second wife a widow whose father was Sir Thomas Bludworth, ex-Lord Mayor
of London. Whether rumor treated her unjustly it is impossible to say at
this distance of time; but if reliance may be put on many broad stories
current about the lady, her conduct was by no means free from fault. She
was reputed to entertain many lovers. Jeffreys would have created less
scandal if, instead of taking her to his home, he had imitated the pious
Sir Matthew Hale, who married his maid-servant, and on being twitted by
the world with the lowliness of his choice, silenced his censors with a
jest.

Amongst the love affairs of seventeenth-century lawyers place must be
made for mention of the second wife whom Chief Justice Bramston brought
home from Ireland, where she had outlived two husbands (the Bishop of
Clogher and Sir John Brereton), before she gave her hand to the judge
who had loved her in his boyhood. "When I see her," says the Chief
Justice's son, who describes the expedition to Dublin, and the return to
London, "I confess I wondered at my father's love. She was low, fatt,
red-faced; her dress, too, was a hat and ruff, which tho' she never
changed to death. But my father, I believe, seeing me change
countenance, told me it was not beautie, but virtue, he courted. I
believe she had been handsome in her youth; she had a delicate, fine
hand, white and plump, and indeed proved a good wife and mother-in-law,
too." On her journey to Charles I.'s London, this elderly bride, in her
antiquated attire, rode from Holyhead to Beaumaris on a pillion behind
her step-son. "As she rode over the sandes," records her step-son,
"behind mee, and pulling off her gloves, her wedding ringe fell off, and
sunk instantly. She caused her man to alight; she sate still behind me,
and kept her eye on the place, and directed her man, but he not guessing
well, she leaped off, saying she would not stir without her ringe, it
being the most unfortunate thinge that could befall any one to lose the
wedding-ringe--made the man thrust his hand into the sands (the nature
of which is not to bear any weight but passing), he pulled up sand, but
not the ringe. She made him strip his arme and put it deeper into the
sand, and pulled up the ringe; and this done, he and shee, and all that
stood still, were sunk almost to the knees, but we were all pleased that
the ringe was found."

In the legal circle of Charles the Second's London, Lady King was
notable as a virago whose shr