fled. And then the bang, bang, banging on the door began afresh.

One of Coke's lieutenants suddenly bethought him of a flank attack,
and, after sneaking round the house, this warrior adopted the
burglar's manoeuvre of forcing open a window, on the ground floor. One
by one the valiant members of Coke's little army climbed into the
house by this means, and the august person of the ex-Lord Chief
Justice himself was squeezed through the aperture. Nobody appeared to
oppose their search; but preparations to prevent it had evidently been
made with great care; for Chamberlain wrote that they had to "brake
open divers doors."

Room after room was searched in vain; but, at last, Lady Elizabeth and
Frances were discovered hidden in a small closet. Both the father and
the mother clasped their daughter in their arms almost at the same
moment. The daughter clung to the mother; the father clung to the
daughter. Sir Edward pulled; Lady Elizabeth pulled; and, after a
violent struggle between the husband and the wife, Coke succeeded in
wrenching the weeping girl from her mother's arms.[17] Without a
moment's parley with his defeated antagonist, he dragged away his
prey, took her out of the house, placed her on horseback behind one of
her half-brothers, and started off with his whole cavalcade for his
house at Stoke Pogis.

The writer is old enough to have seen farmers' wives riding behind
their husbands, on pillions. Most uncomfortable sitting those pillions
appeared to afford, and he distinctly remembers the rolling movements
to which the sitters seemed to be subjected. This was when the pace
was at a walk or a slow jog. But the unfortunate Frances must have
been rolled and bumped at speed; for there was a pursuit. In his