I may perhaps bring her
up to town myself, and take that occasion of seeing you; but I have no
other business that is worth my taking a journey, for I have had another
summons from my aunt, and I protest I am afraid I shall be in rebellion
there; but 'tis not to be helped. The widow writes me word, too, that I
must expect her here about a month hence; and I find that I shall want
no company, but only that which I would have, and for which I could
willingly spare all the rest. Will it be ever thus? I am afraid it will.
There has been complaints made on me already to my eldest brother (only
in general, or at least he takes notice of no more), what offers I
refuse, and what a strange humour has possessed me of being deaf to the
advice of all my friends. I find I am to be baited by them all by turns.
They weary themselves, and me too, to very little purpose, for to my
thinking they talk the most impertinently that ever people did; and I
believe they are not in my debt, but think the same of me. Sometimes I
tell them I will not marry, and then they laugh at me; sometimes I say,
"Not yet," and they laugh more, and would make me believe I shall be old
within this twelvemonth. I tell them I shall be wiser then. They say
'twill be to no purpose. Sometimes we are in earnest and sometimes in
jest, but always saying something since my brother Henry found his
tongue again. If you were with me I could make sport of all this; but
"patience is my penance" is somebody's motto, and I think it must be
mine.

I am your.

_Letter 30._--Here is Lord Lisle's embassage discussed again! We know
that in the end it comes to nothing; Whitelocke going, but without
Temple. The statute commanding the marriage ceremony to be conducted
before Justices of the Peace was passed in August 1653; it is to some
extent by such references as these that the letters have been dated and
grouped. The Marriage Act of 1653, with the other statutes of this
period, have been erased from the Statute Book; but a draft of it in
Somers' Tracts remains to us for reference. It contained provisions for
the names of those who intended being joined together in holy matrimony
to be posted, with certain other particulars, upon the door of the
common meeting-house, commonly called the parish church or chapel; and
after the space of three weeks the parties, with two witnesses, might go
before a magistrate, who, having satisfied himself, by means of
examining witnesses on oath