3. That Strangwich had not been in the Navy, but was a shop assistant of Mr. Glanville.
4. That John Glanville, Serjeant-at-Law, presumably her brother, was present at the trial, but was not judge at the time.
The tragic story was not only turned into ballads, but also was dramatised by Ben Jonson and Decker. In Halliwell's Dictionary of Old English Plays (1860) is this entry:—
"Page, of Plymouth. A play by Ben Johnson and Decker, written in 1599, upon the story of the murder of one Page at Plymouth."[1]
A little way out of the town on the Plymouth road, by the Drake statue, is the gateway of old Fitzford House. About this a good deal of both history and legend hangs. The house was that of old John Fitz, whose splendid monument is in Tavistock Church. Late in life he had a son of the name also of John, an only child, whose story is tragical. The heir was fourteen only when he lost his father. John Fitz, who was "a very comely person," was married before he had attained his majority to a daughter of Sir William Courtenay. Of this marriage one child, Mary, was born in 1596, when her father was just twenty-one years old.[2] The young gentleman being now of age, and finding
- ↑ Dr. Brushfield has sifted the whole story in the pages of The Western Antiquary, ix. , p. 35.
- ↑ The story of John Fitz and of Lady Howard has been worked out very carefully by Mrs. George Radford, to whose paper in the Transactions of the Devonshire Association, 1890, I am much indebted for what follows.
