"Ay, ay," said another, "her fingers closed on it pretty willingly

methought, when all was done; and methought, too, she weighed them for a

second in her hand, as she would say, I hope they be avoirdupois."

"She needed not, neighbour," said a third; "it is only when the

corporation pay the accounts of a poor handicraft like me, that they put

him off with clipped coin. Well, there is a God above all--little Master

Recorder, since that is the word, will be greater now than ever."

"Come, good neighbour," said the first speaker "be not envious. She is

a good Queen, and a generous; she gave the purse to the Earl of

Leicester."

"I envious?--beshrew thy heart for the word!" replied the handicraft.

"But she will give all to the Earl of Leicester anon, methinks."

"You are turning ill, lady," said Wayland Smith to the Countess of

Leicester, and proposed that she should draw off from the road, and halt

till she recovered. But, subduing her feelings at this and different

speeches to the same purpose, which caught her ear as they passed on,

she insisted that her guide should proceed to Kenilworth with all

the haste which the numerous impediments of their journey permitted.

Meanwhile, Wayland's anxiety at her repeated fits of indisposition, and

her obvious distraction of mind, was hourly increasing, and he became

extremely desirous that, according to her reiterated requests, she

should be safely introduced into the Castle, where, he doubted not, she

was secure of a kind reception, though she seemed unwilling to reveal on

whom she reposed her hopes.

"An I were once rid of this peril," thought he, "and if any man shall

find me playing squire of the body to a damosel-errant, he shall have

leave to beat my brains out with my own sledge-hammer!"

At length the princely Castle appeared, upon improving which, and the

domains around, the Earl of Leicester had, it is said, expended sixty

thousand pounds sterling, a sum equal to half a million of our present

money.

The outer wall of this splendid and gigantic structure enclosed seven

acres, a part of which was occupied by extensive stables, and by a

pleasure garden, with its trim arbours and parterres, and the rest

formed the large base-court or outer yard of the noble Castle. The

lordly structure itself, which rose near the centre of this spacious

enclosure, was composed of a huge pile of magnificent castellated

buildings, apparently of different ages, surrounding an inner court, and

bearing in the names attached to each portion of the magnificent mass,

and in the armorial bearings which were there blazoned, the emblems

of mighty chiefs who had long passed away, and whose history, could

Ambition have lent ear to it, might have read a lesson to the haughty

favourite who had now acquired and was augmenting the fair domain. A

large and massive Keep, which formed the citadel of the Castle, was of

uncertain though great antiquity. It bore the name of Caesar, perhaps

from its resemblance to that in the Tower of London so called. Some

antiquaries ascribe its foundation to the time of Kenelph, from whom the

Castle had its name, a Saxon King of Mercia, and others to an early era

after the Norman Conquest. On the exterior walls frowned the scutcheon

of the Clintons, by whom they were founded in the reign of Henry I.; and

of the yet more redoubted Simon de Montfort, by whom, during the Barons'

wars, Kenilworth was long held out against Henry III. Here Mortimer,

Earl of March, famous alike for his rise and his fall, had once gaily

revelled in Kenilworth, while his dethroned sovereign, Edward

II., languished in its dungeons. Old John of Gaunt, "time-honoured

Lancaster," had widely extended the Castle, erecting that noble and

massive pile which yet bears the name of Lancaster's Buildings; and

Leicester himself had outdone the former possessors, princely and

powerful as they were, by erecting another immense structure, which now

lies crushed under its own ruins, the monument of its owner's ambition.

The external wall of this royal Castle was, on the south and west sides,

adorned and defended by a lake partly artificial, across which Leicester

had constructed a stately bridge, that Elizabeth might enter the Castle

by a path hitherto untrodden, instead of the usual entrance to the

northward, over which he had erected a gatehouse or barbican, which

still exists, and is equal in extent, and superior in architecture, to

the baronial castle of many a northern chief.




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