that a person of her
quality should be reduced to such a fortune as she has lived upon these
late years, and that she should lose that which she brought, as well as
that which was her husband's. Yet, I hear, she has now got some of her
own land in Ireland granted her; but whether she will get it when she
comes there is, I think, a question.

We have a lady new come into this country that I pity, too, extremely.
She is one of my Lord of Valentia's daughters, and has married an old
fellow that is some threescore and ten, who has a house that is fitter
for the hogs than for her, and a fortune that will not at all recompense
the least of these inconveniences. Ah! 'tis most certain I should have
chosen a handsome chain to lead my apes in before such a husband; but
marrying and hanging go by destiny, they say. It was not mine, it seems,
to have an emperor; the spiteful man, merely to vex me, has gone and
married my countrywoman, my Lord Lee's daughter. What a multitude of
willow garlands I shall weave before I die; I think I had best make them
into faggots this cold weather, the flame they would make in a chimney
would be of more use to me than that which was in the hearts of all
those that gave them me, and would last as long. I did not think I
should have got thus far. I have been so persecuted with visits all this
week I have had no time to despatch anything of business, so that now I
have done this I have forty letters more to write; how much rather would
I have them all to you than to anybody else; or, rather, how much better
would it be if there needed none to you, and that I could tell you
without writing how much I am

Yours.

_Letter 33._--Sir Thomas Peyton, we must remember, had married Dorothy's
eldest sister; she died many years ago, and Sir Thomas married again, in
1648, one Dame Cicely Swan, a widow, whose character Dorothy gives us.

Lord Monmouth was the eldest son of the Earl of Monmouth, and was born
in 1596. He was educated at Exeter College, Oxford. His literary work
was, at least, copious, and included some historical writing, as well as
the translations mentioned by Dorothy. He published, among other things,
_An Historical Relation of the United Provinces_, a _History of the Wars
in Flanders_, and a _History of Venice_.

Sir John Suckling, in the following doggerel, hails our noble author
with a flunkey's enthusiasm,--

It is so rare and new a thing to see
Aught that belongs