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and behold this lamentable spectacle, which they immediately performed, and by searching him found that he was murdered the same night.

      “Upon this the Mayor committed Priddis to prison, who, being examined, did impeach Tom Stone, showing that he was a chief actor in the same. This Thomas Stone was married upon the next day after the murder was committed, and being in the midst of his jollity, was suddenly attached and committed to prison to bear his fellow company.

      “Thus did the Lord unfold this wretched deed, whereby immediately the said Mistress Page attached upon murder, and examined before Sir Francis Drake, Knight, with the Mayor and other magistrates of Plymouth, who denied not the same, but said she had rather die with Strangwidge than live with Page.

      “At the same time also the said George Strangwidge was nearly come to Plymouth, being very heavy and doubtful by reason he had given consent to the murder; who, being in company with some of London, was apprehended and called before the justices for the same, whereupon he confessed the truth of all and offered to prove that he had written a letter to Plymouth before coming thither, that at any hand they should not perform the act. Nevertheless, Mr. Page was murdered before the coming of this letter, and therefore he was sent to prison with the rest to Exeter; and at the Assizes holden this last Lent, the said George Strangwidge, Mistress Page, Priddis, and Tom Stone, were condemned and adjudged to die for the said fact, and were all executed accordingly upon Saturday the 20th February last, 1591.”

      This is circumstantial enough, and contemporary, and it shows how that the story travelling down traditionally has been altered.

      The tract above quoted – we have modernized the spelling – does not, however, give the Christian name of Mistress Page, and gives us the name of her father, Glandfeeld, a merchant tradesman of Tavistock. Glandfeeld is the same as Glanville, just as Priddis is the same as Prideaux, and as Grenville appears in the registers and in deeds as Grenfeeld and Greenfield.

      That she was not the daughter of Justice Glanville is plain from the above account, but she was a niece, for Eulalia was the daughter of Nicolas, the eldest son of John Glanville, merchant, of Tavistock; he and another brother, Thomas, were in trade at Tavistock, and they were both brothers of Judge Glanville. This we learn from the Heralds’ Visitation of Cornwall for 1620, where Eulalia is entered as daughter of Nicolas, but with no details concerning her.

      There appeared several ballads concerning the tragedy.

      1. “The Lamentation of Master Page’s wife of Plimouth, who being enforced by her parents to wed against her will, did most wickedly consent to his murther, for the love of George Strangwidge, for which fact she suffered death at Bar[n]staple in Devonshire. Written with her own hand a little before her death.” This is, of course, untrue. It is one of those supposititious confessions written by the common ballad monger. By this we know that her Christian name was Ulalia.

      2. “The Lamentation of George Strangwidge, who for consenting to the death of Master Page of Plimouth, suffered Death at Bar[n]staple.” In this occurs the statement that she was the daughter of “Glandfield.”

      O Glandfield, cause of my committed crime,

      Snared in wealth, as Birds in bush of lime,

* * * * *

      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 held at Barnstaple in the ensuing March, 1591 (n.s.), and he terminates thus: —

      “The gibbet was set up on the Castle Green and xvii prisoners hanged, whereof iiij of Plymouth for a murder.”

      The parish register gives the particulars and the names: —

      “Here ffolloweth the names of the Prysoners w^ch were Buryed in the Church yeard of Barnistaple ye syce [assize] week.

      “March 1590–1.

· · · · · ·

      “George Strongewithe, Buryed the xx^th daye.

      “Thomas Stone, Buryed the xx^th daye.

      “Robert Preidyox, Buryed at Bishopstawton y^e xx^th daye.”

      The three men were hanged, but Eulalia Page was burnt alive, as guilty of petty treason. Moreover, her uncle, Justice Glanville, did not condemn her to the stake. He was serjeant-at-law, and was not made a Justice of the Common Pleas till 1598, when he was knighted. He died in 1600, and his stately monument is in Tavistock Church.

      The judge who sentenced Eulalia Page was, as Wyot tells us, “Lord Anderson,” who tried all the cases “and gave judgment upon those who were to be executed.” But John Glanville, serjeant-at-law, was present at these assizes; for Wyot gives the list of the lawyers present at the time, and he names “Sergt. Glandyl” as lodging at Roy Cades. Glandyl is a mistake for Glandvyl.

      As the crime of Eulalia Page was one of petty treason, she would be burnt alive, and not hanged. Petty treason, according to a statute 25 Edward III, consists in (1) a servant killing his master; (2) a wife her husband; (3) an ecclesiastic his superior, to whom he owes faith and obedience. The punishment of petty treason in a man was to be drawn and hanged, and in a woman to be drawn and burned.

      Catherine Hayes was burned alive in 1726 for the murder of her husband. She is the Catherine whom Thackeray took as heroine of the story under that name. In 1769 Susanna Lott was burned for the murder of her husband at Canterbury. A poor girl, aged fifteen, was burnt at Heavitree by Exeter, in 1782, for poisoning her master. A woman was burnt for causing the death of her husband, at Winchester, in 1783.

      A writer in Notes and Queries, August 10, 1850, says: “I will state a circumstance that occurred to myself in 1788. Passing in a hackney coach up the Old Bailey to West Smithfield, I saw unquenched embers of a fire opposite Newgate. On my alighting, I asked the coachman, ‘What was that fire in the Old Bailey over which the wheel of your coach passed?’ ‘Oh, sir,’ he replied, ‘they have been burning a woman for murdering her husband.’”

      In 1790, Sir Benjamin Hammett in the House of Commons called attention to the then state of the law. He said that it had been his painful office and duty in the previous year to attend the burning of a female, he being

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