That a sad colour tinged the joys of the Nonconformists must be confessed. How their Anglo-Saxon gravity might become more grave, and the light which sparkled over the home-life of their neighbours, might, in their own case, be darkened,--we see plainly enough when we recollect the perils which brooded over them even in seasons of calm, and the cruel interruptions which they suffered in the cloudy and dark day. Heywood speaks of officers sweeping away his chests, his tables, his chairs, his bed,--in short all his goods, except a cupboard and a few seats; and the same person was, for holding a religious meeting, imprisoned in York Castle.[332] How could such men, with all their tenderness, help being stern in their faith, and solemn in their pleasures? If genial they could not be light-hearted. They did not weep, as their enemies often said of them that they did, with a hypocritical whine; nor did they laugh, as some of their enemies really did, with affected glee,--their tears and smiles were genuine as the rain and the sunshine from heaven. Life was not to them, as to some others, a gay comedy,--it had in it a tragic cast; yet they never regarded it as a drama acted on the stage, but always as a real, earnest battle, fought in the open field, under the eye of God. [Sidenote: FAMILY LIFE.] Let us pass from the homes of Oliver Heywood and the two Henrys to the mansion of a Nonconformist nobleman already noticed--Philip Lord Wharton, the good Lord Wharton, as he is called, to distinguish him from a descendant of a far different character. In the pleasant village of Woburn, in Buckinghamshire, situated on the river Wick, a tributary to the Thames,--which in its course through a delightful district, turns the wheel of many a paper mill,--there stands, under the shadow of richly-wooded hills, and adorned by a stately row of poplars, a goodly house; connected with which are stables and fish-ponds, pertaining to a far nobler residence which once occupied the site. The estate, before it came into the possession of the Whartons, exhibited much magnificence, of the feudal stamp, containing a palace for the Bishops of Lincoln, and a chapel with a small cell adjoining, called Little Ease,--where Thomas Chase, of Amersham, was, in 1506, privately strangled for heresy, and where Thomas Harding, of Chesham, was confined in 1532, previously to his being burnt at the stake. This ancient and stately house became a great place of resort for Nonconformist Divines. Manton and Bates, Howe and Owen, were often entertained under the hospitable roof, and the shadows of these departed ones still pleasantly haunt the spot, as the Puritan residents of the neighbourhood conduct strangers through the gardens, and relate to them the legends of the old dwelling. There--during one of the severe attacks of his fatal malady--Owen wrote his last and justly admired letters to his Church; and there, under the operation