Geoffrey Hudson, the most celebrated English dwarf, was
born at Oakham in England in 1619. At the age of eight, when not
much over a foot high, he was presented to Henriette Marie, wife
of Charles I, in a pie; he afterward became her favorite. Until
he was thirty he was said to be not more than 18 inches high,
when he suddenly increased to about 45 inches. In his youth he
fought several duels, one with a turkey cock, which is celebrated
in the verse of Davenant. He became a popular and graceful
courtier, and proved his bravery and allegiance to his sovereign
by assuming command of a royalist company and doing good service
therein. Both in moral and physical capacities he showed his
superiority. At one time he was sent to France to secure a
midwife for the Queen, who was a Frenchwoman. He afterward
challenged a gentleman by the name of Croft to fight a duel, and
would accept only deadly weapons; he shot his adversary in the
chest; the quarrel grew out of his resentment of ridicule of his
diminutive size. He was accused of participation in the Papist
Plot and imprisoned by his political enemies in the Gate House at
Westminster, where he died in 1682 at the advanced age of
sixty-three. In Scott's "Peveril of the Peak" Hudson figures
prominently.
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