; and her husband accepted
the title of Earl of Castlemaine, well knowing to what he owed it.
Pepys, who admired Lady Castlemaine more than any woman in England,
describes the husband and wife meeting at Whitehall with a cold
ceremonial bow: yet the husband _was_ there. A quarrel between the two,
strangely enough on the score of religion, her ladyship insisting that
her child should be christened by a Protestant clergyman, while his
lordship insisted on the ceremony being performed by a Romish priest,
brought about a separation, and from that time Lady Castlemaine, lodged
in Whitehall, began her empire over the king of England. That man, 'who
never said a foolish thing, and never did a wise one,' was the slave of
this imperious and most impudent of women. She forced him to settle on
her an immense fortune, much of which she squandered at the
basset-table, often staking a thousand pounds at a time, and sometimes
losing fifteen thousand pounds a-night.

Nor did her wickedness end here. We have some pity for one, who, like La
Valliere, could be attracted by the attentions of a handsome,
fascinating prince: we pity though we blame. But Lady Castlemaine was
vicious to the very marrow: not content with a king's favour, she
courted herself the young gallant of the town. Quarrels ensued between
Charles and his mistress, in which the latter invariably came off
victorious, owing to her indomitable temper; and the scenes recorded by
De Grammont--when she threatened to burn down Whitehall, and tear her
children in pieces--are too disgraceful for insertion. She forced the
reprobate monarch to consent to all her extortionate demands: rifled the
nation's pockets as well as his own; and at every fresh difference,
forced Charles to give her some new pension. An intrigue with Jermyn,
discovered and objected to by the King, brought on a fresh and more
serious difference, which was only patched up by a patent of the Duchy
of Cleveland. The Duchess of Cleveland was even worse than the Countess
of Castlemaine. Abandoned in time by Charles, and detested by all people
of any decent feeling, she consoled herself for the loss of a real king
by taking up with a stage one. Hart and Goodman, the actors, were
successively her cavalieri; the former had been a captain in the army;
the latter a student at Cambridge. Both were men of the coarsest minds
and most depraved lives. Goodman, in after-years was so reduced that,
finding, as Sheridan advised his