n the door being forced
open whence the smoke proceeded, it was discovered that Sir William
had set fire to a large heap of fine linen, piled up in the middle of
the room. From an adjoining room, where Sir William had made his
escape, the flames burst out with such fury that all were glad to make
their escape out of the house, the greater part of which was in a few
hours burnt to the ground--no other remains of its master being found
next morning but the hip-bone, and bones of the back.

A case which, at the time, created considerable sensation was the
murder of Thynne of Longleat by a jealous antagonist. The eleventh
Duke of Northumberland left an only daughter, whose career, it has
been said, "might match that of the most erratic or adventurous of her
race." Before she was sixteen years old, she had been twice a widow,
and three times a wife. At the age of thirteen, she was married to the
only son of the Duke of Newcastle, a lad of her own age, who died in a
few months. Her second husband was Thynne of Longleat, "Tom of Ten
Thousand," but the tie was abruptly severed by the bullet of an
assassin, set on by the notorious Count Konigsmark, who had been a
suitor for her hand, and was desirous of another chance. After his
death, the young widow, who was surrounded by a host of admirers,
married the Duke of Somerset, and she seems to have made him a fitting
mate, for when his second wife, a Finch, tapped him familiarly on the
shoulder, or, according to another version, seated herself on his
knee, he exclaimed indignantly:

"My first wife was a Percy, and she never thought of taking such a
liberty."

It may be added that one of the most remarkable incidents in this
celebrated beauty's life was when by dint of tears and supplications
she prevented Queen Anne from making Swift a bishop, out of revenge
for the "Windsor prophecy," in which she was ridiculed for the redness
of her hair, and upbraided as having been privy to the brutal murder
of her second husband. "It was doubted," says Scott, "which imputation
she accounted the more cruel insult, especially since the first charge
was undoubted, and the second arose only from the malice of the poet."

Another tragedy of a similar kind was the murder of William Mountford,
the player. Captain Richard Hill had conceived a violent passion for
Mrs. Bracegirdle, the beautiful actress, and is said to have offered
her his hand, and to have been refused. At last his passion became
u