that he appeared before the king with all the assurance imaginable. He was a fine person of a man, and I think his hair was the longest I ever saw." He denied all participation in the murder, but he was committed and tried with the principals, as an accessory before the fact; and although acquitted by the jury, a perusal of the trial produces a strong persuasion that he was privy to the purpose of the assassins. A fact much pressed against him was his inquiry of the Swedish envoy, "Whether or no, if he should kill Mr. Thynne in a duel, he could, by the laws of England, afterwards marry the Lady Ogle?" a question which showed beyond all doubt that he had in some form entertained a design against Mr. Thynne's life, and also that the attainment of the lady was the motive. But whatever may have been the intention of the Count, and whatever may have been the nature of his intercourse with the Lady Ogle, it is quite clear that they were not married. On the contrary, this lady of early nuptial experience, and of romantic but somewhat suspicious adventure,--who was married three times, and twice a widow, before she was sixteen years old,--was married on the 30th of May, 1682, and within four months after the murder of Mr. Thynne, to Charles Seymour, Duke of Somerset. (Collins's _Peerage_, vol. i. p. 191.) Thus early practised in _matrimonial_ intrigue, we find her thirty years afterwards the accomplished organ of _political_ intrigue; the favourite and friend of Queen Anne, and the zealous partisan of the Whig party. In that character she became the object of Swift's pasquinade, the "Windsor Prophecy," which, though aimed at the Duchess of Somerset, and the destruction of her influence at court, recoiled upon the head of the author, prevented the queen from making him a bishop, and banished him from her favour for the remainder of her reign. The meaning of the "Prophecy," and the keenness of its sarcasm, were of course readily understood and appreciated by cotemporaries. Swift himself seems to have been highly pleased with it. He says, in one of his letters to Stella, "The Prophecy is an admirable good one, and the people are mad for it." The above recital of the early history of the Duchess of Somerset will render it fully intelligible at the present day. After mentioning some incidents and characters of the time, the "Windsor Prophecy" ends thus: "And, dear Englond, if aught I understond, Beware of _Carrots_[3] from Northumberlond! Carrots, sown _Thynne_, a deep root may get, If so be they are in _Sommer set_. Their _conyngs mark_ thou! for I have been told, They _assassine_ when young, and _poison_ when old. Root out these _Carrots_, O thou, whose name[4] Is backwards and forwards always the same! And keep close to thee always that name[5] Which backwards or forwards is _almost_ the same. And, Englond, would'st thou be happy still, Bury those _Carrots_ under a _Hill_."[6]