And lette ye British crown hang down from there?_"

[Illustration]

Whether or no the Baron of Peddlington was guilty of this traitorous
effusion no one, not even the king, could ever really make up his mind.
The charge was never fully proven, nor was De Herbert ever able to refute
it successfully, although he made frantic efforts to do so. The king,
eminently just in such matters, gave the baron the benefit of the doubt,
and inflicted only half the penalty prescribed, confiscating his estates,
and letting him keep his head and liberty. De Herbert's family begged the
crown to reverse the sentence, permitting them to keep the estates, the
king taking their uncle's head in lieu thereof, he being unmarried and
having no children who would mourn his loss. But Charles was poor rather
than vindictive at this period, and preferring to adopt the other course,
turned a deaf ear to the petitioners. This was probably one of the
earliest factors in the decadence of literature as a pastime for men of
high station.

De Herbert would have starved had it not been for his old friend Baron
Bangletop, who offered him the post of private secretary, lately made
vacant by the death of the Duke of Algeria, who had been the incumbent of
that office for ten years, and in a short time the Baron of Peddlington
was in full charge of the domestic arrangements of his friend. It was far
from easy, the work that devolved upon him. He was a proud, haughty man,
used to luxury of every sort, to whom contact with those who serve was
truly distasteful; to whom the necessity of himself serving was most
galling; but he had the manliness to face the hardships Fate had put upon
him, particularly when he realized that Baron Bangletop's attitude towards
servants was such that he could with impunity impose on the latter seven