defence of the county against the anticipated advance of the army of the Duke of Hamilton; in the succeeding year he was appointed to the office of Vice-chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster; and he was also named as one of the judges of assize for the circuit of West Chester and North Wales. His name also occurs in 1650 on the commission for the survey of Church livings and the provision of a competent maintenance for preaching ministers in the several parishes throughout England and Wales. Fell was much esteemed in his own locality, and is described as a wise and learned man, incorruptible as a judge, honoured and feared as a magistrate, and beloved by his neighbours. In 1632 John Fell took to himself a wife in the person of Margaret Askew, a lady of good family and exemplary piety, the daughter of John Askew, of Marsh Grange, in the adjoining parish of Dalton-in-Furness, he being at the time 34 years of age, and his bride not quite 18. Mrs. Fell inherited an historic name that she was in every way worthy of, her great-grandmother being Ann Askew, the most notable of the victims of the horrible persecutions which dishonoured the closing years of the reign of Henry VIII. Ann Askew was well known at Court, if indeed, she was not actually employed about the person of Queen Catherine Parr, whose Lutheran tendencies were more than suspected, she herself being an avowed believer in the reformed doctrines. She had been married against her will, and had been discarded by her bigoted husband on account of the strength of her convictions. Her religious zeal outran her discretion, and, having expressed her opinions of the doctrine of transubstantiation with imprudent frankness, she was subjected to an examination by the Bishop of London; she escaped on that occasion, but was subsequently examined before the council, when she was less fortunate, being sentenced to be burnt at the stake in Smithfield after having undergone the torture of the rack. The barbarous scene is thus described in a letter addressed by a London merchant, Otwell Johnson, to his brother at Calais:--"Quondam Bishop Saxon (Shaxton), Mistress Askew, Christopher White, one of Mistress Fayre's sons, and a tailor that came from Colchester or thereabouts, were arraigned at the Guildhall, and received their judgments of my Lord Chancellor (Wriothesley) and the council to be burned, and so were committed to Newgate again. But since that time the aforesaid Saxon and White have renounced their opinions; and the talk goeth that they shall chance to escape the fire for this viage. But the gentlewoman and the other men remain in steadfast mind; and yet she hath been racked since her condemnation, as men say; which is a strange thing in my understanding. The Lord be merciful to us all." Burnet says that he had seen an original journal of the transaction in the Tower, which shows that "they caused her to be laid on the rack, and gave her a