lution. What is more to the point is in the speech of Hedon, a voluptuary and a courtier in Cynthia's Revels. 'You know that I call Madam Philantia my Honour, and she calls me her Ambition. Now, when I meet her in the presence, anon, I will come to her and say, "Sweet Honour, I have hitherto contented my sense with the lilies of your hand, and now I will taste the roses of your lip.' To which she cannot but blushing answer, "Nay, now you are too ambitious;' and then do I reply, "I cannot be too ambitious of Honour, sweet lady. Wilt not be good?"'—I think there is some remnant of this foppery preserved in masonic lodges, where each brother is distinguished by a name in the Lodge, signifying some abstract quality, as Discretion, or the like. See the poems of Gavin Wilson.
Note 6.—Rowland Yorke and Stukely, p. 178.
'Yorke,' says Camden, 'was a Londoner, aman of loose and dissolute behaviour, and desperately audacious—famous in his time amongst the common bullies and swaggerers, as being the first that, to the great admiration of many at his boldness, brought into England the bold and dangerous way of fencing with the rapier in duelling. Whereas, till that time, the English used to fight with long swords and bucklers, striking with the edge, and thought it no part of man either to push or strike beneath the girdle?
Having a command in the Low Countries, Yorke revolted to the Spaniards, and died miserably, poisoned, as was supposed, by his new allies. Three years afterwards, his bones were dug up and gibbeted by the command of the States of Holland.
Thomas Stukely, another distinguished gallant of the time, was bred a merchant, being the son of a rich clothier in the west. He wedded the daughter and heiress of a wealthy aiderman of London, named Curtis, after whose death he squandered the riches he thus acquired in all manner of extravagance. His wife, whose fortune supplied his waste, represented to him that he ought to make more of her. Stukely replied, 'I will make as much of thee, believe me, as it is possible for any to do;' and he kept his word in one sense, having stripped her even of her wearing apparel, before he finally ran away from her.
Having fled to Italy, he contrived to impose upon the Pope, with a plan of invading Ireland, for which he levied soldiers and made some preparations; but ended by engaging himself and his troops in the service of King Sebastian of Portugal. He sailed with that prince on his fatal voyage to Barbary, and fell with him at the battle of Alcazar.
Stukely, as one of the first gallants of the time, has had the honour to be chronicled in song, in Evans's Old Ballads, vol. iii, edition 1810. His fate is also introduced in a tragedy, by George Peel as has been supposed, called the Battle of Alcazar, from which play Dryden is alleged to have taken the idea of Don Sebastian; if so, it is surprising he omitted a character so congenial to King Charles the Second's time, as the witty, brave, and profligate Thomas Stukely.
Note 7.—Julian Avenel, p. 273.
If it were necessary to name a prototype for this brutal, licentious, and cruel Border chief, in an age which showed but too many such, the Laird of Black Ormiston might be selected for that purpose. He was a friend and confidant of Bothwell, and an agent in Henry Darnley's murder. At his last stage, he was, like other great offenders, a seeming penitent; and, as his confession bears, divers gentlemen and servants being in the chamber, he said, 'For God's sake, sit down and pray for me, for I have been a great sinner otherwise' (that is, besides his share in Darnley's death), 'for the which God is this day punishing me; for of all men on t he earth, I have been one of the proudest, and most high-minded, and most unclean of my body. But specially I have shed the innocent blood of one Michael Hunter with my own hands. Alas, therefore! because
