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174 Glimpses of Our Ancestors. |
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written to Cromwell was not discovered till later days. His wife was a daughter of Sir Herbert Springett, of Broyle Place, Ringmer, and he left four children, who, we are told, all married well. So treachery, it would seem, sometimes does prosper!
Peregrine Pelham, like Anthony Stapley, belonged to the class of landed gentry. He was a scion of the great Pelham family, several of which sat in the Long Parliament, and took part with the great leaders of liberty, Eliot, Pym, Hollis, and Hampden; but he was the only one who followed the cause to the "bitter end," and sat on the High Court of Justice. He was absent from only one of its sittings, and signed the warrant of execution. But little is known of him personally, though he was a man of family, fashion, and fortune, descending from that Sir William Pelham who was Lord Deputy of Ireland in the reign of Elizabeth, and being one of the Commissioners for conserving the peace between England and Scotland in 1646. Fortunately for him, he died previous to the Restoration, but his name was inserted in the exception clause of the Bill of Indemnity.
Sir Gregory Norton, Bart., was another of the Regicides residing in and connected with Sussex, though he came originally from Hants. He sat for Midhurst in the Long Parliament, and his name appears on nearly all the sittings of the High Court and on the warrant of execution. Noble, in his History of the Regicides, accuses him of being actuated by sordid motives—doubtless from the fact that he bought a portion of the furniture of Richmond Palace at a low price; but Noble never fails to put the worst construction on the acts and motives of the men whose lives he attempts, from very imperfect materials, to chronicle. Sir Gregory Norton died before the Restoration. His name was attainted and his property escheated to the Crown.
James Temple sat for Bramber in the Long Parliament, and, like so many of its younger and more active members, became a Colonel of the Parliamentary army. Though a |
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