l try if I can go a little further
without being out. No, I cannot, for I have forgot already what 'twas I
would have said; but 'tis no matter, for, as I remember, it was not much
to the purpose, and, besides, I have paper little enough left to chide
you for asking so unkind a question as whether you were still the same
in my thoughts. Have you deserved to be otherwise; that is, am I no more
in yours? For till that be, it's impossible the other should; but that
will never be, and I shall always be the same I am. My heart tells me
so, and I believe it; for were it otherwise, Fortune would not persecute
me thus. Oh, me! she's cruel, and how far her power may reach I know
not, only I am sure, she cannot call back time that is past, and it is
long since we resolved to be for ever

Most faithful friends.

_Letter 24._--Tom Cheeke is Sir Thomas Cheeke, Knight, of Purgo, in the
county of Essex, or more probably his son, from the way Dorothy speaks
of him; but it is difficult to discriminate among constant generations
of Toms after a lapse of two hundred years. We find Sir Thomas's
daughter was at this time the third wife of Lord Manchester; and it
appears that Dorothy's great-grandfather married Catherine Cheeke,
daughter of the then Sir Thomas. This will assist us to the connection
between Dorothy, Tom Cheeke, and Lord Manchester. Sir Richard Franklin,
Knight, married a daughter of Sir Thomas Cheeke. He purchased Moor Park,
Hertfordshire, about this time. The park and the mansion he bought in
1652 from the Earl of Monmouth, and the manor in 1655 from Sir Charles
Harbord. The gardens had been laid out by the Countess of Bedford, who
had sold the place in 1626 to the Earl of Pembroke. The house was well
known to Temple, who describes the gardens in his Essay on Gardening;
and when he retired in later years to an estate near Farnham in Surrey,
he gave to it the name of Moor Park.

Lord Manchester was Edward Montagu, second Earl of Manchester. He was
educated at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and sat for
Huntingdonshire in the first two Parliaments of Charles I. He was called
to the Upper House as Lord Kimbolton in 1626, and succeeded his father
in 1642. His name is well known in history as that of the leader of the
Puritans in the House of Lords, and as the only peer joined with the
five members impeached by the King. He raised a regiment and fought
under Essex at Edgehill, reconquered Lincolnshire, and took part in the