and diverse tortures. The like they did in the
kingdom of Venezuela, destroying four or five
millions, and out of that continent carried to
the islands for slaves, at times, in seventeen
years a million of people. But why do I longer
trace them in their bloody steps?"

Such was the way in which men wrote who
had just heard of the Gunpowder Plot, men
who, as children, had seen their mothers' cheeks
glow and their fathers' eyes sparkle at the
glorious news of the rout of the boastful Armada.
It was such cruelties that made the Spaniards
hateful to all Europe, that corrupted their
nation, that made their climax so brief, that
rendered England their deadly and dangerous
enemy for nearly a century, and, finally, that
left them where they are at present—the last
laggards in the race of civilisation.

Manningtree, near Harwich, though a mere
small, struggling town on the southern bank of
the Stour, is, like Pleshy, a Shakesperean place,
being mentioned in Henry the Fourth, where
Falstaff is compared, by the mad prince, to " a
roasted Manningtree ox, with a pudding in its
belly." Manningtree is a place especially
connected with one of the most miserable and
cruel of old superstitions—the belief in witchcraft.
It, indeed, went very hard with all
poor, soured, half crazed old women for several
centuries, and Essex was especially debased by
the irrational persecution. The world had had
feverish fits of wild burning, as in Geneva in
1575, when, in three months only, five hundred
witches were burnt, or, as in Como, in 1524,
when one thousand were burnt in one year.
That notorious fool or knave, or both, Matthew
Hopkins, " the witch finder," in 1645,
hurried to execution about one hundred
persons in Essex, Norfolk, and Suffolk. This man
pretended to discover the diabolical marks
(generally warts) on the old women, by which
the devil had marked them for his own. At
last, submitting to his own tests, "hoist by
his own petard," unlucky and over-zealous
Matthew was himself found to be diabolical,
and was hung incontinently. Still the miserable
fear and folly continued. Even Hale, wise and
excellent judge though he was, burnt two
unlucky persons for witchcraft in 1664, and in
1676 seventeen or eighteen persons were burnt
at St. Osyth's in Essex. In 1716 Mrs. Hicks
and her child (nine years old) were hanged at
Huntingdon. The last sufferer in Scotland was
at Dornach in 1722.

Harwich, a place declining ever since the
French war ended with that thunder-clap at
Waterloo, stands on a point of land bordered
by the sea on the east, and on the north by the
estuaries of the Stour and Orwell. The Romans,
wishing to guard the Saxon settlements on the
south and east coast from fresh German pirates,
established a sort of sea patrol or coastguard,
under the command of " the honourable count
of the Saxon shore," whose jurisdiction
reached from Aldrington in Sussex to
Brancaster in Norfolk. The Saxons in their turn
continued the same patrol, and this town ob-
tained its name from their camp, " Here-wich"
(the town of the army). The Romans have
left traces here, for there is still a Roman
paved road leading to the town, and a camp
with ramparts and fosse reaching from the
south side of the town to Beacon Hill Field.
In 855 King Alfred broke up the Danish
piratical fleet at the broad mouth of the Orwell
and captured every vessel. After the Norman
invasion, and the decay of the older town of
Orwell, which stood on a spot now a shoal five
miles from the shore, Harwich became a place
of importance and a favourite spot of embarkation
for Holland and Flanders. In September,
1326, Isabella, queen of Edward the Second,
landed at Harwich, with seven hundred and
fifty Hainaulters, her son the prince, and
her paramour, Roger Mortimer. Here, joined
by three bishops, and the Earls of Kent
and Norfolk, she marched against her husband
and his evil counsellors. A year from that day
the weak king was cruelly put to death in the
vaulted room at Berkeley. In 1338 Edward the
Third sailed from Harwich with five hundred
blazoned, gilded, and turreted vessels for his
first campaign against France. In the following
year eleven French galleys, "willing to
wound and yet afraid to strike," hovered
menacingly round the mouth of the Orwell,
but did not venture within reach of our
crossbow bolts and arrows. In 1340, Edward the
Third set sail again from Harwich on
Midsummer Eve, took half the enemy's ships, and
made many prisoners. In due time Henry the
Eighth, Queen Elizabeth, and Charles the
Second visited the town. William the Third
chose Harwich as his point of departure for
Holland, and George the First and Second
started joyfully from this same Essex town,
which modern travellers have malignantly
branded as dull.

On September 6th, 1761, the great but heavy
Lord Anson arrived at Harwich from Cuxhaven
with the Princess Charlotte, of Mecklenburgh
Strelitz, the destined bride of the young King
George. They had been a week at sea. She
remained all the Sunday on board the royal
yacht in Harwich Roads, landed late on the
Monday, was welcomed by the authorities in
the usual respectful and tiresome manner, and
then posted on to Colchester, where Mr. Green,
a private gentleman, gave her tea, and a native
of the place presented her with a box of candied
eringo root. Lord Harcourt, the king's
representative, describes the Princess as full of good
sense, vivacity, and cheerfulness, no regular
beauty, but a good figure, with a charming
complexion, and very pretty eyes. The Princess
entered London by Whitechapel, wearing
a fly cap with lace lappets, a diamond spangled
stomacher, and a gold brocade suit of clothes
with a white ground.

In 1764, four years after the ascent of
George the Third, Charles William Frederick,
Prince of Brunswick, landed at Harwich, on
his way to claim the hand of the young king's
sister, the Princess Augusta. The new queen
(Charlotte) had a small German jealousy of
Brunswick. The prince was a knightly, ugly