There Was, However, An Air Of Severe Monastic
Discipline, Though I Am Far From Asserting That Such Actually
Existed.
We were attended throughout by the sub-rector, the
principal being absent.
Of all the curiosities of this college,
the most remarkable is the picture gallery, which contains neither
more nor less than the portraits of a variety of scholars of this
house who eventually suffered martyrdom in England, in the exercise
of their vocation in the angry times of the Sixth Edward and fierce
Elizabeth. Yes, in this very house were many of those pale smiling
half-foreign priests educated, who, like stealthy grimalkins,
traversed green England in all directions; crept into old halls
beneath umbrageous rookeries, fanning the dying embers of Popery,
with no other hope nor perhaps wish than to perish disembowelled by
the bloody hands of the executioner, amongst the yells of a rabble
as bigoted as themselves: priests like Bedingfield and Garnet, and
many others who have left a name in English story. Doubtless many
a history, only the more wonderful for being true, could be wrought
out of the archives of the English Popish seminary at Valladolid.
There was no lack of guests at the Trojan Horse, where we had taken
up our abode at Valladolid. Amongst others who arrived during my
sojourn was a robust buxom dame, exceedingly well dressed in black
silk, with a costly mantilla. She was accompanied by a very
handsome, but sullen and malicious-looking urchin of about fifteen,
who appeared to be her son.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 307 of 809
Words from 85548 to 85802
of 222596