Page:Devonshire Characters and Strange Events.djvu/151

I would to God thy wisdome had been more,
Or that I had not entered in the door;
Or that thou hadst a kinder Father beene
Unto thy Child, whose yeares are yet but greene.

The match unmeete which thou for much didst make,
When aged Page thy Daughter home did take,
Well maist thou rue with teares that cannot dry.
Which was the cause that foure of us must dye.

Ulalia faire', more bright than Summer's sunne,
Whose beauty hath my heart for ever won,
My soule more sobs to thinke of thy disgrace,
Than to behold mine own untimely race.

In this also, as will be seen, Mistress Page is Eulalia, and her father Glandfield is said to have been rich.

3. "The Sorrowful Complaint of Mistress Page for causing her husband to be murdered, for the love of George Strangwidge, who were executed together." This contains no particulars relative to her relationship to the Glanvilles.

It may at first sight seem strange that a crime committed at Plymouth should be expiated at Barnstaple, but the reason is simple enough. In September, 1589, the plague broke out in Exeter, and it was very fatal in that year, according to Lysons. Under ordinary circumstances the murderers of Page would have been tried at Exeter; but with the terrible remembrance of the "Black Assize" in that city in 1586, when the judge, eight justices, and all the jury except one, fell victims to the gaol fever; and the plague continuing there, the assizes of 1590 (o.s.) were removed to Barnstaple.

The Diary of Philip Wyot, town clerk of Barnstaple from 1586 to 1608, has been printed by Mr. J. R. Chanter in his Literary History of Barnstaple, and he records that the assize was held in 1590 at Honiton and at Great Torrington, "the plague being much at Exeter," and he gives particulars of the assizes