on talk on the quay and the purlieus of the
Tower.

Braddon had no great difficulty in finding a little girl named Jane
Lodeman, aged thirteen, who was in the same tale. This is what he took
down:--

"Jane Lodeman was in the Tower on Friday morning, 13th July last, and
standing almost over against the late Earl of Essex's lodging window,
she saw a hand cast a razor out of my lord's window, and immediately
upon this she heard shrieks, and that there was a soldier by my lord's
door, who cried out to those within the house that somebody should
come and take up a razor which was thrown out of the window, whereupon
there came a maid with a white hood out of the house, but who took up
the razor she can't tell."

Dated 8th August, 1683.

On July 20th Braddon had gone to Whitehall before he had obtained this
corroborative evidence, and had laid information before the King and
Council, and produced a written deposition as to what the boy Edwards
had said he had seen; but the boy's sister deposed that Mr. Laurence
Braddon had forced her brother to sign it. Soon after Braddon had
taken this step, he heard a rumour that the fact of the violent death
of the Earl of Essex had been known and discussed in Frome Selwood the
same day, and he hurried off to make inquiries into this. But on
reaching Salisbury he was arrested, thrown into prison, and brought
back to London. Another gentleman, a Mr. Speeke, had also been
spreading the report that Lord Essex had been foully murdered, and it
was hinted that the Duke of York, if not the King, had ordered the
assassination. Speeke also was arrested.

Narcissus Luttrell's account of the death of Essex is as follows:--

1683, 13th July.--"About nine in the morning, the Earl of Essex,
prisoner in the Tower of London, upon account of this new plott, did
most barbarously cut his own throat from one ear to the other with a
razor. What occasioned it is doubtfull: some say, the sense of his
guilt; others, the shame for being accused of such a crime, when his
father, the Lord Capell, died for his 