"He loved a lady, daughter of the Lord Monserau, and widow of Lewis d'Amboise, and had for confessor a certain Benedictine monk, abbot of St. John d'Angely, named John Favre Versois. This wicked monk poisoned a very fair peach, and gave it to that lady, who, at a collation, put it to steep in wine, presented one-half of it to the Prince, and eat the other herself. She, being tender, died in a short time; the Prince, more robust, sustained for some while the assaults of the venom, but however could not conquer it, and in the end yielded

his life to it.

"Such as adjust all the phenomena of the Heavens to the accidents here below, might have applied it to this same comet of extraordinary magnitude, which was visible fourscore days together from the month of December. Its head was in the sign of the Balance, and it had a long tail, turning a little towards the north."-P. 494. Bulteel.

The duke died on the 12th of May. The king was very anxious to get the perpetrator of the crime out of the hands of the Duke of Burgundy, who had been thrown into inexpressible rage on hearing the catastrophe of Charles. "The monk was found dead in prison, the devil, as was said, having broken his neck the night before that day wherein they were to pronounce his sentence. This was what the King desired, that so the proof of the crime might perish with the poysoner.” P. 495.

In Dr. Dibdin's "Tour," vol. iii. p. 591, there is a very beautiful miniature figure of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, at prayers: it is taken from a manuscript breviary on vellum, of the fifteenth century, executed for his use. A more hard-featured and truculent-looking visage is scarcely to be imagined than that prefixed to one of the four portraits intended to adorn the frontispiece of the edition of the "Memoires de Comines."

At the close of his own life, Louis placed all hope in his physician, James Coctier, who received 10,000 crowns by the month for the last five months. (Mezeray, p. 505).

PEVERIL OF THE PEAK.

The following outline of Peveril's Castle of the Peak, which might have made a conspicuous figure in the novel of that name, may still relieve the disappointment of many of our antiquarian readers.

On the summit of a steep and rocky eminence, at the base of which is that vast subterranean recess, the Peak Cavern, stand the remains of the ancient castle of the PEAK, from which the adjacent village of Castleton derives its name. The elevated situation of the fortress, and the almost perpendicular chasms that partially insulate the rock which it occupies, must have rendered it nearly impregnable, prior to the use of artillery in sieges. On the east and south sides its site is bounded by a narrow ravine called the cave; and on the west it is skirted by the precipice which frowns over the cavern. The most accessible part is towards the north. Yet even here the path has been carried in a winding, or rather in a zig-zag direction, in order to obviate the steepness of the ascent. The Castle-yard, or Ballium, included nearly the whole summit of the eminence. The enclosing wall, though for the most part in ruins, measures twenty feet in height in a few places on the outside. On the north side were two small towers, now destroyed. The entrance was at the north-east angle, where part of an arched way still remains. Near the opposite angle in the keep, the walls of which, on the south and west sides, are the most entire, and at the north-west corner, they are above fifty feet high; the north and east sides are much shattered. On the outside the keep forms a square of thirty-eight feet, but its interior dimensions are unequal; the extent from north to south being rather more than twenty-one feet, but from east to west only nineteen. The walls consist of broken masses of limestone, embedded in mortar of such tenacity, that it imparts to the whole the solidity of an entire rock. Some of the herring-bone masonry may be observed on the inner side. The interior is now a complete vacuity; but it anciently consisted of two chambers, one on the ground floor and one above, over which the roof was raised with a gable end to the north and south, but not equal in height

to the outer walls. The lower chamber was about fourteen feet high, and the upper one about sixteen: the only entrance to the former appears to have been through a doorway on the southside of the latter, down a flight of steps now wholly destroyed, but said to have existed within memory. At the south-east angle are the ruins of a narrow winding staircase communicating with the roof. In the east wall of the upper apartment is a kind of recess or niche, of a rectangular figure, having a singular canopy.

1

That eminent antiquary Mr. King, who has minutely described this curious edifice in the "Sequel to his Observations on Ancient Castles," in the sixth volume of the "Archæologia," and also in the third volume of his elaborate "Monumenta antiqua," has endeavoured to prove that this castle was erected by the Pagan Saxons, and was the dwelling of some great chieftain of that nation; he suspects, rather fancifully perhaps, that the niche above-mentioned, like that in Conesborough Castle in Yorkshire, might have been designed for the reception of an idol. By other antiquaries the Peak's Castle is considered to be a Norman structure, built by William Peveril, natural son of the Conqueror; to whom, indeed, the traditions of the neighbourhood ascribe its erection. This opinion is in some degree countenanced by the ancient appellation of the castle, "Peverel's place in the Peke." Whichever of these suppositions be the true one, it is certain that this fortress was possessed by Peveril, at the period of the doomsday survey, together with the Peak forest, and numerous manors.

The following curious and romantic account of a tournament held here, is related by Mr. Pelkington, in his "View of Derbyshire": ':—" William, a valiant knight, and sister's son to Pain Peveril, Lord of Whittington, in the county of Salop, had two daughters, one of whom, called Mallet, was no less distinguished by a martial spirit than her father. This appeared from the declaration which she made respecting the choice of a husband. She firmly resolved to marry none but a knight of great prowess; and her father, to confirm her purpose, and to procure and encourage a number of suitors, invited all noble young men, who were inclined to enter the lists, to meet at Peveril's place in the Peke, and there decide their pretensions by the use of arms; declaring at the same time, that whoever vanquished his

competitors should receive his daughter, with the castle of Whittington, as a reward of his skill and valour. Guarine de Meez, a branch of the house of Lorraine, and an ancestor of the Lord Fitzwarrine, hearing this report, repaired to the place abovementioned. He had a silver shield with a peacock for his crest, and there engaged with a son of a king of Scotland, and also with a baron of Bourgogne, and, vanquishing them both, obtained the prize for which he fought.

*

JEFFREY HUDSON, being one of the important personages in Peveril of the Peak, a brief notice of him here may not be uninteresting. He was born at Oakham, in Rutlandshire, in 1619, and at about the age of seven or eight, being then but 18 inches high, was retained in the service of the Duke of Buckingham, who resided at Burleigh on the Hill. Soon after the marriage of Charles I., the King and Queen being entertained at Burleigh, little Hudson was served up to table in a cold pie, and presented by the Duchess to the Queen, who kept him as her dwarf. From the age of seven to thirty he grew no taller; but after thirty he shot up to three feet, nine inches, and there fixed. Jeffrey became a considerable source of entertainment at court. Sir W. Davenant wrote a poem called ‘Jef-. freilos,' or a battle between him and a turkey cock; and in 1683 was published a very small book, called the "New Year's Gift," presented at court from the Lady Percival, to the Lord Minimus (commonly called little Jeffrey), her Majesty's servant, &c., written by Micropholus, with a little print of Jeffrey prefixed. Before this period Jeffrey was employed on a negociation of great importance: he was sent to France to fetch a midwife for the Queen, and on his return with this gentlewoman and her Majesty's dancing-master, and many rich presents to the Queen, from her mother, Mary de Medicis, he was taken by the Dunkirkers. Jeffrey thus made of consequence, grew to think himself really so. He had borne with little temper the teazing of the courtiers and domestics, and had many squabbles with the King's gigantic porter. At last, being provoked by Mr. Crofts, a young gentleman of family, a challenge ensued; and the appointment being on a level, Jeffrey with the first fire shot his

* Peveril of the Peak, p. 411.

antagonist dead. This happened in France, whither he had attended his mistress in the troubles. He was again taken prisoner by a Turkish rover, and sold into Barbary. He probably did not remain long in slavery; for at the beginning of the civil war, he was made a captain in the royal army; and in 1644, attended the Queen of France, where he remained till the restoration. At last, upon suspicion of his being privy to the Popish plot, he was taken up in 1682, and confined in the gate-house, Westminster, where he ended his life in the 63d year of his age.

The following passage in a work not much known, “Mémoires d'un Homme qui se repose," bears a striking similarity to the history and description of Sir Geoffrey Hudson, in Peveril of the Peak:-"We stopped two or three days at Prague, to see some friends we had known at Vienna. We dined one day at the house of a lady, whose name has escaped me, where I remarked a custom which is pretty general in the principal houses in Bohemia and Saxony, that of having a dwarf, as one has a favourite dog or cat : some are very well made and well proportioned. The late king Stanislaus had a very small one, which amused him exceedingly, walking to and fro on the table conversing with the guests. The king had him served up once in a large pie, out of which he issued, to the great astonishment of some foreign princes who were dining with the king, and had not yet seen the dwarf. This one has been dead some years, but I saw his face in wax, with his clothes: he was about the height of a child of four years of age. The one I saw at Prague dined with the company, and was a little boaster that babbled and talked the whole time of dinner. He was waited on at table by another dwarf, hideously ugly, who amused me greatly by the sidelong looks of hate' he cast on his brother dwarf while he served him; and indeed the little man at table had no greater advantage over the one that waited on him than being better made." The date of this tour is 1770.