Every power that human cruelty and
ingenuity could compass was tried, but happily in vain, to confine the
free and unfettered spirit for ever in the dark cells of ignorance and
superstition.
From a number of unconnected accounts respecting this great, if not good
man, whose virtues even would have been the vices of our own age, we
find as the most prominent parts of his disposition a thorough contempt
for the maxims and opinions of the world, and an utter recklessness of
its censure or esteem. Marrying into the family of the Harringtons, he
resided the latter part of his life at the Castle of Hornby, where we
find him engaged in schemes for the most part tending to his own wealth
and aggrandisement.
The chapel which he built is said to have been vowed at Flodden, but
this statement is evidently untrue, having no foundation but the
averments of those who content not themselves with a plain narrative of
facts, but assume a licence to invent motives agreeable to their own
folly or caprice. That Sir Edward Stanley made any such vow we cannot
imagine, much less would he put it into execution. "Let us eat and
drink, for to-morrow we die," was the governing principle of his life,
and the mainspring of his actions.
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