Relics. "In Hentzner's book," says Dr. Percy, "they were wretchedly corrupted," but were restored, as they now follow, by Horace Walpole.

"O fortune, how thy restlesse wavering state,
Hath fraught with cares my troubled will,
Witness this present prisonn, whither fate
Could bear me, and the joys I quit.
Thou causedest the guiltie to be losed
From bandes wherein are innocents inclosed,
Causing the guiltless to be straight reserved,
And freeing those that death had well deserved.
But by her envy can be nothing wrought,
So, God, send to my foes all they have thought.
ELIZABETH, prisoner."

"A. D. MDLV."

These lines are of little or no value in themselves, but they become of interest from the station of the writer, and the strait to which she was reduced for want of writing materials. Shenstone has written a poem upon the subject.

Woodstock Palace and Park, with all their poetical and romantic associations, have, in later years acquired a still dearer place in the hearts of the lovers of English literature, by the beautiful novel of Sir Walter Scott. It is impossible for any one who has read it, to wander in that park without conjuring up the remem

brance of the gentle Alice, the doughty old Sir Harry Lee, and his honest dog, and the iron warriors, and canting hypocrites of that day, with stern old Cromwell giving his orders to batter down the walls that he might take possession of that last stronghold of royalty.

Woodstock Park and Palace were also the scene of that famous ghost story related so minutely in Glanvil's book of Witchcraft, in the form of a continuation to his wondrous tales, by Dr. Henry More, and entitled, "A Transcription of a Narrative out of the Natural History of Oxfordshire, of the strange passages

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that happened at Woodstock, Anno. 1649, when the commissioners for surveying the manor house, park, deer, woods, and other demesnes belonging to that manor, sate and lodged there."

Their first act was to efface every symbol of royalty; and a noble old tree, which had stood for centuries in the park, was uprooted by their order, merely because it bore the, to them obnoxious, name of the King's Oak. Immediately their troubles began; fearful noises were heard in the chimneys, bricks, tiles, and stones, rattled about their ears at all hours of the day and night; invisible hands pulled the clothes off their beds; shrieks and groans, and the clanking of chains were heard; their lights were suddenly extinguished, no one knew how; and glasses and bottles broke mysteriously wherever they attempted to lay hands upon them.

The bewildered commissioners betook themselves to penitence and prayer, and watched all night with Bibles and drawn swords to repel the evil spirits that so tormented them. But all in vain; when worn out with watching they retired to rest towards the morning, they found logs of wood in their beds instead of pillows, and were drenched unaccountably with green ditch-water, as they attempted to lie down. Their eyes became no

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less bewildered than their ears; their fear became so great that they indulged each other's dread with the marvellous, and swore to each other that they actually saw the devil scratching with his hoof upon a candle to put it out; that they saw legions of imps in every corner of the house; that Beelzebub walked up and down the great room every night, howling in a most fearful manner, and sometimes making a noise as great as if a whole park of artillery had been fired off. Finding that their prayers were inefficacious, and enjoying no peace or rest for several days and nights, they finally determined to quit Woodstock altogether, which they did in the firm belief that it was the abode of the devil and ten thousand

of his evil spirits. Some years afterwards it was discovered that the man who played the devil to such perfection on this occasion was one Giles Sharp, the clerk of the Commissioners, a pretended republican, but in reality a loyalist, who had passed his early years in Woodstock, and who resorted to this trick to frighten away these rude spoilers from the hallowed abode of the royalty of England. The credulity of the commissioners rendered his deception comparatively easy; their contagious fears carried it on for him; and, aided by a few dex

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