Blighted Ambition, Or, the Rise and Fall of the Earl of Somerset (Volume 723); A Romance in Three Volumes (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAP. TIL There is a plot against my life, my crown; All's true that is mistrusted; that false villain Whom I employed, vvas pre-employed by him: He has discovered my design, and I Remain a pinch'd thing; yea, a very trick For them to play at will. Winter's Tale. In the preceding chapter we have made two statements, which it shall be our object in this to explain and illustrate. In the first place, we have congregated in the aisle of St. Paul's a number of people at a period when the vulgar opinion fixes a plague among the citizens of London. But this direful scourge of the human race was only very partially felt in the early part of the season, andit was fully a month after the period at which our story begins, that the people of London fled into the country to avoid its pestilential influence. Secondly, in regard to the conspiracy of the Lords Cobham and Grey, and Sir Walter Raleigh, we have undertaken to thread a maze, over which contemporary historians have drawn a dark veil. As respects the correctness of our statement in reference to the explanation implied in our first particular, we beg leave to observe, that the contagion was confined, at first, to the more eastern part of the city. The most crowded part of London extended, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, along the northern side of the Thames towards Cheapside, and, with the exception of oleman-street and a few straggling buildings, from Lothbury to Bishops- gate-street, and from Bishopsgate-street to the Tower, all was uncovered orgarden ground. East of the Tower there were few buildings; Goodman's- fields were enclosed pasture-grounds; Whitechapel consisted of a few houses only; Hounsditch boasted only a single row of houses opposite to the City walls, and Spital-fields, from the back of the...