their flesh, and placed him in a condition of actual
blockade.

Fortunately for his resources, no sooner was
it understood that bones — nothing but bones
—a continuous monotony of bones — was all
that was discoverable, than the attendance
dwindled to a score or so a day; then to a few
scientific investigators; until, on the day on
which the writer, in company with a friend,
resident in Stratford-on-Avon, visited the spot,
no one else was present to divide the attention
of the good-natured and well-informed host.
We were thus enabled to arrive at certain
small facts connected with the scene of the
discovery, as well as with the latter itself, which,
pending the dispersion of the mystery still
overhanging these remains, may not be wholly
devoid of interest.

Milcote, so close upon the border of Warwick
as to be included in a Gloucestershire parish,
has found an able historian in the precise Sir
John Dugdale, its fortunes tracing back more
than twelve centuries, to the days of Ethelred,
King of Murcia, by whom the manor was
annexed to the bishopric of Worcester. How it
was separated from that see " by violence,"—
a term unexplained in history — in the time of
Danish Canute—how, after the Norman invasion,
it passed to Bishop Odo of Bayeux, then
to Ralph Boteler, Geffrey Martelle, " one
Madiho," and various other gentlemen, more or
less known and respected in history, until it
vested — a not uncommon vestment in old days
—in the king, by escheat, are matters of little
more than barren record. In the reign of John,
it came into the possession of Geffrey de
Hauville, and from his family descended to the
Grevilles, during whose tenure occurred a
tragedy which has found record in other pages
than Dugdale's, and which drew the proud
Grevilles of Milcote into a melancholy notoriety.

It was in the reign of Elizabeth, that Ludovick
Greville succeeded to the large family
estates, at the age of twenty-two. Ambitious,
gay, unprincipled, he made waste of his
revenues, and, having incurred great expense in
the construction of a castle (long since crumbled
into dust), found himself, despite his large
possessions, plunged in considerable difficulty.
Now, Ludovick was a man devoid of heart and
feeling. His eldest son had been slain by the
descent of an arrow upon his bare head, the
shaft having been discharged without purpose
into the air by his brother. Their brutal father
laughed, as if it were a good jest, and told the
unfortunate archer that it was the best shot he
ever made in his life.

This estimable person appears to have cast
envious eyes upon the comfortable unencumbered
possessions of a former agent of the
family, one Webb, described by Dugdale as a
"wealthy batchelour," then residing on his
estate of Drayton, in Oxfordshire. This property
Greville resolved to obtain, and, as a first step,
prepared a document, purporting to be a will
made by Webb, in which the latter devised the
whole of his Drayton property to the forger,
Greville. This done, he invited the intended
victim to join a Christmas party at his estate of
Seasoncote, in Gloucestershire, and there, by
the hands of two hired ruffians, strangled him in
his bed.

A report was instantly circulated that the old
man had fallen very ill. The minister of the
parish was sent for to complete his will, and one
of the assassins, secreted in the curtained bed
with the corpse, answered in feeble tones to the
questions by which Greville affected to ascertain
the intentions of the supposed dying man.
These were not many, since with the exception
of an attorney of Banbury, whose mouth it was
thought desirable to stop, Ludovick Greville's
was the only name mentioned in the will. A few
hours later, it was announced that all was over,
and order was taken for the victim's burial.

Ludovick Greville was in the full enjoyment
of his ill-gotten wealth, when one of his guilty
instruments, being in his cups at a Stratford
inn, let drop some noticeable words, signifying
that it was in his power, if it should so please
him, to hang his master. His accomplice,
reporting this indiscretion to his master, and
receiving orders to make the babbler " safe,"
did so, and flung his body into a pit; a flood
filling the latter, the corpse came up, was
discovered, and led to the apprehension of the
murderer, who confessed the whole affair.
On the sixth of November, fifteen hundred
and thirty-six, both culprits were tried in
Westminster Hall, when Greville, to prevent the
forfeiture of the large landed estates of the family,
refused to plead, and was condemned, under the
rigour of the existing law, to the peine forte et
dur — pressing to death — a doom which he
underwent on the eighth day ensuing.

Thus Milcote had already obtained its passing
hour of notoriety, when the new circumstance
arose which bids fair to impress it, with a deeper
and more legitimate interest, on the historic page.

It would seem, from information chiefly
derived from the lips of the proprietor, a fine
specimen of the higher class of British yeomen, a
man of reading and intelligence beyond the
sphere of agricultural pursuits, that for these
forty years human relics have been, at intervals,
laid bare by the Milcote ploughmen; the occurrence
being sufficiently common to afford
confirmation to a tradition long current in the
neighbourhood, but based upon no established
history, that an ancient cemetery existed not
far from the place. The legend, at all events,
sufficed to divest these discoveries of more than
a passing interest, and the remains were
assumed to have tenanted some outlying grave,
when a necessity of obtaining gravel induced
the breaking up of a kind of lawn close beside
the farm-house. Then, for the first time, it
became apparent that a vast mass of human
remains lay buried beneath a coverlid of
gravelly soil, so shallow that the bones frequently
pierced upward within little more than a foot
of the surface.

Bones, bones and ever bones! A trench
was sunk in advance of the original cutting,