Restoration, therefore, a portion of the large domains of the family reverted to it, with the Isle of Man. An attempt was made by Earl Charles to recover the estates which had been sold under the Commonwealth by the agents of sequestration, without his consent. A bill to this effect passed the Lords under a protest from Clarendon (who never loved the Stanleys) and other peers, and, through his and their influence, it was dropped in the Commons.1 Thus the loyalty of the seventh earl sadly diminished the hereditary estates of the Earls of Derby, which, says Seacome," so reduced the said Earl Charles that he had scarce sufficient left to support the honour and dignity of his character. Insomuch," he adds, "that his eldest son and successor, Earl William, whom I had the honour to serve several years as household-steward, hath often told me that he possessed no estate in Lancashire, Cumberland, Westmoreland, Yorkshire, Cheshire, Warwickshire, and Wales, but whenever he viewed any of them he could see another near, or adjoining to, that he was in possession of, equal, or greater of value, lost by his grandfather for his loyalty and service to the Crown and his country." Among the estates purchased from the agents of sequestration, without the consent, expressed or implied, of Earl Charles, was one to which some little interest attaches in our own time. Hawarden, in Flintshire, an estate of the Stanleys, was bought, after the execution of Earl James, from 1 Raines, cclxxiv. vi. Thus there was a certain want of accuracy in the indignant inscription at Knowsley, said to be still extant there, as a memorial of the indignation of—so it runs, or ran-"James Earl of Derby, Lord of Man and the Isles, grandson of James Earl of Derby, and of Charlotte, daughter of Claude, Duc de la Trémoille, whose husband James was beheaded at Bolton, 15th October, 1652, for strenuously adhering to Charles II., who refused a bill passed unanimously by both Ilouses of Parliament, for restoring to the family the estates lost by his loyalty to him." the agents of sequestration, by the notorious Serjeant Glyn (or Glynne), who served the Commonwealth with zeal1 and with profit to himself. Trimmer of trimmers, rat of rats, after having been Lord Chief Justice during the Protectorate and one of Cromwell's peers, he managed matters so dexterously that he was taken into favour by Charles II., and died in 1666 Sir John Glyn, Knight, and his Majesty's Ancient Serjeant.2 This was the Glyn who pressed the crown upon Oliver in an elaborate speech, which he actually republished after the Restoration, in proof of his royalism, with the title, "Monarchy asserted to be the Best, Most Ancient, and Legal Form of Government"! Hawarden belonged to a batch of domains expressly named in the bill. of restitution, the fate of which has been already told. In the hands of Glyn, however, it remained, and was inherited by his descendants, in the possession of one of whom, Sir Stephen Glynne, Bart., it now is. Hawarden Castle, Flintshire, is the country-residence of the Right Hon. William E. Gladstone, married to a sister of this Sir Stephen Glynne—a fact rather curious to consider when it is remembered what has been the part played by the late and by the present Earl of Derby on the political stage of England in relation to that Right Honourable gentleman. 1 "Was not the King by proclamation, To make good subjects traitors strain hard?"-Butler's Hudibras. 2 Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chief Justices (London, 1849), i. 435-43. 8 See Raines, ii. cclxxiii.-vi. VIIL BOOTH THE PLAYER.* PUSH your way through the shabby swing-door that admits into the Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey, and on the right hand the first monument that meets your eye is that of the Elizabethan Michael Drayton, with an epitaph by Ben Jonson. Next to Drayton, on the same side, is a medallion bust (with Roman toga flowing from the shoulders), showing in profile a handsome, spirited face. Overhead two cherubs suspend a laurel crown, and one of them unfolds a scroll, the inscription on which is mainly obliterated, though enough remains to tell that the monument was erected "in memory of Barton Booth, Esq.” This famous actor sprang from the ancient and honourable family of the Booths of Barton (in the parish of Eccles), one closely allied to the old Earls of Warrington, and which, in the reign of Henry VI., gave two archbishops to the see of York, and in their persons two chancellors to England. He was the third and youngest son of "John Booth, Esq., of Barton," and was born in Lancashire, in 1681, the year before the amalgamation of the King's players under Killi * Chetwood's General History of the Stage (London, 1749), § "Barton Booth, Esq."; The Life and Character of Barton Booth, Esq., by Victor (London, 1733); Theophilus Cibber's Lives and Characters of the Most Eminent Actors and Actresses of Great Britain and Ireland (London, 1753), part I., "The Life of Barton Booth, Esq."; Biographia Britannica, § Barton Booth; Colley Cibber's Apology (London, 1830); Lucy Aikin's Life of Addison; Johnson's Lives of the English Poets, &c., &c occasion. grew with the Duke's players under Davenant, and their earliest conjoint performance at Drury Lane Theatre, Dryden furnishing both prologue and epilogue on the great "Blood and culture " united to form the future friend of Bolingbroke, and first performer of the hero of Addison's "Cato." He was in his third year when his father, in embarrassed circumstances, removed to London to push the family fortunes, and in his ninth he was sent to Westminster School, then presided over by the terrible Dr Busby, a pedagogue, with all his severity, however, quick to discern any promise in a pupil. Barton's own phrase subsequently, when he had to mention the place of his education, was that he had been "under the correction" of Dr Busby, but he himself was a favourite pupil. turned out a good scholar, showing for Horace a special relish, which he retained in after-life; and Chetwood, the prompter, records his habit in later years, of "taking a classic" from his shelves, and reading it off in the most elegant English." He At school he betrayed the qualities which beckon their possessor to the stage. Knipe, Busby's successor in the head-mastership of Westminster, told the writer of the elaborate memoir with which Booth was honoured by the 'Biographia Britannica" that in the routine of lesson-saying the little Lancashire boy "repeated passages from the classics with such action and feeling that he was taken notice of by the whole school," and among Booth's schoolfellows was Nicholas Rowe, afterwards a famous dramatist and Shakespearian editor and biographer. Booth's doom was sealed when Busby praised and his fellow-pupils applauded his Pamphilus in the "Andria," at the annual performance of a Latin play, the fine old custom still kept up at Westminster. Soon after this approval Busby died, and Booth's father, angry at his son's inclination for the stage, used to say that "the old man had poisoned him with his last breath." Mr Booth of Barton intended his hopeful for the Church, and, at seventeen, the youth was told to be in readiness for "the university." According to one rather apocryphallooking account of his early life, he really did go to Trinity College, Cambridge, but soon decamped from it with a company of strolling players, and only after a series of romantic adventures, including a reconciliation with his angry family, found himself on the Dublin boards. He certainly acted at Dublin in 1698, and he told Chetwood of a mishap which befell him on the night of his first appearance in the Irish metropolis. He was playing the hero in Southern's now all but forgotten Oroonoko," a socalled tragedy, in which a stratum of rant is superimposed on a lower formation of the coarsest indecency. The night was hot; and, before going on the stage, Booth wiped his face, forgetting that it had been blacked to suit the part. When he came forward, he had, he said himself, "the appearance of a chimney-sweeper," and the laughter with which the audience greeted him was anything but appropriate to the effect which he wished to produce. It says something for his powers that, in spite of this contretemps, he was successful. His "Oroonoko" brought him five guineas at a time when, as he avowed in confidential moments, "his last shilling was reduced to brass." His career in Dublin was of a kind to bind him firmly to the stage, and, after two or three years, he returned to England with the reputation of an actor of the highest promise. At this time he appears really to have effected a reconciliation with his family, fear of whose anger is said to have prevented Betterton, at a former period, from acceding to his request to be allowed to try his chance on the London boards. However this may have been, he secured friends |