tayed many
days, and was threatened with many things and great punishments, yea,
even to be tried by the Lord Jeffreys for high treason, in resisting the
king's order to deliver up her grandchild to its natural guardian--which
was its father, the Viscount Mallerden, now created by royal favour
Marquis of Danfield. But even this last danger she scorned; and after
months of confinement near the royal court, her enemies gave up
persecuting her for that season, and at last she came back to Mallerden
Court. In the meanwhile, we went on in a quiet and comfortable manner in
the parsonage--the Viscount Lessingholm frequently with us, (almost as
if he were a pupil of the house;) and on one or two occasions we had a
visit for an evening from my honoured friend, Mr William Snowton of
Wilts. He was pleased to use great commendations, both of my excellent
wife and me, for the mode in which we attended to the mind and manners
of his niece, the culinary and other accomplishments, and the rational
education wherein he saw her advanced. He never stayed later than
day-dawn on the following morning, and kept himself reserved, as one
used to the intimacy of the great, and not liking to make his news
patent to humble people such as we; and he would on no account open his
mouth on the quarrels of our great lady and her son, the new Marquis of
Danfield, but kept the conversation in equable channels of everyday
matters, and expounded how my glebe lands might be made to yield a
greater store of provision by newer modes of cultivation--the which I
considered, however, a tampering with Providence, which gives to every
field its increase, and no more. But by this time my glebe was not the
only land on which I could plant my foot and say, Lo, thou art mine! for
I had so prospered in the five years during which I had held a ladder
for my pupils to the tree of knowledge, that much golden fruit had
fallen to my share, (being kicked down, as it were, by their climbing
among the branches;) so that I had purchased the fee simple of the
estate of my friend, Master George Sprowles, who had taken some alarm at
the state of public affairs, and gone away over the seas to the
plantation called, I think, Massachusets, in the great American
continent.

It was in the beginning of October 1688, that another call was made on
the great lady to make her appearance within a month from that time in
the city of London, to give a final answer for her contumacy in refusin