" This beautiful and highly accomplished
woman had already been married twice, and after the King's death took a
fourth husband. She narrowly escaped being burnt, for the King had
already signed her death-warrant and delivered it to the Lord
Chancellor, who dropped it by accident, and the person who found it
carried it to the Queen herself. She was actually in conversation with
the King when the Lord Chancellor came to take her to the Tower, for
which the King called him a knave and a fool, bidding him "Avaunt from
my presence." The Queen interceded for the Chancellor; but the King
said, "Ah, poor soul, thou little knowest what _he_ came about; of my
word, sweetheart, he has been to thee a very knave."
[Illustration: KENDAL CHURCH.]
Kendal possessed a fine old church, in one of the aisles of which was
suspended a helmet said to have belonged to Major Phillipson, whose
family was haunted by the two skulls, and who was nicknamed by
Cromwell's men "Robert the Devil" because of his reckless and daring
deeds. The Phillipsons were great Royalists, and Colonel Briggs of
Kendal, who was an active commander in the Parliamentary Army, hearing
that the major was on a visit to his brother, whose castle was on the
Belle Isle in Lake Windermere, resolved to besiege him there; but
although the siege continued for eight months, it proved ineffectual.
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