saries!" Burleigh shed tears at the sentence, and the Queen herself now frequently praised the quality of mercy and quoted that decree of the Emperor Theodosius, "Should any one have spoken evil of the Emperor, if through levity it ought to be despised, if through insanity pitied, if through malice forgiven." The Queen's mercy, if intended, was too long delayed to take effect, and Perrot expired in the Tower in September 1592, six months after his conviction. His lands, which he had alienated previous to his trial, were suffered to descend to his son, who had espoused the sister of the Earl of Essex.*

Sir John Perrot, when resident in Wales, was frequently engaged in the prosecution of the daring and atrocious pirates who at that time infested the Severn sea, and in amercing the inhabitants of the counties of Pembroke and Caermarthen, who furnished them with provisions or purchased of them commodities which they had captured from trading vessels or carried off from lands bordering on the sea-coast. These articles consisted chiefly of corn, beeves, sheep, and salt. An original document, of which an extract is subjoined, gives particulars of some of these "water thieves."

"Presentment by the oaths of the per sons undernamed, taken 12th December 1573, before Sir John Perrot, Knight, John Wogan of Boulston, and John Barlow, Esqrs. by virtue of a commission under the great seal to them directed; as also by letters from the Lords of Her Majesty's Privy Council, for and concerning all such persons as have bargained and contracted with the late pirate Robert Hexte, and been victuallers of the now pirate Thomas Clerke; together with the value of their lands and goods, so near as the said Commissioners could learn, as particularly upon the oaths of the said contractors and victuallers doth appear."

Here follow the names of the jurors, twenty-three in number. Of the presentments the following are speci

mens:

"David Allan of Laughern and Richard Hamon of Tynbie had their bark, being of the burthen of twelve tons or

therabouts, laden with salt from the said Hext, by whom we know not. Valent in bonis, viz. Allyn 31. and Hamon 31.-John Butler of Laughern had from the said Hexte one bark of fifteen tons or therabouts, laden with salt, &c. &c.-James

ap Rodds, Robert Elliot, and George

White, with divers others, at the commandement of Sir John Perrot, Knight, took two pynnaces of one Roger ap Richard, alias Parry, of Aberystith in the county of Cardigan, from the said Hext his ship side. The one having in her thirty-eight barrels of salt, the other

....

bushels of corne-which corne was by them restored to one Harman Rancke and Bernard Jordane, being the true owners therof, from whence the said Hexte took it; and they had given unto them by the said owners for their paynes, the one moytie with an acquittance under the owners hands and seales, which acquittance was seene by us the jury. John Humfry sold the said Clarke one carcase of a beef, and one mutton. Thomas Hexte of the Nangle went on board the said Clerke in a payer of velvet breeches, layde on with gold lace, a dublett of satten and a velvett cap, and brought Clerke as much tallow as drest his ship."

By this it would appear that as much attention to personal attire was used by these Welshmen in boarding a pirate's vessel as others might observe in going to court. But the depredations of Hexte or Clerke, or the state they might affect when on board their roving vessels, sink into insignificance when compared with the deeds of the redoubtable pirate Captain Thomas Salkeld, as may be gathered from a deposition made 17th April 1610, before William Wogan and John Wogan, knights, and Alban Stepneth, Esq. William Young, of Pembroke, stated that Captain Salkeld captured him and his bark (laden with coals, goods, and passengers, from Tredarth, and bound for Ireland,) in Milford Haven, on the 8th March 1609, carried them afterwards to Lundy Island, where he set the vessel adrift on the rocks, and she was totally lost!

On the same day he went ashore at Milford Haven, and killed eight beeves, thirty young lambs, and many wethers, conveying them all on board his ship. On the 13th of the same month he landed at Dale, a town at the entrance of Milford Haven, spoiled the inhabitants of their goods, and set their houses on fire! At the same time he took from the quay a bark belonging to an inhabitant of Dale, laden with iron, train oil and beer, set her adrift, and she was dashed to pieces on the adjacent rocks. On the 20th of March he took Mr. George Escott's bark of Bridgwater, bound for France, and made him and his men prisoners; the same fate attended the vessel of one John Bennet, of Appledore; and both these vessels Salkeld, after taking out such portion of their cargoes as he thought fit, together with their sails, abandoned to the wild impulse of the waves, and they were shattered to fragments on the rocks of Lundy.

On the 23rd he landed on Lundy Island with his men, with colours displayed, in defiance of the King of England; wished his Majesty's heart were on the point of his sword, and proclaimed himself King of Lundy; and on the 25th March, being Sunday morning, he obliged his prisoners to carry stones for the purpose of forming a quay for a port in his newly acquired territory. He divided them into three several companies, lest they should attempt any refractory movement: one portion he sent to an islet south of Lundy, another he marched to the north of the island, four miles distant; they were not to communicate with each other on pain of death. In the evening of the same Sunday a Flemish ship of two hundred tons burthen from Rochelle, laden with salt, and bound for Bristol, came into the road of Lundy. Salkeld sent his long boat off to her, instructing the crew to say that she belonged to a king's ship, and to offer to supply her with a pilot. storm arose in the night, and the ship was constrained to make sail, carrying with her a few of Salkeld's men. A Weymouth vessel, which he had captured on the same day, also escaped under cover of the storm, leaving, however, two of her crew in Salkeld'spower. On the 26th he called his men and prisoners together, and threatened those who would not abjure their King and country, and receive him for their sovereign, with execution on a gallows, which he had in readiness.

A

"

He caused the heads of some of his captives to be shaved, in token of slavery, and set them to building walls for a fort, and constructing a platform for cannon to command the road: he brought three pieces of cast-iron ordnance on shore, and a cannon, styled in the warlike language of the day a murtherer," to be planted on the fort, and on an old ruinous castle adjacent; but honest George Escott of Bridgwater defeated, by a coup-demain, the measures of this daring and infatuated ruffian. Escott had been confined by Salkeld in a little house, "too badde (says my authority) for dogs to lye in." There he concerted, with some of his fellow captives, the recovery of liberty. Issuing forth with his companions through a hole in the dilapidated hovel, Escott, who alone was armed, "having a poniard in his hand, and noe more, did enter his (Salkeld's) fort vyolently through his courte of guarde, and there did discerne Salkeld's confederates, who were rebels, traitors and pirates, and some he toke and some he put to flight; then all the company by one consent made Escott their commander for the king. Then, presently, Salkeld fled away with Escott's bark and goods; and if this enterprise had not took effect, all had surely died, for," continues the manuscript, "this Salkeld did mean to have kept the island during his life," &c. The above deposition is formally subscribed, "William Young of Pembroke." Of the ultimate fate of Salkeld, pseudo-king of Lundy, I have no knowledge; but suppose his elevation on a gallows superseded all other dignities; his story is as romantic as it is well authenticated, and if known to Sir Walter Scott would probably have been incorporated with some of his admirable romances. Salkeld acted upon precedent, for as early as the reign of Henry the Third, William de Marisco, a mischievous pirate, made that iron-bound and almost inaccessible island his head quarters. It was occupied by another pirate in the reign of Henry VIII.*

whence the expanse of Caermarthen bay and the movements of any pirati cal barks might be observed. The spot bears the name to this day of

Sir John's Hill. I shall close this notice of Sir John Perrot's transactions with extracts of an ancient document, preserved in a very extraordinary manner, in which he is frequently mentioned. About five years before the attainder and conviction of the knight, it appears that an inquisition was taken by jury of the state and profits of the lordship of Laugharne, When Judge Powell became possessed of the demesne he probably obtained an official copy of this document from the records of the Exchequer. On the house at the Broadway being pulled down, the library of Sir John Powell was removed to an adjacent barn, whence the books and papers were afterwards conveyed in a cart. The survey of the lordship of Laugharne dropped from the vehicle, and for some time lay unregarded on a dunghill, where it was found by an inhabitant of the town, in whose pos

session it now is. It is somewhat stained, but is still perfectly legible.

The more material portion now finds a saving refuge in the pages of Sylvanus Urban.

"The county of Carmarthen. The Castle and Lordship and Mannor of Tallaugharne, alias Laugharne, with the members. A booke of the survey of the said lordshipp, made by the oathes of the parties undernamed, the second day of October, in ye xxxvii yere of the raigne of our soveraigne Lady Elizabeth, according to certain articles given them in charge, by Thomas Hanbury, Auditor, and Robert Davye, Receiver, and others her Majesty's Commissioners for that service." Here follow the names of the Jury, "James Pretherech, armiger," and eighteen others.

higher into the land. At the entry wherof, from the said towne, is a fair gatehouse, having on it two lodgings, from which goeth a wall eastward, along the garden aftermentioned, compass-wise to the pyle itself, and from the other side of the gate-house westward the like wall; within which is an utter court of ffower hundred and three yards compass. The castle or pyle itself hath at the entrance into it a strong new gate, over which are faire chambers with lights of stone hewed towards the said utter court, the whole building of which castle is contrived compass wise from the said entrance, about a

little inner court of ffower score and ten

yards in compass, in the middest whereof is a very choyce fountaine,* with a stately round staire of hard lime stone wrought, and a porch over a parte thereof leading into a faire halle; at the upper end whereof is a great dyning chamber, and within the whole building a great number of lodgings and offices faire and fitt for such a pyle.

"The same hath been a very ancient castle, but utterly decayed till about xiii yeares past, when Sir John Perrot did re-edify the same, and almost fully finished it, but now many of the windows as well within as without moulder away by force of the weather and badness of the stone, and the whole castle by reason of the bad building thereof (without excessive charges), is like within a few years to run to utter ruin again.

The burrowe (borough) of Laugharne.
First, there is a gardent without

the court-wall of the castle, taining by estimation an acre, sisting of vii burgages and a half parte lately built. The towne of Laugharne we finde to be a corporation, and graunted by one Guydo de Bryan the younger, in King John's dayes, being 300 yeares past, then being Lord Marcher of the said towne and lordship of Laugharne, having Jury Regale (Jura Regalia) in himself, which appeareth by his deed grant unto the burgesses of the said towne of Tallaugharne, as well for the government of the corporac'on aforesaid, as also free commons of divers lands there within the libertyes of the said towne of Tallaugharne, to the number of 400 acres, as by auncient custom out of time and mind the burgesses and ffreeholders of the said towne now holdeth and keepeth in

pidgeon house* is now ruinous and ready to fall to utter decay.

Kifficke (Cyfig) Park impaled, contain ing four myles three quarters compass, every myle 1800 yards, wherein is by estimac'on 300 acres, whereof we find of copses and groves 12 acres, which we value each acre of ye said copse and groves to be worth xiiis. iiiid. for the wood; also, we find one other parcel of timber trees of 100 years growth or thereabouts, which we value every tree, with bark, top and lop, to be worth 4s. Silly + ground, heathes and ffurzes, the number of c. IIII**.11. (182) acres, which we do value ye aforesaid grounds to be worth per ann. 61. 138. 4d.

On the foregoing document the following observations may be made. The honest burgesses of Laugharne have had no great reason in subsequent times to congratulate themselves for having alienated their land of Maen y cors, granted to them by the charter of Sir Guy Brian to Sir John Perrot, which transfer, by the bye, it appears was not effected without opposition on the part of some of their body. The land was a portion of that fertile alluvial tract Laugharne Marsh, on which considerable stock of cattle are yearly fattened. For 300 acres thus conveyed, Sir John Perrot assured to the burgesses of Laugharne one annuity or yearly rent of 9l. 68. 8d. for ever.§ The Crown resuming possession of the lordship of Laugharne, probably after the conviction of Sir John Perrot of treason, the above rent of 9l. 68. 8d. long remained unpaid. I found among the muniments of the corporation, however, two records that successful application had been made by the burgesses for its recovery. One is an order of the Court of Exchequer of the time of James I. much defaced, for the future payment of the said rent of 9l. 6s. 8d. to the burgesses for ever, barring, however, any claim by them for arrears.

Another order of the Court of Exchequer, dated 1 July, in the 5th year of the reign of Charles II. is to the same effect. I could not learn that the rent is now received, and the humble corporators of Laugharne console themselves with traditions of their former valuable possessions, and of the lamentably lapsed position of their claims; vague complaints, chiefly, perhaps, arising from the innovations made by Sir John Perrot.

The lord of Laugharne renders, I believe, a small quit rent to the Crown, the demand of which for many years lay dormant. The boundaries of the lordship are perambulated every three years by the burgesses with much ceremony; the circuit is said to be upwards of twenty miles. A cart with a barrel of good Welsh ale, cwrw dda, from the malt of Mr. John David, "the merchant,"|| and a due proportion of cakes, keep up the spirits of the pedestrians fulfilling the terms of Sir Guy Brian's charter. The ancient fair, according to the survey, was held on the festival of the patron saint of the Church, St. Martin's day, November the sixth. In the ninth of William III. return was made to a writ of ad quod damnum, directed to the sheriff of Caermarthen by the Lord Chancellor, that it would not be to the prejudice of the Crown or others or of any market, fairs, &c. that Thomas Powell, Esq. his heirs and assigns, should hold a market at Laugharne on Tuesday in every week, or two fairs in each year, for the sale of all kinds of corn, grain, cattle, goods, mercery, and other merchandize; one fair to be held on the 8th of June, or if that day should be Sunday on the Monday ensuing, the other on the 17th September, with the same provision. The said Thomas Powell, his heirs, &c. to hold and keep the fairs as above, with a court of Pie Poudre, and to