a large part of the multitude he was regarded as a martyr who had
died for the Protestant religion. The head and body were placed in a
coffin covered with black velvet, and were laid privately under the
communion table of Saint Peter's Chapel in the Tower. Within four years
the pavement of the chancel was again disturbed, and hard by the remains
of Monmouth were laid the remains of Jeffreys. In truth there is no
sadder spot on the earth than that little cemetery. Death is there
associated, not, as in Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's, with genius and
virtue, with public veneration and imperishable renown; not, as in
our humblest churches and churchyards, with everything that is most
endearing in social and domestic charities; but with whatever is
darkest in human nature and in human destiny, with the savage triumph of
implacable enemies, with the inconstancy, the ingratitude, the cowardice
of friends, with all the miseries of fallen greatness and of blighted
fame. Thither have been carried, through successive ages, by the rude
hands of gaolers, without one mourner following, the bleeding relics
of men who had been the captains of armies, the leaders of parties,
the oracles of senates, and the ornaments of courts. Thither was borne,
before the window where Jane Grey was praying, the mangled corpse of
Guilford Dudley. Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, and Protector of
the realm, reposes there by the brother whom he murdered. There has
mouldered away the headless trunk of John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester
and Cardinal of Saint Vitalis, a man worthy to have lived in a better
age and to have died in a better cause. There are laid John Dudley,
Duke of Northumberland, Lord High Admiral, and Thomas Cromwell, Earl of
Essex, Lord High Treasurer. There, too, is another Essex, on whom nature
and fortune had lavished all their bounties in vain, and whom valour,
grace, genius, royal favour, popular applause, conducted to an early
and ignominious doom. Not far off sleep two chiefs of the great house
of Howard, Thomas, fourth Duke of Norfolk, and Philip, eleventh Earl of
Arundel. Here and there, among the thick graves of unquiet and aspiring
statesmen, lie more delicate sufferers; Margaret of Salisbury, the last
of the proud name of Plantagenet; and those two fair Queens who perished
by the jealous rage of Henry. Such was the dust with which the dust of
Monmouth mingled. [432]

Yet a few months, and the quiet village of Toddington, in Bed