XX INTRODUCTION. direction, it surrendered at mercy only, and the inmates, including three of Sir Robert's younger children, were taken prisoners, after 17 April, 1644. a siege of three weeks. There were taken 67 men, 100 arms, two NIercurius Belgicus. b Brampton Register. 1605-1643. Baxter's Life by Calamy. barrels of powder, and a whole year's provisions.a Lady Brilliana was of a delicate constitution; and, enfeebled by repeated attacks of illness and continued anxieties during her troubles, and the long absence of her husband and son, whom she fondly loved, she took a cold, alluded to in her last letter, and after a few days' illness died, soon after the raising of the first siege, in Oct. 1643, leaving three sons and four daughters, all baptised at Bramp- ton, as follows :-Edward, 24 Oct. 1624 ; Robert, 16 April, 1626 ; Thomas, 13 Jan. 1627 -8 ; Brilliana, 26 April, 1629 ; Dorothie, 12 Sept. 1630 ; Margaret, 25 Dec. 1631 ; and Elizabeth, 26 Oct. 1634.b Edward Harley, born at Brampton, 21 Oct. 1624, and baptised as above, three days afterwards, was as his mother, in his infancy, of a delicate constitution. Having passed some period at school, first in Shrewsbury and then at Gloucester, he was sent to Magdalen hall, at that time under the principal Dr. Wilkinson, and the tutorage of Edward Perkins, described by Calamy° " as a great man, a very ready and well studyed divine, especially in school divinity, a great tutor, and particularly famous for his giving Mr. John Corbet (the historian of Gloucester, and a good divine) his education and the direction of his studies." Magdalen hall at this time was in Oxford what Emmanuel College was at Cambridge, a famous puritanical school, and several remarkable men had been there edu- cated, on which account, no doubt, it was selected by Sir Robert for his son. Dr. Ingram, in his Memorials of Oxford, states, " as a house of learning, it could have been inferior to none in the university in eminence at that period, since in the year 1624, under the elder Wilkinson, it reckoned 300 students on the books, forty of whom
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