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‘ [46] and this to keep off the fowls from seizing upon them. The whole sight, as well that of the bloody quarters first as this of the heads after wards, was both frightful and loathsome, and begat an abhorrence in my nature.’ At the next session of the municipal court at the Old Bailey, Ellwood obtained his discharge. After paying a visit to ‘my Master Milton,’ he made his way to Chalfont, the home of his friends the Penningtons, where he was soon after engaged as a Latin teacher. Here he seems to have had his trials and temptations. Gulielma Springette, the daughter of Pennington's wife, his old playmate, had now grown to be ‘a fair woman of marriageable age,’ and, as he informs us, ‘very desirable, whether regard was had to her outward person, which wanted nothing to make her completely comely, or to the endowments of her mind, which were every way extraordinary, or to her outward fortune, which was fair.’ From all which, we are not surprised to learn that ‘she was secretly and openly sought for by many of almost every rank and condition.’ ‘To whom,’ continues Thomas, ‘in their respective turns, (till he at length came for whom she was reserved,) she carried herself with so much evenness of temper, such courteous freedom, guarded by the strictest modesty, that as it gave encouragement or ground of hope to none, so neither did it administer any matter of offence or just cause of complaint to any.’ Beautiful and noble maiden! How the imagination fills up this outline limning by her friend, and, if truth must be told, admirer! Serene,
Boston and New York, Houghton, Mifflin and company, 1888-89.
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