Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/332

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Walks in the Black Country

This resumè of the life and worth of Colonel John Lane, taken from his monument, is as brief a notice of him as one could well write. His unwavering fidelity to a king and a cause which the great majority of the English people so disliked does not dim the lustre of that loyalty of heart which even the political enemies of a man cannot help admiring. Charles, on his restoration to the throne, remembered gratefully, as well he might, the devotion of this faithful servant of his crown; and the House of Commons voted £1,000 per annum, and another £500 in 1660. Although called Mrs., she must have been Jane Lane, the colonel's sister, who took up Charles II on her saddle before her, on that famous ride to Bristol. It is a pity that Richard Penderel, the hero of the Boscobel drama, was not also buried in Wolverhampton church or honoured with a monument near the Lanes. We found that he was interred in St. Giles-in-the-Fields. London, where his true-hearted faithfulness to his outlawed and distressed sovereign is recorded in rhymes of wretched brag and bathos, unworthy of the sublime simplicity of his virtues. When next in London I intend to visit the grave of that valiant yeoman, whom Cromwell himself might have admired for his unbribable and invincible constancy. The other host and hider of Charles in his thickest perils, or Thomas Whitgreave, of