CHAPTER VI.

A NIGHT HUE AND CRY IN THE FIELDS.

BOUT six in the morning of Monday, the 13th February, 1682, Leicester Fields was astir with flambeaux and

coaches. Lords in rumpled clothes and crumpled periwigs were moving about with armed servants, king's messengers, and an unusual muster of the watch. The crowd was thickest round the door of the house where lodged one Harder, a Swedish doctor. Foul murder had been done, and this was the hue and cry for the assassins.

In the troubled times of the Exclusion Bill and the Papist Plot, between 1680 and 1682, one of the richest heiresses in England was Elizabeth, daughter of the eleventh Earl of Northumberland. She had been married while still a child, after the fashion of those days, to a great lord,

Henry Cavendish, Earl of Ogle, son and heir of Henry Duke of Newcastle, by whom, in 1680, she was left a widow of thirteen, in charge of her grandmother, the old Duchess of Northumberland. Looking round for a match suitable in fortune to her wealthy virgin-widow, the Duchess, a keen old worldling, had fixed on Thomas Thynne, commonly called "Tom of Ten Thousand," from the fortunes that had flowed together into his hands. He had inherited, besides other wealth, the splendid palace and estate of Longleate, had sat for Wiltshire in four Parliaments, had been employed on various missions, was an accomplished courtier if not a very wise or worthy man, and a special friend of the Earl of Monmouth, whom he often entertained at Longleate in the princely state he affected.

But the young widow did not fancy Tom of Ten Thousand. Her grandmother had insisted on a year's interval between the marriage and its consummation; and before the year had expired, the lady, to escape her bridegroom, had fled to Holland. Shortly before her flight, she had encountered at Court a remarkable adventurer, Charles John, Count Königsmarck, nephew of

He

the governor of Pomerania, a soldier of fortune (elder brother of the famous Aurora, afterwards mistress of Augustus of Saxony, and mother of Marshal Maurice de Saxe), possessing his family gifts of beauty, courage, and strength. In anticipation of service to be opened to him by the alliance of England with Sweden and the Low Countries against France, he had come over to this country with special recommendations to the King about eight months before this time. had in the interval done good service as a volunteer at Tangiers. His reckless courage shown against the Turks on sea and shore, and in Spain against the bulls in the arena, had made a lion of him. His reputation as soldier and gallant, and his fine face and figure, may well have made an impression on young Lady Ogle, and perhaps have heightened, if not inspired, her aversion to Tom of Ten Thousand. Königsmarck determined to win her and her fortune, a magnificent one in the eyes of an adventurer of even his quality. But the lady was wedded, though not bedded, and it was necessary to get Thynne out of the way. About ten o'clock on the night of Sunday, the 12th of February, 1682, came to the

King's couchée the startling news that Tom Thynne had been shot in his coach in Pall Mall, on his way home from Lady Northumberland's in St. James's Street, close to his own door at the end of St. Alban's Street. The attack was a deliberate one. As the coach came slowly along, with two footmen bearing flambeaux before it, three mounted men met it on the right hand; one stopped and bade the footmen stand, the second rode past, and, at the same moment, the third fired a musketoon into the coach window. The three then put spurs to their horses, turned, and rode away up the Haymarket, outstripping one of the footmen, who ran after them till he was exhausted. The Duke of Monmouth had been with Thynne in the coach about an hour before. The first thought was that the bullet had been meant for Monmouth, then the popular Protestant hero of the mob. Among the circle at the couchée was Sir John Reresby, a Yorkshire baronet, a zealous partizan of the Court, and an unwearied pusher of his own fortunes with the King

1 Almost in the line of Waterloo Place and Regent Street.

K

and the Court party, in and out of Parliament. He was a Middlesex magistrate, and known as a man of energy and activity. As he was getting into his bed, under all the excitement of the night's news, came a gentleman of Mr. Thynne's, praying Sir John to grant him a hue and cry. At his heels followed a page of the Duke of Monmouth's, with a coach, to carry Sir John to Mr. Thynne's lodgings. Here he found the dying man with five bullet holes in his body, with Mr. Hobbes a surgeon in attendance, surrounded by the Duke of Monmouth, Lord Mordaunt, and others of his friends.

Suspicion seems at once to have attached to Königsmarck. His recent, probably his present visit to England, and his pretensions to the Lady Ogle, were no secret. Waylaying, cudgelling, nose-slitting, and even assassination, were at that time not uncommon ways for men of quality to settle their secret quarrels and vengeances. Among the Count's retainers was one Captain Vratz, who had been heard to threaten Thynne. A chairman was ere long found, who had carried one of the captain's associates, a Swedish lieutenant, John Stern, from his lodgings in West