am weary," added he, "of the times, and I foresee great miseries for my country; but I believe I shall be out of it all ere night." He fell as he had predicted, covered with wounds. He was only in the thirty-fourth year of

his age.

The second battle of Newbury was fought in the following year. The Parliament desirous of striking some decisive blow against the King, elated by his recent successes in the west of England, gave orders to their generals, the Earls of Essex and Manchester, and Waller, Cromwell, and Middleton, to join their forces and attack the King. Charles took up his post at Newbury, where, on the 27th of October, 1644, he was vigorously attacked by the Earl of Manchester. The Parliamentary soldiers very soon after their first onset, recovered several pieces of cannon which had been taken from them in Cornwall, which they embraced and hugged in their arms, and kissed with tears of joy, so great was their enthusiasm. Their next onset was increased in impetuosity by this excited feeling, and they hewed down the royal troops with great fury, and made much slaughter. Night again intervening, brought a cessation to the battle, and saved the honour of the Royalists, who fell back upon Donnington

Castle, where they stationed the brave Colonel Boyce with a large quantity of ammunition and stores, and thence retreated to Wallingford and Oxford. The Parliamentary forces then attacked Colonel Boyce, and so shattered Donnington Castle with their artillery, that its principal towers were thrown down, and the place reduced to a ruin, which it has ever since remained.

It was this castle that, two hundred and fortyfour years previously, was the chosen retirement of Geoffrey Chaucer; and, as such, its ruins, though the work of civil warfare, and not of time, are hallowed to the eyes and hearts of all lovers of English literature. For the greater part of his life, his residences appear to have been the Savoy Palace in the Strand, some apartments near the Custom-House of London, and Woodstock Park, of which we shall have occasion to speak hereafter, but the last two years were passed at Donnington. He seems to have chosen it for reasons of economy. His constant friend, relative, and patron, John of Gaunt, being dead, an unfriendly monarch being upon the throne, and his pecuniary affairs being in a state of some embarrassment, he withdrew from the more public life he had been in the habit of leading, to this seclusion,

only leaving it occasionally when summoned to London on the business of some of his many lawsuits. Henry IV, the son of his friend, ascended the throne a few months after Chaucer had hidden himself here, and this monarch was not unmindful of him. The pipe of wine and the annuity which he had enjoyed as poetlaureate, and lost during the dissensions of those unhappy times, were renewed and confirmed by Henry very soon after his accession, and he also granted him an additional annuity of forty marks. The poet did not live long to enjoy them: he died on the 25th of October, 1400, the second year of his retirement to Donnington-some say at that castle, but others, with more probability, at London, whither he had been summoned on some affair of business.

Chaucer's son, Thomas, who was Speaker of the House of Commons during the reigns of Henry IV. and V, resided occasionally at Donnington, his principal seat being at Ewelm in Oxfordshire. The daughter and heiress of this gentleman married the famous William de la Pole, Earl, and afterwards Duke of Suffolkhe who was so cruelly murdered in the Straits of Dover, by two partisans of the House of York, in the reign of Henry VI. The chief

of this unfortunate family, and great-grandson of Alice Chaucer, was Edmund de la Pole, beheaded in the reign of Henry VIII. on a charge of high treason against that monarch, and against Henry VII. He was confined for seven years in the Tower before he was brought to execution. At his death, all the estates once possessed by the Chaucer family reverted to the Crown. Along with the title of Suffolk, most of them were shortly afterwards bestowed upon the favourite of Henry VIII, the famous Charles Brandon.

Camden, who visited Donnington Castle long before the artillery of civil warfare had reduced it to ruins, describes it in his time as a small but neat castle, situate on the brow of a rising hill, having an agreeable prospect, very light, with windows on all sides. Evelyn, the lover of trees, visited it when in its ruins, drawn thither to view a large tree in the park, said, according to tradition, to have been planted by Chaucer, and under which he composed several of his poems. Of this tree the philosopher has left us a description in his well-known work. The tradition, that Chaucer composed poems under this tree, seems to be devoid of foundation. He was a very aged, a very busy, and a very ailing man, when he first went to

Donnington, and the only poem that he wrote during that period, was a short one entitled "The good Counsaile of Chaucere," supposed to have been written a few days before his death; and some of his biographers say, during the few calm hours he enjoyed in the interval of his last agonies. At such a time it is not likely that the Bard went under a tree to compose. It was at Woodstock, as we shall have occasion to mention hereafter, that Chaucer loved to meditate and compose under his own