part of his long life, and that his food was in general very simple and even coarse:

Good wholesome labour was his exercise,

Down with the lamb he with the lark would rise,
The cock his night-clock and till day was done,
His watch and chief sun-dial was the sun.

He thought green cheese most wholesome with an onion,
He ate coarse meslin-bread, drank 'milk or
Buttermilk,' or for a treat' cyder or perry.'
His physic was 'nice treacle' or 'Mithridate.'
He entertained no gout, no ache he felt,
The air was good and temperate where he dwelt,
While mavisses and sweet-tongued nightingales
Did chant him roundelays and madrigals.
Thus, living within bounds of Nature's laws,
Of his long lasting life may be some cause.

Of Parr's bodily appearance the poet assures us—
From head to heel the body hath all over

A quick-set, thick-set, natʼrall hairy cover.

Although we have the above evidence of Parr's extreme age, it is not documentary; and the birth dates back to a period before parish registers were instituted by Cromwell. Still, the fact of Henry Jenkins's age is not so well authenticated as Parr's.

It may not be generally known that his grandson, Robert Parr, born at Kinver, 1633, died 1757, having lived to the age of 124.

There is a portrait of Parr, stated to be by Rubens : and among the pictures in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, we remember to have seen a portrait of Parr two-thirds length, reasonably presumed to have been painted from the life, being in the manner of the period: it has not been engraved.

In 1814, Old Parr's cottage at Alberbury was standing: it had undergone very little alteration since the period when Parr himself occupied it.

GEORGE AND BLUE BOAR INN.-THE INTERCEPTED LETTER.

THE long-known George and Blue Boar Inn, Holborn, which was taken down in 1864, for the site of the Inns of Court Hotel, is associated with a great event in our national history. Here was intercepted the letter of Charles I., by which Ireton discovered it to be the King's intention to destroy him and Cromwell, which discovery brought about Charles's execution. In the Earl of Orrery's Letters we read: "While Cromwell was meditating how he could best come in' with Charles, one of his spies—of the King's bedchamber— informed him that his final doom was decreed, and that what it was might be found out by intercepting a letter sent from the King to the Queen, wherein he declared what he would do. The letter, he said, was sewed up in the skirt of a saddle, and the bearer of it would come with the saddle upon his head that night to the Blue Boar Inn, in Holborn ; for there he was to take horse and go to Dover with it. This messenger knew nothing of the letter in the saddle; but some persons at Dover did. Cromwell and Ireton, disguised as troopers, taking with them a trusty fellow, went to the Inn in Holborn; and this man watched at the wicket, and the troopers continued drinking beer till about ten o'clock, when the sentinel at the gate gave notice that the man with the saddle was come in. Up they got, and, as the man was leading out his horse saddled, they, with drawn swords, declared they were to search all who went in and out there; but, as he looked like an honest man, they would only search his saddle. Upon this they ungirt the saddle and carried it into

the stall where they had been drinking, and left the horseman with the sentinel; then, ripping up one of the skirts of the saddle, they found the letter, and gave back the saddle to the man, who, not knowing what he had done, went away to Dover. They then opened the letter, in which the King told the Queen that he thought he should close with the Scots. Cromwell and Ireton then took horse and went to Windsor; and, finding they were not likely to have any tolerable terms with the King, they immediately from that time forward resolved his ruin."-The Earl of Orrery's State Letters.

LORD SANQUHAR'S REVENGE: A STORY OF
WHITEFRIARS.

THE ancient precinct of Whitefriars appears to have been noted as the abode of fencing-masters, professors of languages, music, and other accomplishments. Here, in the reign of James I., Turner, the fencing-master, kept his school, at which Lord Sanquhar, a Scotch nobleman, one day, when playing with Turner at foils, in his excitement to put down a master of the art, was pressed by him so hard, that his Lordship received a thrust which put out one of his eyes. "This mischief," says the narrator, was much regretted by Turner; and the Baron, being conscious to himself that he meant his adversary no good, took the accident with as much patience as men that lose one eye by their own default use to do for the preservation of the other." "Some time after," continues this writer, "being in the court of the great Henry of France, and the King (courteous to strangers), entertaining discourse with him, asked

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him How he lost his eye?' he (cloathing his answer in a better shrowd than a plain fencer's) told him, ‘It was done with a sword.' The King replies, Doth the man live?' and that question gave an end to the discourse. The Baron, however, bore the feeling of revenge in his breast some years after, till he came into England, when he resolved to take vengeance upon the unfortunate fencing-master. For this purpose he hired two of his countrymen, Gray and Carliel; but Gray's mind misgave him, and Carliel got another accomplice named Irweng. These two, about seven o'clock on a fine evening in May, repaired to the Friars, and there saw Turner drinking with a friend at a tavern door: they saluted one another, and Turner and his friend asked Carliel and Irweng to drink, but they turning about cocked a pistol, came back immediately, and Carliel, drawing it from under his coat, discharged it upon Turner, and gave him a mortal wound near the left pap; so that Turner, after having said these words, Lord, have mercy upon me! I am killed,' immediately fell down. Carliel and Irweng fled Carliel to the town; Irweng towards the river, but mistaking his way, and entering into a court where they sold wood, which was no thoroughfare, he was taken. Carliel likewise fled, and so did also the Baron of Sanquhar. The ordinary officers of justice did their utmost, but could not take them; for, in fact, as appeared afterwards, Carliel fled into Scotland, and Gray towards the sea, thinking to go to Sweden, and Sanquhar hid himself in England."

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James having made the English jealous by the favour he had shown to the Scotch, thought himself bound to issue a promise of reward for the arrest of Sanquhar

and the assassins. It was successful; and all three were hung-Carliel and Irweng in Fleet Street, at the Whitefriars Gate, where the entrance to Bouverie Street now is; and Sanquhar in front of Westminster Hall.

Scarcely a trace of old Whitefriars remains; but some buildings named "Hanging Sword Alley" remind one of the schools of defence, and Sanquhar's revenge.

MARTYRDOM OF KING CHARLES I.

SUCH is the designation of this anniversary of English history -one of the darkest, the deepest, and most impressive of any age or time-January 30th, 1649.

Charles was taken on the first morning of his trial, January 20th, 1649, in a sedan-chair, from Whitehall to Cotton House, where he returned to sleep each day during the progress of the trial in Westminster Hall. After this, the King returned to Whitehall; but on the night before his execution he slept at St. James's. On January 30th he was "most barbarously murthered at his own door, about two o'clock in the afternoon." (Histor. Guide, 3rd imp. 1688.) Lord Leicester and Dugdale state that Charles was beheaded at Whitehall Gate. The scaffold was erected in front of the Banqueting-house, in the street now Whitehall. Sir Thomas Herbert states that the King was led out by "a passage broken through the wall," on to the scaffold; but Ludlow asserts that it was out of a window, according to Vertue, of a small building north of the Banqueting-house, whence the King stepped upon the scaffold. A picture of the sad scene, painted by Weesop, in the manner of Vandyke, shows the platform, extending only in length