Mary Louisa Boyle

“ Shortly after his arrival in Rotterdam, Grotius was sent to England on a mission connected with some dispute which had arisen between the Dutch and English, connected with the whale fisheries, and here he was cordially welcomed by James the First, with whom he had many conferences, on matters theological, as well as diplomatic, while his society was eagerly courted by all the men of eminence in this country. But a storm was gathering over the calm horizon of Hugo Grotius’s hitherto bright career. ”

“ Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, was declared guilty of high treason. On this sad passage, the saddest of all in Charles’s sad life, we need not dwell long. He had pledged his royal word to his noble friend, ‘You shall not suffer in honour, in fortune, or in life.’ Yet after some hesitation and delay, weeping all the time, he signed the death-warrant, laying up for himself hours of deep remorse during the few years he survived. The generous prisoner wrote to his master, indeed, to absolve him from his promise ”

“ It is seldom the lot of any woman to live continuously in one loved home, but Mary Wilbraham was born, married, died, and was buried at Weston, where her childhood, youth, the chief part of her married life, and the latter days of her widowhood were all passed, and which she brought into the Newport family. Francis, Earl of Bradford, and his wife were most anxious to secure for their eldest son so desirable a match as this young lady presented, not only on account of her noble inheritance, but in respect of her amiable qualities and the comeliness of her person. ”

“ Lord Russell’s choice was free no more, and the sequel proved the selection had been for his own happiness, and that of the whole family. The King interested himself in the cause of the young lovers, and sent the Duke of Lennox to mediate with Lord Bedford in the matter. Lord Somerset, with all his crimes on his head, had proved himself the most tender and devoted of fathers, giving his child an excellent and strictly virtuous education, and he made every sacrifice in his power to give her a good dowry, seeing that her poverty was an additional obstacle to the marriage in Lord Bedford’s eyes ”

“ Then Lord Russell’s ‘noble consort’ cast herself at the King’s feet, and adjured him, by the memory of her father, the loyal and gallant Southampton, to let his services atone for ‘the errors into which honest but mistaken principles had seduced her husband.’ This was the last instance of female weakness, if it deserve the name, into which Rachel Russell was betrayed. But Charles was inexorable. He whose weak heart was too easily swayed by beauty, too frequently overcome by emotion of a baser kind, remained impervious to 54the tears and anguish of this lovely and virtuous woman. ”

“ When only ten years old William Harvey went to a Grammar School, and subsequently to Caius College, Cambridge, where, we are told, ‘he studied classics, dialectics, and physics.’ It was the fashion of the day for young men of any standing to finish their education on the Continent, in one or other of those schools of learning and science which were indeed the resort of the youth of all nations. ”

“ The two women had much ado to patch up and lengthen out, and with dirt and clay, putty and plaster, they smeared the hands of the great philosopher, and sent him forth with fear and trembling, to run the gauntlet of many dangers. Next door was a library, which was the resort of learned professors, and book-lovers of all kinds, to many of whom Grotius was known by sight. He slouched his felt hat over his eyes, took his measuring-wand in his hand, and followed the mason through the streets to the bank of the river, where the friendly clothier met them. ”

“ In his constant letters to his ‘dearest harte,’ he gives a melancholy picture of the perplexed and unsatisfactory state of affairs in the royal army. He says: ‘The discontent that I and other honest men receive dayly is beyond expression,’ and he declares ‘that were it not for the punctilio of honour’ he would not ‘remaine an howre.’
Lord Spencer was with the King at Edgehill, and with Prince Rupert at Bristol, etc. etc., and in 1643 he was raised to the dignity of Earl of Sunderland. ”

“ Her admiration for Grotius, and her pride in his genius, could only be equalled by her affection. To think that a man, with whose name Europe already rang, whose writings were fated to influence the destinies of nations—that he should waste the best days of his life in prison—wither away, as it were, in a living tomb,—the thought was intolerable to her. ”

“ A curious picture at Woburn leads us to believe that the young Francis shared his father’s love of sport, being there represented in a white hunting jacket with green hose, a hawk on his hand, and two dogs in couples beside him. He was knighted in 1604 by James the First, at Whitehall, and the ensuing year he married Catherine, daughter and co-heir of Gyles Brydges, third Lord Chandos, with whom he lived very happily; and during the first years of his marriage he devoted himself to domestic life, and took great delight in study. ”

“ In the life of William, Lord Russell, we have given full details of his political career, of the animosity his independent line of conduct aroused in the 70minds of the King and the Duke of York, of his arrest on the false pretence of being implicated in the Rye House Plot, of his unjust trial and hurried execution, particulars of which it would be superfluous to repeat here. Lady Russell spent the early days of her widowhood, and indeed the greater part of her subsequent life, at Woburn, with her father-in-law, affording and imparting sympathy. ”

“ Lord Essex was the next so-called conspirator apprehended, and he also refused every argument for flight, saying that he considered his own life not worth saving, if by drawing suspicion on Lord Russell, so valuable a life as his, also should be endangered. The Duke of Monmouth had it conveyed to Lord Russell that he would willingly give himself up and share his fate. But the noble prisoner answered it would be no advantage to him that his friends should suffer, and so, on the 13th of July 1683, William, Lord Russell, stood at the bar of the Old Bailey on a charge of high treason. ”

“ Lord Cromwell imagined that a Protestant queen of his own selection would be an invaluable ally at Court, and help him to retain the favour of the King, who was persuaded into the belief that the 161Lady Anne of Cleves was not only ‘fair and portly,’ but comely in face and feature, an error in which Henry was confirmed by a very flattering portrait from the pencil of Holbein. So the Princess was sent for to come over to England, and a magnificent cortége was despatched, with the Archbishop of Canterbury himself, to bring her on her way to London ”

“ She was the eldest of the eight daughters of Robert Sidney, Earl of Leicester, of that name, by Dorothy, daughter of Henry Percy, ninth Earl of Northumberland. Lord and Lady Leicester bore a high character for ‘integrity and refinement of breeding at the Court of Charles the First, while in private life they shone a bright example of domestic harmony.’ Lady Leicester was a provident as well as a tender mother, and she entertained early projects in the matter of an advantageous marriage for her daughter, while Dorothy was still very young. ”

“ After dwelling with gratitude and delight on the complete unity of their hearts and minds, she goes on to write to her dearest William, dated from Stratton: ‘Let us cheerfully expect to live together to a good old age, and, if God wills otherwise, then firmly believe that He will support us under whatsoever trial He may see fit to inflict.’ Noble and pathetic words, of which the sadder alternative was to be her allotted portion. ”

“ People of all opinions applied to Rachel to secure her good offices with the new Sovereigns, and Lady Sunderland, whose husband had been most instrumental in Lord Russell’s downfall, did not scruple to ask her intercession. Passing years brought fresh trials in their train for one who seemed indeed born for sorrow. ”

“ Both their Majesties sat constantly for their portraits, and it is needless to observe that every country house in England is enriched by treasures from the brush of Vandyck. The King and the Duke of Buckingham were busy in arranging a suitable match for their friend and favourite. The lady selected was Mary Ruthven, a member of the Queen’s household, and grand-daughter of the unfortunate Earl Gowrie, much esteemed for her goodness and beauty, who visited Antwerp with her husband shortly after their marriage, where they were received with every mark of respect and distinction. ”

“ On becoming a widow, Rachel went to reside for some time with her sister, Lady Elizabeth Noel, at their old home of Titchfield, in Hampshire, which had come by inheritance to Lady Elizabeth, as the eldest daughter of Lord Southampton,—Stratton, in the same county, falling to Lady Vaughan’s share. It was not long before (among many admirers) that William Russell, the second son of Francis, fifth Earl (afterwards first Duke) of Bedford, made himself conspicuous by the devoted court he paid to the beautiful young widow. ”

“ Looking at the great crowd he said ‘I hope I shall soon see a much better assembly.’ He walked about the scaffold four or five times, then he turned to the Sheriffs, and in presenting the paper he protested his innocence of any design against the King’s life, or any attempt to subvert the Government. He prayed God to preserve the Protestant religion, and earnestly wished that Protestants should love one another, and not make way for Popery by their animosities. He forgave all his enemies, and died in charity with all mankind. ”

“ She was in London at the time of the King’s death, and although she had no reason to regret Charles, yet to one whose interest was never deadened in the course of public affairs, there was little to be hoped for in the accession of James the Second. The trials of Algernon Sidney, Hampden, and others, who were associated with the memory of her lord, made her wounds bleed afresh, more especially the execution of the Duke of Monmouth, Lord Russell’s most intimate friend. ‘Never,’ she writes, ‘had a poor creature more awakers to quicken and revive her sorrow’ ”

“ It has often been a subject of deep concern to me, while staying in some beautiful country-house, to find that the younger portion of the family, at least, were often entirely ignorant of any details respecting the lives of the men and women who look down upon them from the walls, and who in some cases have lived, loved, enjoyed, suffered, and died in those very apartments. ”

“ It would appear that at the time the King did not realise the idea that Cromwell was the principal instigator of the hated union, for it was after the marriage that he was raised to the Earldom of Essex, and made Lord Chamberlain, and his son granted a separate peerage. We know from the pages of history how the King’s horror of ‘the Flanders mare’ increased day by day, and he never rested till he had obtained a divorce, soon followed by the downfall of the newly created Earl of Essex, whose ruin was resolved on. ”

“ On his arrival at home, William for a time devoted himself to the care of his brother, then in ill-health, and to giving his father assistance in domestic affairs. At the Restoration, Lord Bedford and his family were marked out for favour, and the Earl carried the sceptre at the Coronation, and soon after William was elected member for Tavistock. Handsome, accomplished, and nobly born, he became a shining light at the brilliant Court of Charles the Second, but his tastes were 49too earnest, and his bias too virtuous to find any lasting satisfaction in a society so frivolous and immoral. ”

“ As must invariably be the case with men in prominent positions, more especially in times of great civil, religious, and political struggles, Sir Orlando Bridgeman’s character was by turns eulogised and blamed; in spite of his loyal services 174to Charles the First, that King found occasion to censure his faithful servant at the time of the Treaty of Uxbridge, on a question of religion, ‘having,’ said his Majesty, ‘expected otherwise from the son of a Bishop.’ Yet Sir Orlando was a staunch Churchman. Burnet’s testimony was merely to his judicial capacity. ”

“ George Goring, on his arrival in the Low Countries, enlisted as a soldier, entered Lord Vere’s regiment, and soon gained a high command, distinguishing himself at the siege of Breda. On his return to England he was made Governor of Portsmouth, in which capacity he got into trouble with the Parliament, and was summoned before the House of Commons on suspicion of favouring the Royal cause. Anxious to provide for his own interests by pleasing both sides, he contrived to give satisfaction to the Parliament, and was therefore exonerated. ”