e 5th, last night, Dr. Clench, the physician, was
strangled in a coach; two persons came to his house in Brownlow Street,
Holborn, in a coach, and pretended to carry him to a patient's in the
City; they drove backward and forward, and after some time stopt by
Leadenhall, and sent the coachman to buy a couple of fowls for supper,
who went accordingly; and in the meantime they slipt away, and the
coachman when he returned found Dr. Clench with a handkerchief tyed
about his neck, with a hard sea-coal twisted in it, and clapt against
his windpipe; he had spirits applied to him and other means, but too
late, he having been dead some time." Dr. Clench's murderer, one Mr.
Harrison, a man of gentle condition, was apprehended, tried, found
guilty, and hung in chains.

[3] Holt's country seat was Redgrave Hall, formerly the home of the
Bacons. It was on his manor of Redgrave, that Sir Nicholas Bacon
entertained Queen Elizabeth, when she remarked that her Lord Keeper's
house was too small for him, and he answered--"Your Majesty has made me
too great for my house."

PART II.

LOVES OF THE LAWYERS.

CHAPTER VI.

A LOTTERY.

"I would compare the multitude of women which are to be chosen for wives
unto a bag full of snakes, having among them a single eel; now if a man
should put his hand into this bag, he may chance to light on the eel;
but it is an hundred to one he shall be stung by a snake."

These words were often heard from the lips of that honest judge, Sir
John More, whose son Thomas stirred from brain to foot by the bright
eyes, and snowy neck, and flowing locks of _cara Elizabetha_ (the _cara
Elizabetha_ of a more recent Tom More was 'Bessie, my darling')--penned
those warm and sweetly-flowing verses which delight scholars of the
present generation, and of which the following lines are neither the
least musical nor the least characteristic:--

"Jam subit illa dies quae ludentem obtulit olim
Inter virgineos te mibi prima choros.
Lactea cum flavi decuerunt colla capilli,
Cum gena par nivibus visa, labella rosis:
Cum tua perstringunt oculos duo sydera nostros
Perque oculos intrant in mea corda meos."

The goddess of love played the poet more than one droll trick. Having
approached her with musical flattery, he fled from her with fear and
abhorrence. For a time the highest and holiest of human affections was
to his darkened mind no more than a carnal appetite; and he strove to
c