in Clieveden's proud alcove,
The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love,"

the infamous pair defied the world, and crowned their ignominy by
standing together at the altar, where the Duke's chaplain made them one,
almost before the body of the Countess's husband (who had survived his
duel two months) was cold, and while the Duchess of Buckingham was, of
course, still alive. The Countess was not long before her brazen
effrontery carried her back to Court, where she took the lead in the
revels and at the gaming-tables, and made love to the "Merrie Monarch"
himself. Evelyn tells us that, during a visit to Newmarket, he

"found the jolly blades racing, dancing, feasting and
revelling, more resembling a luxurious and abandoned rout
than a Christian country. The Duke of Buckingham was in
mighty favour, and had with him that impudent woman, the
Countess of Shrewsbury, and his band of fiddlers."

It was only with the downfall of the Stuarts that this shameless
alliance came to an end, when Buckingham's reign of power was over, and
he was haled before the House of Lords to answer for his crimes. He and
the partner of his guilt were ordered to separate; and for this purpose
to enter into security to the King in the sum of L10,000 apiece. Thus
ignominiously closed one of the most infamous intrigues in history.
Buckingham, buffeted by fortune, rapidly fell, as the world knows, from
his pinnacle of power to the lowest depths of poverty, to end his days,
friendless and destitute, in a Yorkshire inn.

"No wit, to flatter, left of all his store!
No fool to laugh at, which he valued more.
There reft of health, of fortune, friends,
And fame, this lord of useless thousands ends."

To my Lady Shrewsbury, as to her paramour, the condemnation of the Lords
marked the setting of her sun of splendour. The slumbering rage of
England against her long career of iniquity awoke to fresh life in this
hour of her humiliation, and she was glad to escape from its fury to the
haven of a convent in France, where she spent some time in mock
penitence.

But the Countess was, by no means, resigned to end her days in the odour
of a tardy and insincere piety. As soon as the sky had cleared a little
across the Channel, she returned to England, and tried to repair her
shattered fame by giving her hand to a son of Sir Thomas Bridges, of
Keynsham, in Somerset, who was so enslaved by her charms that he was
proud