Thomas de Montacute, Earl of Salisbury, after obtaining the highest honour
in the campaigns in France with Henry V. was killed by the splinter of a
window-frame, driven into his face by a cannon ball, at the siege of
Orleans. Richard, the stout Earl of Warwick, another possessor, was killed
at Barnet. George, Duke of Clarence, was drowned in a butt of Malmsey.
Richard III. was the next possessor. Lady Margaret de la Pole, was
beheaded at the age of seventy-two, by the cruel policy of Henry VIII., in
revenge for a supposed affront by her son the Cardinal. In this parish
also lived the infamous Colonel Titus, who advised Cromwell to deliver the
nation from its yoke, in a pamphlet, entitled _Killing no Murder_.

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_West._--A New York paper states that the old sign of the Bull's Head,
which has hung at a house in Strawberry-street, for nearly seventy years,
is ascertained to be one of the first productions of Benjamin West, and is
said to be the first painting of the kind ever executed in America. The
wood on which it is painted is much decayed, but the paint and figures are
visible.

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_Congreve_ is said to have written his comedy of the _Old Bachelor_ and
part of the _Mourning Bride_, in a grotto formed in a steep rocky hill in
the grounds of Ham Hall, in Dove Dale, Derbyshire. This romantic retreat
was furnished with a stone seat and table, and herein the poet and
dramatist was accustomed to seek refuge from the license of a London life.

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