"_
The loss of a young, beautiful, and amiable partner, at a period so
interesting, was the probable reason of her husband devoting his
fortune to a charitable institution. The epitaph occurs in Strype's
edition of _Stewe's Survey of London_, Book iii., page 228.
Note III. p. 39.--PROCLAMATION AGAINST THE SCOTS COMING TO ENGLAND
The English agreed in nothing more unanimously than in censuring James
on account of the beggarly rabble which not only attended the King at
his coming first out of Scotland, "but," says Osborne, "which, through
his whole reign, like a fluent spring, were found still crossing the
Tweed." Yet it is certain, from the number of proclamations published
by the Privy Council in Scotland, and bearing marks of the King's own
diction, that he was sensible of the whole inconveniences and
unpopularity attending the importunate crowd of disrespectable
suitors, and as desirous to get rid of them as his Southern subjects
could be. But it was in vain that his Majesty argued with his Scottish
subjects on the disrespect they were bringing on their native country
and sovereign, by causing the English to suppose there were no well-
nurtured or independent gentry in Scotland, they who presented
themselves being, in the opinion and conceit of all beholders, "but
idle rascals, and poor miserable bodies." It was even in vain that the
vessels which brought up this unwelcome cargo of petitioners were
threatened with fine and confiscation; the undaunted suitors continued
to press forward, and, as one of the proclamations says, many of them
under pretence of requiring payment of "auld debts due to them by the
King," which, it is observed with great _naivete_, "is, of all kinds
of importunity, most unpleasing to his Majesty.
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