Page:A cyclopaedia of female biography.djvu/536

 a name ever to be remembered among the benefactors of misery. The Archbishop of Besançon pave her permission to visit the prisons, and she devoted herself to the wretched tenants with enthusiasm, when the breaking out of the revolution filled them with a different and still more miserable order of inhabitants. During the reign of terror. Sister Martha, her convent destroyed, her companions dispersed, remained faithful to her vocation. She still comforted the prisoners, now prisoners of war; she dressed their wounds, applied to the charitable throughout the town, for the means of affording them necessary comforts; they were as her children, so active, so devoted was her zeal in their behalf during a series of years. Spaniards, Englishmen, Italians, all in turn experienced her tender cares. When the French soldiers who were accustomed to her care were wounded, and away from home, they would exclaim, "Oh I where is Sister Martha? If she were here, we should suffer less.' When the allied sovereigns were in Paris, they sent for Sister Martha, and bestowed valuable gifts upon her. Medals were sent her, at different times, from the Emperor of Russia and from the Emperor of Austria. Nor was her benevolence confined to the soldiers alone; the poor, the suffering of every description, resorted to Sister Martha, and never in vain. In 1816 she visited Paris, to obtain succours for her poor countrymen suffering from a scanty harvest, and consequent scarcity of food. She was very graciously received by Louis the Eighteenth, and the giddy butterflies of the court vied with each other in attentions and caresses to the poor nun. Sister Martha finished a life employed in good works in 1824, at the age of seventy-six.

MARTIA, Proba, or the Jast, was, according to Hollinshed, "the widow of Gutiline, Bang of the Britons, and was left protectress of the realm during the minority of her son. Perceiving much in the conduct of her subjects which needed reformation, she devised sundry wholesome laws, which the Britons, after her death, named the Martian statutes. Alfred caused the laws of this excellently-learned princess, whom all commended for her knowledge of the Greek tongue, to be established in the realm." These laws, embracing trial by jury and the just descent of property, were afterwards collated and further improved by Edward the Confessor. Thus there are good reasons for believing that the remarkable code of laws, called the common law of England, usually attributed to Alfred, were by him derived from the laws first established by a British queen, a woman.

MARTIN, ELIZABETH AND GRACE, wives of the two eldest sons of Abram Martin, of South Carolina, who were engaged in active service in their country's cause during the war of the revolution, distinguished themselves by a daring exploit. Being left at home alone with their mother-in-law, Elizabeth Martin, during their husbands' absence, and hearing that two British officers, with important despatches, were to pass that night along the road near their dwelling, the two young women disguised themselves in their husbands' apparel, and taking fire-arms, concealed themselves by the road, till the courier appeared