"Not that there is much to be seen in the great inner court on which my chamber-window looks. An ancient vine climbs up one side of the walls, encircling the entrance arch, and its leaves, brown and crimson with the autumn, stirred with the breeze, are making a pleasant quiet country music as I write. This vine is held in high honour in the college, having illustrated the text of the sermon, 'Look on this vine,' which inspired good Bishop de Rotheram, more than two hundred years since, to become the second Founder of the College. "Through this entrance-arch I look beyond its shadow to the sunny street, crossed now and then by the flash of arms, and gay Cavaliers' mantles, or the prancings of a troop of horse. That is all the glimpse I have of the outer world. But I think my Mother were content to live in such a place for ever. Every day she resorts more than once to a quiet corner of the new Chapel to pay her orisons, taking delight in the stillness, and in the brilliant colours of the painted windows Bishop Williams (once the antagonist of Archbishop Laud, and now with him in the Tower) had brought but a few years since from Italy. "Outside this chapel there is a garden, where we walk, and discourse of the prospects of the kingdom, and of those friends at Netherby from whom we are now so sadly parted. "For Roger and Mr. Drayton are in the rebel army--alas! there is no longer doubt of it--and any day their hands and those of my seven brothers, all in the king's army, may be against each other. "_November_ 8th.--The king and the army are away at Reading, with my Father and my brothers; and the city is quiet enough without them. "Sir Launcelot is now on service about the Castle. I would he were on the field, and one of my brothers here. However, I am not like to see much of him at present. He will scarce venture to come after what I had to say to him this morning. "He came in laughing, saying he had just seen an encounter between an old rebel woman at the gate and four of Prince Rupert's plunderers. 'She was contending with them for the possession of a sober Puritanical-looking old horse,' said he. 'They claimed it for the king's service. She said 'that might be, but in that case she chose to give it up herself unto the care of one of His Majesty's court, to whom she had a letter.' "'Did you not give her a helping word?' said I. "'I am scarcely such a knight errant as that, Mistress Lettice,' said he; 'I should have enough to do, in good sooth. Moreover, the godly generally make good fight for their carnal goods, and in this instance the woman seemed as likely as not to have the best of the debate, to say nothing of her being wrinkled and toothless.'