Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe
by Ann Fanshawe · English · Gutenberg #6064 · 441,326 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe
Author: Ann Fanshawe
Release date: July 1, 2004 [eBook #6064]
Most recently updated: December 29, 2020
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6064
Credits: Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEMOIRS OF LADY FANSHAWE ***
Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading
Team.
[Illustration: ANNE, LADY FANSHABE
(From a painting formerly at Parsloes)]
MEMOIRS OF LADY FANSHAWE
WIFE OF SIR RICHARD FANSHAWE, BT.
AMBASSADOR FROM CHARLES II. TO
THE COURTS OF PORTUGAL & MADRID
WRITTEN BY HERSELF CONTAINING
EXTRACTS FROM THE CORRESPONDENCE
OF SIR RICHARD FANSHAWE EDITED
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY BEATRICE
MARSHALL AND A NOTE UPON THE
ILLUSTRATIONS BY ALLAN FEA
INTRODUCTION
There is a deathless charm, despite the efforts of modern novelists
and playwrights to render it stale and hackneyed, attaching to the
middle of the seventeenth century--that period of upheaval and turmoil
which saw a stately debonnaire Court swept away by the flames of Civil
War, and the reign of an usurper succeeded by the Restoration of a
discredited and fallen dynasty.
So long as the world lasts, events such as the trial and execution of
Charles Stuart will not cease to appeal to the imagination and touch
the hearts of those at least who bring sentiment to bear on the
reading of history.
It is not to the dry-as-dust historian, however, that we go for
illuminating side-lights on this ever-fascinating time, but rather to
the pen-portraits of Clarendon, the noble canvases of Van Dyck, and
above all to the records of individual experience contained in
personal memoirs. Of these none is more charmingly and vivaciously
narrated or of greater historic value and interest than the following
memoir (first published in 1830) of Sir Richard Fanshawe, "Knight and
Baronet, one of the Masters of the Requests, Secretary of the Latin
Tongue, Burgess of the University of Cambridge, and one of His
Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council of England and Ireland, and
His Majesty's Ambassador to Portugal and Spain." It was written by his
widow in the evening of her days, after a life of storm and stress and
many romantic adventures at home and abroad, for the benefit of the
only son who survived to manhood of fourteen children, most of whom
died in their chrisom robes and whose baby bones were laid to rest in
foreign churchyards.
Two contemporaries of Lady Fanshawe, Mrs. Hutchinson and the Duchess
of Newcastle, also wrote lives of their husbands, which continue to
live as classics in our literature. But the Royalist Ambassador's wife
is incomparably more sparkling and anecdotic than the Puritan
Colonel's, and she does not adopt the somewhat tiresome "doormat"
attitude of wifely adoration towards the subject of her memoir which
"Mad Margaret" (as Pepys called her Grace of Newcastle) thought
fitting when she took up her fatally facile pen to endow her idolised
lord with all the virtues and all the graces and every talent under
the sun.
Yet with less lavishly laid on colours, how vivid is the portrait Lady
Fanshawe has painted for posterity of the gallant gentleman and
scholar, one of those "very perfect gentle knights" which that age
produced; loyal and religious, with the straightforward simple piety
that held unwaveringly to the Anglican Church in which he had been
born and brought up.
And of herself, too, she unconsciously presents a series of charming
pictures. The description of her girlhood is a glimpse into the
bringing up of a Cavalier maiden of quality, of the kind that is
invaluable in a reconstruction of the past from the domestic side. In
the town-house in Hart Street which her father, Sir John Harrison,
rented for the winter months from "my Lord Dingwall," where she was
born, her education was carried on "with all the advantages the time
afforded." She learnt French, singing to the lute, the virginals, and
the art of needlework, and confesses that though she was quick at
learning she was very wild and loved "riding, running and all active
pastimes."
One can picture the light-hearted "hoyting girl" breaking loose when
she found herself at Balls in Hertfordshire, where the family spent
the summer, and skipping and jumping for sheer joy at being alive. And
then we see her at fifteen suddenly sobered by the death of her
mother, a lady of "excellent beauty and good understanding," and
taking upon her young shoulders the entire management of her father's
household. With naive satisfaction she tells of how well she succeeded
and how she won the esteem of her mother's relations and friends,
being ever "ambitious to keep the best company," which she thanks God
she did all the days of her life.
Her father, like other loyal gentlemen, cheerfully suffered beggary in
the King's cause. His estates and property were confiscated and he
himself arrested. He managed to escape to Oxford, whither his
daughters followed him, to lodge over a baker's shop in a poor garret
with scarcely any clothes or money, they who had till then lived in
"great plenty and great order."
The seat of learning was strangely transformed by the presence there
of the moribund Court indulging in its last fling of gaieties and
gallantries on the eve of the debacle of Marston Moor. Soldiers
swarmed in the streets and were billeted over the college gates, and
gardens and groves were the trysting-place of courtiers and beautiful
ladies in that fair spring-time. Oxford melted down its plate for the
King and gave up its ancient halls to masques and plays for the
amusement of the Queen.
Sir John Harrison and his young daughters played their part in this
brilliant society. Mistress Anne's tender heart was moved to pity by
the "sad spectacle of war," when starving, half-naked prisoners were
marched past the windows of their lodging, but nothing could damp for
long her high spirits and girlish gaiety. We are told (not by herself,
but by the arch-gossip, old Aubrey) that in the company of Lady
Isabella Thynne, brightest star of the Stuart Court, "fine Mistress
Anne" played a practical joke on Dr. Kettle, the woman-hating
President of Trinity, who resented the intrusion of petticoats into
his garden, "dubbed Daphne by the wits." The lady in question aired
herself there in a fantastic garment cut after the pattern of the
angels, with her page and singing boy wafting perfumes and soft music
before her, an apparition not likely to soothe the gigantic, choleric
doctor. Lady Isabella and her friend Anne Harrison figure in one of
the most graphic and remarkable chapters of "John Inglesant," in which
the author has also drawn largely from these memoirs for a foundation
to one of his imaginary episodes. The girl of eighteen, full of life
and enthusiasm, was doubtless flattered at being taken up by the
fashionable Court beauty, and may have allowed herself to be led into
rather dangerous frolics, till Richard Fanshawe, a connection of her
mother's family whom she had not met before, came to wait on the King
at Christ Church. The two were thrown much together, and we may be
sure Anne's time was now claimed by one she admired even more
fervently than the eccentric Lady Isabella. Sir Richard wooed and won
his fair young kinswoman amidst the alarums of war, and they were
married at Wolvercot Church in May 1644, when the fritillaries were in
bloom along the banks of Isis and Cavaliers still made merry in the
last stronghold of a waning cause.
It must have been a picturesque group which assembled at the altar of
the little quiet country church; the joyous bride with her fair young
sister and handsome father of whom she was so proud, and the genial
bridegroom who was of "more than the common height of men," and so
popular that every one, even the King, called him Dick. Those
troublous times had reduced the fortunes of both Harrisons and
Fanshawes to the lowest ebb, and the young couple started their
married life on 20 pounds and the forlorn hope of their Sovereign's
promise of eventual compensation. When her husband went to Bristol
with the Prince of Wales, we see the young wife left at Oxford, in
delicate health, with scarcely a penny and a dying first-born. She
relates how she was sitting in the garden of St. John's College
breathing the air for the first time after her illness, when a letter
came from Bristol, to her "unspeakable joy" containing fifty gold
pieces and a summons to join Mr. Fanshawe, and how there was a sound
of drums beating in the roadway under the garden wall, and she went up
to the Mount to see Sir Charles Lee's company of soldiers march past,
and as she stood leaning against a tree a volley of shot was fired to
salute her, and she narrowly escaped being hit by a brace of bullets
which struck the tree two inches above her head.
Thus began the long series of separations, reunions, hardships, and
extraordinary adventures which this brave, fair Royalist passed
through. Like Queen Henrietta Maria, she seems hardly ever to have
gone to sea without being nearly "cast away." From Red Abbey in
Ireland she and her babies and servants had to fly at the peril of
their lives through "an unruly tumult with swords in their hands." On
the Isles of Scilly she was put ashore more dead than alive, and
plundered of all her possessions by the sailors. At Portsmouth she and
her husband were fired upon by Dutch men-of-war, and another time they
were shipwrecked in the Bay of Biscay. Yet her buoyant temperament was
never crushed. She might have said with Shakespeare's Beatrice, "A
star danced when I was born," so infinite was her capacity for keeping
on the "windy side of care."
It was the old "hoyting girl" spirit still alive in her which prompted
her to borrow the cabin boy's blue thrum-cap and tarred coat for half
a crown to stand beside her husband on the deck when they were
threatened by a Turkish galley on their way to Spain. But it was the
true womanly spirit, tender, loving, devoted, which, after the Battle
of Worcester, where Sir Richard was made a prisoner, took her every
morning on foot when four boomed from the steeples, along the sleeping
Strand to stand beneath his prison window on the bowling-green at
Whitehall. This happened during the wettest autumn that ever was
known, and "the rain went in at her neck and out at her heels."
Sir Richard was released on parole by Cromwell, and for seven years
the Fanshawes lived in comparative retirement in London and at
Tankersley, the seat of the Lord Strafford in Yorkshire. Here they
planted fruit-trees, and Sir Richard completed most of his literary
work. Even when he was walking out of doors he was seen generally with
some book in his hand, "which oftentimes was poetry." He translated
the "Lusiad" of de Camoens, Guarini's famous pastoral the "Pastor
Fide," and various pieces from Horace and Virgil. In Yorkshire their
favourite little daughter Nan, the "dear companion of her mother's
travels and sorrows," died of small-pox, and they left it for
Hertfordshire, where the news of the Protector's death reached them in
1658.
They were allowed now to join the Court in France, and the exiled King
appointed his faithful servant Dick Fanshawe Master of the Requests
and Latin Secretary. He and his wife came home with the King at the
Restoration, and her account of that gala voyage is one of the
brightest and most vivid that has survived. It seems literally to
burst with the jubilation and new hopes born by this event in a long-
distracted country.
Charles II. gave Sir Richard his portrait framed in diamonds, and sent
him first on an embassy to Portugal to negotiate his marriage, and
then appointed him to the still more important post of Ambassador to
Spain. On June 26, 1666, he died at Madrid of fever at the age of
fifty-eight.
The England to which his wife brought his body had not fulfilled the
high hopes and dreams of the Restoration. The vice, and laxity of
morals into which it was sinking, would certainly have been repugnant
to the clean-living, high-souled statesman, and we can hardly think
him unhappy in the time of his death.
He was buried with much pomp in the Church of St. Mary at Ware, and
his monument stands in a side chapel near the chancel. There, thirteen
years later, his loyal lady and sprightly biographer was laid beside
him in the vault and beneath the monument which she says: "Cost me two
hundred pounds; and here if God pleases I intend to lie myself."
An unfinished sentence gives a pathetic close to these pages, so full
of touches of humour, keen observation and racy anecdote. It would
seem as if the hand which wielded so descriptive and ready a pen had
wearied of its task; as if, at last, the sunny nature was overcast and
the merry heart saddened. But surely not another word is needed to
make the narrative more perfect. Those who first become acquainted
with it in this reprint will meet with many things less familiar than
Lady Fanshawe's moving account of her leave-taking from Charles I. at
Hampton Court, which has been quoted hundreds of times. They will be
thrilled by at least three stories of the supernatural told with the
elan and consummate simplicity that exceeds art, and they will be
charmed with the ingenuousness of the writer when she writes about
herself, and her masterly little sketches by the way of such
characters of the time as Sir Kenelm Digby and Lord Goring, son of the
Earl of Norwich. Indeed, we venture to think they cannot fail to find
the whole book delightful, because, though relating to a long-vanished
past, it is as livingly human and fresh as if written yesterday.
BEATRICE MARSHALL.
NOTES ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS
As will be seen from the rough pedigree appended, the Baronetcy became
extinct in 1694 with Sir Richard, Lady Fanshawe's son; while the
Viscountcy, which was given to this Sir Richard's uncle, Thomas, came
to an end in 1716 with Simon, the fifth Viscount. The knightly and
lordly branches having failed, the tail male was represented by the
Fanshawes of Jenkins, of Parsloes, and of Great Singleton.
The first branch became extinct in 1705, Sir Thomas Fanshawe of
Jenkins leaving no male issue, and thus the heirlooms have descended
to the two latter branches. The representatives of both these families
possess the portraits, manuscripts, &c., many of which came originally
from Ware Park,[Footnote: By the will of Sir Henry Fanshawe, who dies
in 1616, it appears that some of the older pictures came from the
"gallery," and his house in Warwick Lane. He directed they should be
brought to Ware Park and remain as heirlooms.] the parental house of
Lady Fanshawe's Royalist husband, as well as from Jenkins and
Parsloes.
But before speaking of the heirlooms it may not be out of place to say
something of these old seats of the Fanshawes and one or two other
places mentioned in the Memoirs.
Parsloes, which stands partly in the parish of Barking and partly in
Dagenham (Essex), is now in a very forlorn and dilapidated condition.
Alterations that have been made from time to time, particularly the
embellishments of 1814, which have somewhat given the old mansion a
Strawberry-Hill-Gothic appearance, have in a measure destroyed its
original character. Yet some panelled rooms remain, and some fine
carved stone fireplaces that were removed here many years ago from the
adjacent Elizabethan mansion, Eastbury House. [Footnote: Vide
"Picturesque Old Houses."]
Jenkins, the more important estate, which passed away from the family
in the early part of the eighteenth century, was a large square-moated
timber house with two towers. Remains of the old fishponds and
terraces may still be traced (about a mile from Parsloes), but nothing
remains of the house or of a later structure which followed it.
Indeed, the very name is now forgotten.
The mansion Ware Park has also long since been pulled down and
rebuilt. It was sold owing to Sir Henry Fanshawe's losses in the
Royalist cause.
Of the Derbyshire seat, Fanshawe Gate, at Holmesfield near Dronfield,
there are still some picturesque remains, and the Church of Dronfield
contains some good sixteenth-century brasses to the early members of
the family.
Lady Fanshawe's parental house, Balls Park, near Hertford, though much
modernised of recent years, dates back from the reign of Charles I. By
intermarriage the estate passed to the Townshends, and the late
Marquis sold it a few years ago.
Among the Townshend heirlooms which were dispersed in March 1904, were
many portraits of the Harrisons, including a fine full-length of Lady
Anne's Cavalier brother, William, who died fighting for the King in
1643.[Footnote: As the present owner of Balls Park, Sir G. Faudel-
Phillips, was a conspicuous purchaser at this sale, it may be presumed
some of the Harrison portraits have found their way back to their
original home.]
"Little Grove," East Barnet, another place mentioned in the Memoirs,
was rebuilt in 1719, and renamed "New Place."
It would be interesting if the position of Lady Fanshawe's lodgings in
Chancery Lane, "at my cousin Young's," could be located. The house
there that her husband rented from Sir George Carey in 1655-6, in all
probability was the same which is mentioned in the artist George
Vertue's MS. Collections as the old timber house that was once the
dwelling of Cardinal Wolsey. In a "great room above stairs," he said,
were carved arms and supporters of the Carews [Careys], who had
repaired the ceilings, &c. At the time he wrote the building was used
as a tavern. [Footnote: Vide Notes and Queries. Second Series, vol.
xii., pp. 1, 81; also Middlesex and Hertfordshire Notes and Querie.,
vol. iii., p. 30.] The house on the north side of Lincoln's Inn Fields
known as "The Pine Apples," where Lady Fanshawe was living at the time
of her husband's death, has disappeared with the other old residences
on that side of the square. Nothing is said in the Memoirs to locate
the building where she met her husband when he was brought to London a
prisoner after Worcester fight. The room in Whitehall facing the
Bowling-green of course perished in the fire which destroyed the
Palace at the end of the seventeenth century. [Footnote: A description
of Borstal Tower mentioned in the Memoirs will be found in
"Picturesque Old Houses."]
In regard to the monument of Sir Richard in Ware Church, which was
erected to his memory by Lady Fanshawe, it is strange that there is no
record of the interment in the Register. In the Register of All Saints
Church, Hertford,[Footnote: The old church, including a fine monument
to the Harrisons, was completely destroyed by fire a few years ago.]
however, it is stated that the body was first interred in Sir John
Harrison's vault:--"1671, May 18. Sir Richard Fanshawe, Ambassador,
was taken out of this vault and laid in his vault at Ware." The
monument was formerly in the Chapel at the south side of Ware Church,
and was afterwards removed to the east wall of the south transept. No
memorial marks the last resting-place of Lady Fanshawe. She was
interred in the new vault that had been prepared for her husband under
St. Mary's Chapel.
As before stated, the family portraits are now in the possession of
the descendants of the half-brothers William [Footnote: It was William
who married Mary Sarsfield, nee Walter, the Duke of Monmouth's sister.
Vide "King Monmouth."] and John Fanshawe, the sons of Lady Fanshawe's
cousin, John Fanshawe.
The portraits of the Parsloes branch remained in the old Essex house
until some thirty years ago, when they were removed to a town
residence. They included Lady Fanshawe's portrait (reproduced here),
the original of that engraved in her Memoirs in 1830 (by no means too
faithfully); portraits of her husband Sir Richard, by Dobson
[Footnote: An interesting portrait of Sir Richard in fancy dress by
Dobson is at West Horsley Place.] and Lely; Sir Simon (the rake), with
Naseby Field in the background: Sir Richard's grandfather, Thomas,
Remembrancer to Queen Elizabeth; Alice, the second wife of Sir
Richard's cousin, John of Parsloes (the daughter of his cousin Sir
Thomas Fanshawe of Jenkins, and the mother-in-law of the Duke of
Monmouth's half-sister, Mary Walter); Sir Richard's nephew, Thomas,
the second Viscount (in breastplate and flowing wig), and his second
wife, Lady Sarah, the daughter of Sir John Evelyn and widow of Sir
John Wray. [Footnote: The ancient Lincolnshire family of Wray is
mentioned in the Introduction of "King Monmouth" in connection with
the remarkable portrait of the Duke after decapitation, which formerly
was in the possession of Sir Cecil Wray. Since writing on this subject
it occurs to me that it is very possible that the picture may have
come originally to the Wrays through Lady Sarah Fanshawe, her husband
being a cousin of the Duke's sister's second husband. Mary Fanshawe,
nee Walter, it is very possible may have come into the possession of
the portrait (perhaps after Henrietta, Lady Wentworth's death, for
whom there is a tradition the picture was originally painted), and her
straitened circumstances may have induced her to part with the work to
the relatives of her kinswoman.]
The original MS. of the Memoirs (of which, thanks to the courtesy of
the owner, Mr. E. J. Fanshawe, I am able to give an illustration) is
bound in old red leather, and bears the Fanshawe arms. It was written
in 1676 for Lady Fanshawe's "most dear and only" surviving son. This
Sir Richard, the second Baronet, died in Clerkenwell in July 1694,
having some years previously had the misfortune through illness to
become deaf and dumb.
Comment at various times has been made upon the inaccuracy of the
printed Memoirs, but judging from a personal inspection of the
original, there appear to be but few serious errors. [Footnote:
"Turning" for "Trimming instruments" (in Lady Anne's will), and such
like slips. See p. 29.]
It must, however, be pointed out that the editor, Sir Harris Nicholas,
only used a COPY of the Memoirs which was made from the original in
1766 by Charlotte Colman, Lady Fanshawe's great grand-daughter. The
editor's transcript, though made ten years later, was not published
until half a century afterwards. [Footnote: Vide Preface of 1830
Edition.] I draw attention to this fact as the Rev. T. L. Fanshawe,
the grandfather of the present owner of the MS., was under the
impression that his original Memoirs when lent to a friend had been
copied and printed without permission, which in the face of the above
statement could not have been the case. [Footnote: I have been
indebted to Mr. Walter Crouch, Mr. R. T. Andrews, and to Mr. H. W.
King's Notes on the Fanshawe Family, 1868-72, for some of the above
information.]
ALLAN FEA.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
NOTES ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS
INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR
MEMOIRS OF LADY FANSHAWE
EXTRACTS FROM THE CORRESPONDENCE OF SIR RICHARD FANSHAWE ILLUSTRATIVE
OF MEMOIR
PEDIGREE SHOWING THE RELATIONSHIPS OF THE VARIOUS MEMBERS OF THE
FANSHAWE FAMILY MENTIONED IN LADY FANSHAWE'S MEMOIRS
INDEX
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Anne, Lady Fanshawe....Frontispiece
From a painting formerly at Parsloes
The Original Manuscript of the Fanshawe Memoirs
Ware Park, Hertfordshire
From an old print in the possession of R. T. Andrews, Esq.
Parsloes, Essex
Present day
Sir Richard Fanshawe, Bart
From a painting by Lely in the possession of Captain Stirling
Anne, Lady Fanshawe
From a painting by Lely in the possession of Captain Stirling
The arrival of Catherine of Braganza at Portsmouth, on May 14, 1662
From a contemporary print
The Queen's arrival at Whitehall, August 23, 1662
(vide Pepys' Diary of that date)
From a contemporary print
Anne, Lady Fanshawe
From an old print in the possession of E. J. Fanshawe, Esq.
Sir Richard Fanshawe, Bart
From an engraving by Farthorne in the possession of E. J. Fanshawe,
Esq.
All Saints' Church, Hertford
From an old print in the possession of R. T. Andrews, Esq.
Monument in Ware Church Erected to the Memory of her husband by Lady
Fanshawe
INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR
It may, possibly, be thought unnecessary to prefix to this work a
biographical sketch of the persons whose careers are faithfully
related in it; and it may be considered an act of imprudence to place
the cold and measured statements of an Editor in juxta-position with
the nervous and glowing narrative of the amiable historian of the
lives of her husband and herself. The latter objection, however true,
ought not to prevent such remarks being made as may cause her labours
to be better understood, and more highly appreciated; especially, as
information can be supplied, and in a few instances, comments
submitted, which may render that justice to the writer it was
impossible for her to do to herself.
These pages will, however, contain a statement of the chief events of
the lives of Sir Richard and Lady Fanshawe; and although most of them
are mentioned in her Memoir, they are so frequently interrupted by
anecdotes and reflections, as well as by accounts of places and
ceremonies, that it is often difficult to follow her. This article may
then be considered as the outline of a picture, which is filled up by
a far abler and more pleasing artist; or, perhaps, it bears a nearer
resemblance to the graphic references which generally accompany the
descriptions of paintings, for the purpose of illustrating them.
The genealogy of the Fanshawe family is so fully stated in the Memoir,
that it is not requisite to allude to the subject, farther than to
observe, that Sir Richard was descended from an ancient and
respectable house; that many of its members filled official situations
under the Crown, and were honoured with Knighthood; that he was the
fifth and youngest son of Sir Henry Fanshawe, of Ware Park, in
Hertfordshire, Knight, by Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Smythe, Esq.,
Farmer of the Customs to Queen Elizabeth, the younger son of an
ancient Wiltshire family, and ancestor of the Viscounts Strangford;
and that his eldest brother was raised to the peerage by the title of
Viscount Fanshawe, of Dromore, in Ireland.
Sir Richard Fanshawe was born at Ware Park, in June 1608, and was
baptized on the 12th of that month. His father having died in 1616,
when he was little more than seven years old, the care of his
education devolved upon his mother, who placed him under the
celebrated schoolmaster, Thomas Farnaby; and in November 1623 he was
admitted a Fellow-commoner of Jesus College, Cambridge, where he is
said to have prosecuted his studies with success, and to have evinced
a taste for classical literature. Being intended for the Bar, he was
entered of the Inner Temple on the 22nd of January 1626; but that
profession ill-accorded with his genius, and he appears to have
selected it in obedience to the wishes of his mother, rather than from
his own choice. It has been supposed that he continued his legal
pursuits until her death left him free to follow his inclination to
travel; but this is not the fact, as he had returned to England before
her decease. At what period he abandoned the law is not known; but
about 1627 he went abroad, with the view of acquiring foreign
languages. Lady Fanshawe says that the whole stock of money with which
he commenced his travels did not exceed eighty-five pounds; that he
proceeded first to Paris, where he remained for twelve months, and
thence went to Madrid; and that he did not return to England for some
years. In 1630 he was appointed Secretary to Lord Aston's embassy to
the Court of Spain, in consequence of the information which he
possessed of the country; but in attaining that knowledge he spent
great part of his patrimony, which amounted only to 50 pounds per
annum, and 1500 pounds in money.
When Lord Aston was recalled, Mr. Fanshawe remained as the Charge
d'Affaires until Sir Arthur Hopton was nominated Ambassador to Madrid;
and he arrived in England in 1637 or 1638. For two years after his
return, he seems to have been in constant expectation of some
appointment, but his views were frustrated by Secretary Windebank. At
the expiration of that time, his eldest brother resigned to him the
situation of Remembrancer of the Court of Exchequer, but upon terms
which prevented its being of any immediate pecuniary advantage. The
Civil War, however, then broke out and being one of the King's sworn
servants, he attended his Majesty to Oxford, where he met the fair
author of these Memoirs.
Anne, the eldest daughter of Sir John Harrison, of Balls, in the
county of Hertford, by Margaret, daughter of Robert Fanshawe, of
Fanshawe Gate Esq., great uncle of Sir Richard Fanshawe, was born in
St. Olave's, Hart Street, London, on the 25th of March 1625. Of her
education and early life she has given a pleasing description, and,
until the Civil War, her family lived in uninterrupted happiness. Her
father having warmly espoused the Royal cause, he attended the Court
to Oxford, and desired his daughters to come to him in that city,
where they endured many privations, "living in a baker's house in an
obscure street, and sleeping in a bad bed in a garret, with bad
provisions, no money, and little clothes." The picture of Oxford at
that moment is truly deplorable, and the sufferings of the royalists
appear to have been very severe, but which she describes as having
been borne "with a martyr-like cheerfulness." The offer of a Baronetcy
to her father--the only return which it was then in the power of the
Crown to bestow, for the heavy losses he had sustained--was gratefully
declined on the ground of poverty. In 1644 important changes took
place in her family, or, as she poetically expresses it, alluding to
the state of public affairs, "as the turbulence of the waves disperses
the splinters of the rock," so were they separated. Her brother
William died in consequence of a fall from his horse, which was shot
under him in a skirmish against a party of the Earl of Essex the year
before; and on the 18th of May she became the wife of Mr. Fanshawe, in
Wolvercot Church, two miles from Oxford, being then in her twentieth
year, and her husband about thirty-six. He was at that time Secretary
at War, and was promised promotion the first opportunity. The fortune
of each was in expectation: they were, she says, "truly merchant
adventurers," their whole capital being only twenty pounds; and, to
preserve the simile, that capital was laid out in the articles of his
trade--in pens, ink, and paper. What was wanting in money was amply
supplied by prudence and affection; and there is no difficulty in
believing her assurance, that they lived better than those whose
prospects were much brighter.
Whilst at Oxford, in 1644, the University conferred upon Mr. Fanshawe
the degree of Doctor of Laws. In the beginning of March 1645 he
attended the Prince to Bristol, but in consequence of his wife's
confinement, she did not accompany him; and the circumstances of their
separation are affecting. She joined him in that city in May, at which
time he was appointed Secretary to the Prince of Wales, but in
consequence of the plague they quitted Bristol, in July 1645, and
proceeded with his Royal Highness to Barnstaple, and thence to
Launceston and Truro, in Cornwall. From Truro the Court removed to
Pendennis Castle; and early in April 1646 the Prince and his suite
embarked for the Scilly Islands. Great as their privations were at
Oxford, they were much exceeded by their sufferings at Scilly; and no
one can peruse the description of their voyage to and lodgings in that
island with indifference. To illness were added cold and hunger: they
were plundered by their friends in flying from their enemies; and to
add to the misery of their situation, Mrs. Fanshawe was very near her
confinement.
After passing three weeks in that desolate place, the Prince and his
suite went to Jersey, where they were hospitably received; and where
Mrs. Fanshawe gave birth to her second child. On the Prince's quitting
Jersey in July, for Paris, Mr. Fanshawe's employment ceased; and he
remained in that island with Lord Capell, Lord Hopton, and the
Chancellor, for a fortnight after his Royal Highness's departure, when
he and his wife went to Caen, to his brother Lord Fanshawe, who was
ill, leaving their infant at Jersey, under the care of Lady Carteret,
the wife of the Governor. From Caen, Mrs. Fanshawe was sent to
England, by her husband, to raise money: she arrived in London early
in September 1646, where she succeeded in obtaining permission for him
to compound for his estates for the sum of 300 pounds, and to return.
They continued in England until October 1647, living in great
seclusion; and in July in that year, whilst the unfortunate Charles
was at Hampton Court, Mr. Fanshawe waited upon him, and received his
instructions to proceed to Madrid. Mrs. Fanshawe states that she had
three audiences of his Majesty at Hampton Court, and her description
of the last interview with which she and her husband were honoured,
exhibits the injured monarch as a husband, a father, a master, a
sovereign, and a Christian, in the most pleasing light, and is ample
evidence of the natural goodness of his heart. "The last time I ever
saw him," she says, "was on taking my leave. I could not refrain from
weeping, and when he saluted me, I prayed to God to preserve his
Majesty with long life and happy years. He stroked me on the cheek,
and said, 'Child, if God pleaseth it shall be so; but both you and I
must submit to God's will, and you know in what hands I am.' Turning
to Mr. Fanshawe, he said, 'Be sure, Dick, [Footnote: That the Royal
family were accustomed to address Mr. Fanshawe in so familiar a
manner, appears from a letter from the Duke of York, afterwards James
the Second, dated at Paris, 18th November, 1651, to Sir Edward
Nicholas: "I have received yours of the 8th of November from the
Hague, and with it that from DICK FANSHAWE."--Evelyn's Correspondence,
vol. v. p. 188.] to tell my son all that I have said, and deliver
those letters to my wife. Pray God bless her! I hope I shall do well;'
and taking him in his arms, observed, 'Thou hast ever been an honest
man, and I hope God will bless thee, and make thee a happy servant to
my son, whom I have charged in my letter to continue his love and
trust to you;' adding, 'I do promise you, that if ever I am restored
to my dignity, I will bountifully reward you both for your services
and sufferings.'"
In the few days they passed at Portsmouth, previous to their quitting
England in October 1647, they narrowly escaped being killed by a shot
fired into the town by the Dutch fleet. From that place they embarked
for France, but returned to England, in April 1648, by Jersey, whence
they brought with them their daughter, whom they had left under the
care of Lady Carteret. In September Mr. Fanshawe attended the Prince
of Wales on board the fleet in the Downs, in which a division existed,
part being for the King and part for the Parliament. The Prince
resolved to reduce the latter to obedience by force, but a storm
separated the ships, and prevented an engagement. Three months
afterwards, Mr. Fanshawe went to Paris on the Prince's affairs,
whither he was followed by his wife; and they passed six weeks there
in the society of the Queen-Mother and the Princess Royal and their
suite, amongst whom was the poet Waller and his wife. From Paris they
went to Calais, where they met Sir Kenelm Digby, who related some of
his extraordinary stories: from that town she again went to England
with the hope of raising money for her husband's subsistence abroad
and her own at home. Mr. Fanshawe was sent to Flanders; and thence, in
the February following, into Ireland, to receive whatever money Prince
Rupert could raise by the fleet under his command, but that effort
proved unsuccessful. At her husband's desire, Mrs. Fanshawe proceeded
with her family to join him, and landed at Youghal after a hazardous
voyage. They took up their residence at Red Abbey, a house belonging
to Dean Boyle, near Cork, and passed six months in comparative
tranquillity, receiving great kindness from the nobility and gentry of
the neighbourhood.
Their happiness, however, was but transitory. On the 2nd of September
in that year Mr. Fanshawe was created a Baronet; and it is singular
that no other allusion should occur to the circumstance in the Memoir
than a notice of his having left the patent in Scotland before the
battle of Worcester.
The Queen received them at Paris with great attention; and after many
acts of favour, she despatched Sir Richard to the King, who was then
on his way to Scotland. Lady Fanshawe and her husband proceeded to
Calais, it being necessary that she should go to England to procure
money for his journey, and in the mean time he intended to reside in
Holland; but circumstances caused him to be immediately sent into
Scotland, where he was received with marked kindness by the King and
by the York party, who gave him the custody of the Great Seal and
Privy Signet. No persuasions could induce him to take the Covenant;
but he performed the duties of his office with a zeal and temper
which, we are told, obtained for him the esteem of all parties.
Lady Fanshawe continued in London, in a state of great uneasiness
about Sir Richard, having two young children to maintain, with very
limited resources; and to add to her discomfort, she was again very
near her confinement. She observes, that she seldom went out of her
lodgings, and spent her time chiefly in prayer for the deliverance of
the King and her husband. A daughter, Elizabeth, was born on the 24th
of June, and on her recovery she went to her brother-in-law's, at Ware
Park, where the news reached her of the battle of Worcester, on the
3rd of September; and after some days' suspense, she learned that Sir
Richard was taken prisoner.
She then hastened to town, intending to seek him wherever he might be;
but on her arrival she learned from him that he would shortly be
brought to London, and he appointed a place near Charing Cross where
she should meet him. Their interview lasted only a few hours; after
which he was conveyed to Whitehall, and was closely confined there for
ten weeks, expecting daily to be put to death. The manner in which she
went secretly to his prison at four o'clock every morning, and her
unwearied zeal to alleviate his sufferings, afford a beautiful example
of female devotion; and it was owing to her exertions alone that he
was ultimately released on bail.
Illness induced Sir Richard to go to Bath, in August 1652, the greater
part of the winter of which year they passed at Benford, in
Hertfordshire; but having occasion to wait on the Earl of Strafford,
in Yorkshire, his Lordship offered him a house in Tankersley Park,
which he accepted. His family removed thither in March 1652, and
during his residence there he amused himself in literary pursuits, and
translated Luis de Camoens. The death of their favourite daughter
Anne, on the 23rd of July 1654, at the age of between nine and ten,
made them quit Tankersley, and they proceeded to Homerton, in
Huntingdonshire, the seat of Sir Richard Fanshawe's sister, Lady
Bedell, where they resided six months; when he being sent for to
London, and forbidden to go beyond five miles of it, his wife and
children removed to the metropolis. Excepting a visit to Frog Pool, in
Kent, the residence of Sir Philip Warwick, they remained in London
until July 1656, during which time Lady Fanshawe had two children, and
her husband suffered severely from illness.
Tired of living in town, Sir Richard obtained permission to go to
Bengy, in Hertfordshire, where he and his wife were attacked with an
ague, which confined her to her bed for many months, and did not
finally leave her for nearly two years, when a visit to Bath perfectly
restored them both. The news of Cromwell's death, in September 1658,
which reached them whilst in that city, caused them to go to London,
with the hope of Sir Richard's getting released from his bail; and
under the pretence of becoming tutor to the son of the Earl of
Pembroke, whilst on his travels, he was permitted to leave England. On
his arrival at Paris, he wrote to Lord Clarendon, acquainting him with
his escape, and desiring him to inform his Majesty of the
circumstance. About April 1659, his Lordship replied that the King was
then going into Spain, but that on his return, which would be in the
beginning of the winter, he should come to his Majesty, who in the
meantime gave him the situations of one of the Masters of Requests,
and Latin Secretary.
Sir Richard Fanshawe then requested his wife to come to Paris with
part of his children, but her application for a passport was refused;
and she relates the ingenious manner in which she imposed upon the
Government, by obtaining a pass in the name of Anne Harrison; the
pretended wife of a young merchant, and altering the word to Fanshawe,
by which means she escaped to Calais, and joined her husband at Paris.
Charles the Second came to Combes, near Paris, on a visit to his
mother, in November 1659, where Sir Richard and Lady Fanshawe had an
interview with him, and were received most graciously, with promises
of future protection. Sir Richard being desired to follow his Majesty
to Flanders, he went thither in December, having previously sent his
wife to London for money, where she arrived with her children in
January 1660. Soon afterwards she followed him to Newport, Bruges,
Ghent, and Brussels, where the Royal family of England were residing,
by all of whom they were treated with kindness. After staying three
weeks at Brussels, Sir Richard and Lady Fanshawe went to Breda, where
they heard of the Restoration, at which place, in April, his Majesty
is said to have conferred on him the honour of Knighthood, [Footnote:
Biographia Britannica.] though the fact is not mentioned in the
Memoir.
On joining the King at the Hague, he promised to reward Sir Richard's
fidelity and sufferings, by appointing him Secretary of State; but
through the machinations of "that false man," as Lady Fanshawe calls
Lord Clarendon, the royal word was not fulfilled. When his Majesty
embarked for England, Sir Richard was ordered to attend him in his own
ship; and a frigate was appointed to convey his family. The morning
after Charles's arrival at Whitehall, Lady Fanshawe, with some other
ladies, waited upon him to offer their congratulations, on which
occasion he assured her of his favour, and presented Sir Richard with
his portrait set in diamonds. To the Parliament summoned immediately
after the restoration he was returned for the University of Cambridge;
and "had the good fortune," his affectionate biographer says, "to be
the first chosen, and the first returned member of the Commons House
in Parliament, after the King came home; and this cost him no more
than a letter of thanks, and two brace of bucks, and twenty broad
pieces of gold to buy them wine." To the jealousy of Lord Clarendon,
who was anxious to remove Sir Richard from about the King's person,
Lady Fanshawe imputes the circumstance of his being sent to Portugal
to negotiate the marriage with the Princess Katharine, to whom he was
charged to present his Majesty's picture; but this appointment is
strong proof of the confidence which was reposed in his discretion and
abilities. He returned to England in December, and during his absence
Lady Fanshawe remained in London, where she gave birth to a daughter
in January 1662. On the arrival of the Queen at Portsmouth, Sir
Richard Fanshawe was sent to receive her, and was present at her
marriage, the description of which ceremony is historically valuable.
Early in 1662 he was nominated a Privy Counsellor of Ireland: in
August he was again sent on an embassy to Lisbon, and was accompanied
by his wife and children. Their journey to Plymouth, their voyage,
their arrival at Lisbon, their reception at Court, and the city, are
minutely described. After a year's residence in Portugal, Sir Richard
was recalled: he returned to London in September 1663, and proceeded
to wait on the King at Bath, who was pleased to raise him to the rank
of a Privy Counsellor. In January 1664, he was appointed Ambassador to
the Court of Madrid, and having embarked at Portsmouth, with a
numerous retinue, on board a squadron on the 31st of that month, they
arrived at Cadiz on the 23rd of February.
Nearly the whole of the remainder of the Memoir is filled with an
account of their journey to Madrid, of their splendid reception, of
the manners of the Spaniards, of various places, and of public events
and ceremonies. These descriptions display considerable judgment and
quickness of observation, and contain some valuable information. Many
of the anecdotes which occur are interesting, and like every other
part of the narrative, they are told with a simplicity which renders
it impossible to doubt their accuracy.
At Madrid, Lady Fanshawe gave birth to her son Richard; and the prayer
which she breathes for his prosperity exhibits her piety and affection
in lively colours. Sir Richard Fanshawe went on a mission to Lisbon in
January 1664, and returned to Madrid early in March following. On the
17th of December 1665, he signed a treaty with the Spanish minister,
but the King refused to ratify it, and he was recalled, when the Earl
of Sandwich was sent to replace him, who arrived at Corunna in March
following. Previous to this circumstance, Lady Fanshawe intended to
return to England to see her father, who was on the verge of the
grave; but she then resolved to wait for Sir Richard's departure.
She was now, however, destined to experience the severest of all her
trials, in the death of her husband, who, after introducing Lord
Sandwich at Court on the 15th of June, was seized with an ague, and
expired on the 26th of the same month. [Footnote: According to the
inscription on his monument, he died on the SIXTEENTH of June; the
discrepancy arose from the difference in the style.]
No other language could convey an adequate idea of Lady Fanshawe's
feelings under her loss, than that in which she has expressed them;
and her address to the Almighty on her sufferings merits every
possible praise.
Some of Sir Richard Fanshawe's biographers have imputed his death to a
broken heart, in consequence of his being recalled; but this is a
gratuitous assertion, for nothing of the kind is hinted in the Memoir,
though the conduct of Lord Clarendon and others towards him is
severely commented upon. His letter to the King on the occasion is
preserved, from which it is evident that he felt his recall deeply,
but the gracious communication by which it was accompanied lessened
the severity of the act, and he seems anxiously to have looked forward
to his arrival in England to defend his conduct.
Lady Fanshawe resolved on accompanying her husband's corpse to
England; but, previous to her quitting Madrid, the Queen-Regent of
Spain offered her a pension, and promised to provide for her children,
if she and they would embrace the Roman Catholic faith; an offer,
which it would be an insult to her memory to attribute any merit to
her for refusing. Having disposed of her plate, furniture, and horses,
she left the Siete Chimeneas, in a private manner, on the 8th of July,
and observes, "Never did any ambassador's family come into Spain so
gloriously, or went out so sad." She reached Bilboa on the 21st of
July, where Sir Richard's corpse awaited her arrival, and remained
there until the 3rd of October. The mournful train then proceeded
towards England, by Bayonne and Paris, where they arrived on the 30th
of October. After an audience of the Queen-Mother, Lady Fanshawe set
out for Calais; and on the 2nd of November was conveyed to the Tower
Wharf in a French vessel-of-war. On the 26th, the body of Sir Richard,
attended by seven of the gentlemen of his suite, was interred in
Allhallows Church, in Hertford, whence it was removed, in May 1671, to
a vault in St. Mary's Chapel in Ware Church, where his widow erected a
handsome monument, with the following inscription to his memory:--
P.M.S.
In Hypogeo, juxta hoc monumentum,
jacet corpus nobilissimi viri
RICARDI FANSHAWE,
Equitis Aurati et Baronetti, ex antiqua illa familia de
Ware Parke, in comitatu Hertfordiae,
Henrici Fanshawe, Equitis Aurati, prolis decimae.
Uxorem duxit Annam filiam natu maximam Johannis
Harrison, Equitis Aurati, de Balls, in com. Hertfordiae;
et ex ea suscepit sex filios et octo filias; e quibus
supersunt Ricardus, Catherina, Margarita, Anna,
et Elizabetha.
Vir comitate morum, luce fidei, constantia,
praestantissimus,
qui olim (laetus exul) serenissimi regis Caroli Secundi
calamitates fortiter amplexus est,
in Rebus bellicis, ab eodem constitutus Secretarius,
posteaque (Regno ei feliciter restaurato)
libellorum supplicum Magister,
a Latinis epistolis, a sanctioribus Regis consiliis
tum Angliae, tum Hiberniae factus; pro Academia Cantabrigiensi
Burgensis;
Necnon ejusdem serenissimi Regis ad utrasque Aulas
Portugal. et Hispan.
Legatus, in quarum proxima, cum pulcherrime officio
suo functus esset, splendidissimam quamdiu egerat
Vitam cum luctuosa morte commutavit.
Monumentum hoc, cum Hypogeo, moestissima conjux
pie posuit, quas etiam corpus Mariti sui ab urbe
Madrid huc per terras transtulit.
Obiit 16 de Junii, anno Dom MDCLXVI aetatis suae LIX.
[Footnote: Clutterbuck's History of Hertfordshire, vol. iii. page 311.
The following arms occur on the monument: Quarterly, 1st and 4th, Or,
a chevron between three fleurs-de-lis Sable, Fanshawe ancient; 2nd and
3rd, cheeky Argent and Azure, a cross Gules, Fanshawe modern, being an
honourable augmentation granted in 1650: on an escutcheon in the
centre, the arms of Ulster. Impaling, Checky, a cross, thereon five
pheons' heads, pointing upwards. Harrison. Crest, on a wreath, Or and
Azure, a dragon's head erased Or, vomiting fire. On a label under the
arms these mottos: "Dux vitae ratio." "In Christo victoria."]
Sir Richard Fanshawe was buried with much pomp; and a full account of
the ceremony occurs in his funeral certificate in the College of Arms.
From the King, the Queen, the Court, and some of the ministers, Lady
Fanshawe received much sympathy and kindness; but, in common with
every other person who had pecuniary claims on the Government, she
experienced great difficulty in procuring the arrears due to her
husband, and it was not until nearly three years that the whole was
paid; by which delay, she says, she sustained a loss of above two
thousand pounds. At the instigation of Lord Shaftesbury, of whom she
speaks with the utmost bitterness, she was obliged to pay the same
amount for the plate furnished to the embassy.
Of the tardy manner in which Sir Richard Fanshawe's allowance was
paid, and the embarrassment into which he was consequently thrown, he
has left ample proof in his letter to his brother-in-law Sir Philip
Warwick, dated a few weeks before his death; in which he tells him
that he had been obliged to pawn his plate for his subsistence.
Lady Fanshawe states in a very feeling manner the situation in which
she found herself after her husband's death; and it is scarcely
possible to read her allusions to his long and faithful services, and
the heavy sacrifices which he made, without admitting the justice of
the charge so often brought against Charles, of being neglectful of
his servants. It is, however, more than possible that the fault was
not the monarch's alone. He was surrounded by greedy and selfish
courtiers, each eager to advance his own interest, and possessed of
similar claims on the ground of services; and as the spoils out of
which they sought to enrich themselves were limited, it was an obvious
point of policy to oppose the demands of others. The few years which
succeeded the Restoration are among the most disgraceful in the annals
of this country; and to the evidence which exists of the want of
principle which characterised the Court of Charles the Second, these
Memoirs are no slight addition. The monarch was heartless and
profligate; his ministers, with very few exceptions, were intent alone
on the promotion of their own interests; and services and sufferings
were nothing in the balance against the influence of the royal
mistresses. In such a state of things, merit availed but little; and
with a host of other zealous adherents of the royal family, at a time
when fidelity was attended with the fearful penalties attached to high
treason, Sir Richard Fanshawe, after thirty years' devotion to his
master, and spending a fortune in his cause, was sacrificed to the
intrigues of his enemies, and probably was only spared by death from
greater mortifications.
To this outline of the lives of Sir Richard and Lady Fanshawe little
remains to be added. The Memoir, though continued to the year 1670,
contains very few facts after her return to England which are
deserving of notice. It is manifest that her hopes were destroyed, and
that her only happiness consisted in reflecting on the past. Her first
object was to reduce her establishment according to her altered
fortune, and the second to educate her family. In 1670 she lost her
excellent father, whose death added heavily to her misfortunes; but
she possessed that resource against human woes which can only be
inspired by a reliance upon Him who never deserts the widow and the
fatherless. Her life had been marked by extreme vicissitudes; and at
its conclusion--dark and cheerless as it was--she wisely looked for
consolation where she had so frequently found it, and where, it may be
confidently said, it is never sought in vain.
Of the conduct of Sir Richard Fanshawe, as a servant of the Crown, and
as a husband and a father, sufficient is said in the Memoir; but it is
desirable to notice his literary labours, which are stated in the
Biographia Britannica to consist of--
1. An English translation, in rhyme, of the celebrated Italian
pastoral, called "Il Pastor Fido, or, the Faithful Shepherd," written
originally by Battista Guarini. Printed at London, 1646, 4to, and in
1664, 8vo.
2. Select parts of Horace translated into English, 1652, 8vo.
3. A translation from English into Latin verse, of "The Faithful
Shepherdess," a pastoral, written originally by John Fletcher. London,
1658.
4. In the octavo edition of "The Faithful Shepherdess," anno 1664, are
inserted the following poems by Sir Richard, viz.: 1. An Ode upon
occasion of his Majesty's Proclamation in 1630, commanding the gentry
to reside upon their estates in the country. 2. A summary Discourse on
the Civil Wars of Rome, extracted from the best Latin writers in verse
and prose. 3. An English translation of the fourth book of the AEneid
of Virgil or the Loves of Dido and AEneas. 4. Two Odes out of Horace,
relating to the civil wars of Rome, against covetous rich men. 5. He
translated, from Portuguese, into English, "The Luciad, or Portugal's
Historical Poem"; written originally by Luis de Camoens. London, 1655,
fol. From the many corrections in the Translator's copy, in the
possession of the late Edm. Turnor, Esq., it appears to have been very
negligently printed, which may in some degree account for the remarks
of Mr. Mickle on Sir Richard's translation. After his decease, namely
in 1671, two of his posthumous pieces in 4to were published, Querer
per solo querer: "To love only for love's sake," a dramatic piece,
represented before the King and Queen of Spain; and Fiestas de
Aranjuez: "Festivals at Aranjuez"; both written originally in Spanish,
by Antonio de Mendoza; upon occasion of celebrating the birthday of
King Philip IV. in 1621, at Aranjuez. They were translated by Sir
Richard in 1654, during his confinement at Tankersley Park, in
Yorkshire; which situation induced him to write the following stanzas:
"Time was, when I, a pilgrim of the seas,
When I, 'midst noise of camps and court's disease,
Purloin'd some hours, to charm rude cares with verse,
Which flame of faithful shepherd did rehearse.
"But now, restrain'd from sea, from camp, from court,
And by a tempest blown into a port,
I raise my thoughts to muse of higher things,
And echo arms and loves of queens and kings.
"Which queens (despising crowns and Hymen's band)
Would neither man obey, nor man command;
Great pleasure from rough seas to see the shore;
Or, from firm land, to see the billows roar."
Sir Richard, to whom Mr. Campbell assigns the merit of having given
"to our language some of its earliest and most important translations
from modern literature," [Footnote: Specimens of the Poets.] wrote
several other articles, which he had not leisure to complete; and it
is said that "some of the before mentioned printed pieces have not all
the perfection which our ingenious author could have given them, but
that is not the case with his excellent translation of Pastor Fido."
[Footnote: Biographia Britannica.]
That translation is highly complimented by Denham, who observes,
"Such is our pride, or folly, or our fate,
That few but such as cannot write translate;"
and after censuring servile translators, he says--
"Secure of fame, thou justly dost esteem
Less honour to create than to redeem;
That servile path thou nobly dost decline,
Of tracing word by word, and line by line."
And,
"That master's hand, which to the life can trace
The air, the line, the features, of the face,
May with a free and bolder stroke express
A varied posture, or a flatt'ring dress;
He could have made those like, who made the rest,
But that he knew his own design was best."
Part of Sir Richard Fanshawe's official correspondence, during his
embassies in Spain and Portugal, was published in 1701, from which
many extracts have been printed at the end of this volume; but the
latest letter therein is dated 26th January 1665. The rough copies of
his correspondence from that time until his death, are preserved in
the Harleian MS. 7010, in the British Museum, the most interesting
parts of which are added to the other extracts.
Lady Fanshawe wrote her Memoir in the year 1676, and died on the 20th
January 1679-80, in her fifty-fifth year. Her will is dated on the
30th October, 31st Car. II., 1679, in which she desired that her body
might be privately buried in the Chapel of St. Mary in Ware Church,
close to her husband, in the vault which she had purchased of the
Bishop of London. She ordered her house in Little Grove, in East
Barnet, with all the jewels, plate, and pictures therein, to be sold.
To her son, Sir Richard Fanshawe, she bequeathed the lease of the
manor of Faunton Hall, in Essex, which she held of the Bishop of
London, on condition that when he possessed his office in the Custom-
House, or any other employment of the value of 500 pounds a year, he
should pay to his eldest sister Katherine 1200 pounds, or deliver up
the said lease to her. She also left him her own and her husband's
picture set in gold, his father's picture by Lilly, and her own by
Toniars, with all her seals, particularly a gold ring, with an onyx-
stone, engraved, her purse of medals, all the gold she had by her at
the time of her death, a Spanish towel, and comeing-cloth, together
with all the books, MSS., writings, &c., sticks, guns, swords, and
turning instruments, which belonged to her late husband. To her
daughter, Katherine Fanshawe, she left 600 pounds of which sum 500
pounds were given her by her grandfather, Sir John Harrison, at his
decease, a warrant for a Baronet, probably her husband's, and all her
jewels. To her daughters Anne Fanshawe and Elizabeth Fanshawe 600
pounds each, of which sums 500 pounds were given to each of them by
their said grandfather. To her daughter Katherine she bequeathed the
Work written by herself, by her said daughter Katherine, or by her
sisters. She requested that her son Richard and her three daughters
would wear mourning for three years after her decease, namely,
mourning with plain linen, excepting either of them married in the
meantime; and she appointed her eldest daughter, Katherine, her sole
executrix, who proved her will on the 6th February 1679-80.
Of her numerous children, the following particulars have been gleaned
from her Memoir and other sources.
1. HARRISON, born in the parish of St. John's Oxford, 22nd February
1644-5, and was there buried in the same year.
2. HENRY, born in Portugal Row, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London, 30th
July 1647, died on the 20th October 1650, and was buried in the
Protestant burying-ground at Paris.
3. RICHARD, born 8th June 1648, died before October 1650.
4. HENRY, born in November 1657, and dying in the same year, was
buried in Bengy Church, in Hertfordshire.
5. RICHARD, born at Lisbon, 26th June 1663; he lived a few hours only,
and was there buried in the Esperanza.
6. RICHARD, born at Madrid, 6th August 1665, to whom the Memoir was
addressed. He succeeded his father in 1666, and became the second
Baronet. He is said to have been deprived of his hearing, and at
length of his speech, in consequence of a fever, and to have died
unmarried about 1695, [Footnote: Le Neve's MSS. in the College of
Arms.] when the Baronetcy became extinct.
The daughters were:
1. ANNE, born at Jersey, 7th June 1646; died at Tankersley Park, in
Yorkshire, 20th July 1654, and was buried in the Parish Church of
Tankersley.
2. ELIZABETH, born at Madrid, 13th July 1649; died a few days
afterwards, and was buried in the Chapel of the French Hospital at
Madrid.
3. ELIZABETH, born 24th June 1650; died at Foot's Cray, in Kent, in
July 1656, and was there buried.
4. KATHERINE, born 30th July 1652, and was living, and unmarried, in
May 1705.
5. MARGARET, born at Tankersley Park, in Yorkshire, 8th October 1653,
married, before 1676, Vincent Grantham, of Goltho, in Lincolnshire,
Esq. It is remarkable that she is not mentioned in her mother's will.
She was living, and the wife or widow of Mr. Grantham, in May 1705.
6. ANN, born at Frog Pool, in Kent, 22nd February 1654-5, unmarried
October 1679; but afterwards married ---- Ryder, by whom she had a
daughter, Ann Lawrence, who, with her mother, were living in May 1705.
7. MARY, born in London, 12th July 1656; died in August 1660, and was
buried in All Saints' Church, Hertford.
8. ELIZABETH, born 22nd February 1662, to whom her mother bequeathed
600 pounds in her will in 1679, after which year nothing more of her
has been found.
Although some trouble has been taken to trace the descendants of Sir
Richard and Lady Fanshawe, all which has been discovered is, that
their daughters became their co-heirs about 1695; that Sir Edmund
Turnor, the husband of Lady Fanshawe's sister, in his will, dated 15th
May 1705, and proved in 1708, mentions his nieces Fanshawe, Grantham,
and niece Ann Fanshawe, alias Ryder, and Anne Lawrence, daughter of
his niece Ryder; and that the MS. from which this volume is printed is
said to have been transcribed in 1766 by Lady Fanshawe's "great
granddaughter, Charlotte Colman."
MEMOIRS OF LADY FANSHAWE
I have thought it good to discourse to you, my most dear and only son,
the most remarkable actions and accidents of your family, as well as
those more eminent ones of your father; and my life and necessity, not
delight or revenge, hath made me insert some passages which will
reflect on their owners, as the praises of others will be but just,
which is my intent in this narrative. I would not have you be a
stranger to it; because, by the example, you may imitate what is
applicable to your condition in the world, and endeavour to avoid
those misfortunes we have passed through, if God pleases.
Endeavour to be innocent as a dove, but as wise as a serpent; and let
this lesson direct you most in the greatest extremes of fortune. Hate
idleness, and curb all passions; be true in all words and actions;
unnecessarily deliver not your opinion; but when you do, let it be
just, well-considered, and plain. Be charitable in all thought, word
and deed, and ever ready to forgive injuries done to yourself, and be
more pleased to do good than to receive good.
Be civil and obliging to all, dutiful where God and nature command
you; but friend to one, and that friendship keep sacred, as the
greatest tie upon earth, and be sure to ground it upon virtue; for no
other is either happy or lasting.
Endeavour always to be content in that estate of life which it hath
pleased God to call you to, and think it a great fault not to employ
your time, either for the good of your soul, or improvement of your
understanding, health, or estate; and as these are the most pleasant
pastimes, so it will make you a cheerful old age, which is as
necessary for you to design, as to make provision to support the
infirmities which decay of strength brings: and it was never seen that
a vicious youth terminated in a contented, cheerful old age, but
perished out of countenance. Ever keep the best qualified persons
company, out of whom you will find advantage, and reserve some hours
daily to examine yourself and fortune; for if you embark yourself in
perpetual conversation or recreation, you will certainly shipwreck
your mind and fortune. Remember the proverb--such as his company is,
such is the man, and have glorious actions before your eyes, and think
what shall be your portion in Heaven, as well as what you desire on
earth.
Manage your fortune prudently, and forget not that you must give God
an account hereafter, and upon all occasions.
Remember your father, whose true image, though I can never draw to the
life, unless God will grant me that blessing in you; yet, because you
were but ten months and ten days old when God took him out of this
world, I will, for your advantage, show you him with all truth, and
without partiality.
He was of the highest size of men, strong, and of the best proportion;
his complexion sanguine, his skin exceedingly fair, his hair dark
brown and very curling, but not very long; his eyes grey and
penetrating, his nose high, his countenance gracious and wise, his
motion good, his speech clear and distinct. He never used exercise but
walking, and that generally with some book in his hand, which
oftentimes was poetry, in which he spent his idle hours; sometimes he
would ride out to take the air, but his most delight was, to go only
with me in a coach some miles, and there discourse of those things
which then most pleased him, of what nature soever.
He was very obliging to all, and forward to serve his master, his
country, and friend; cheerful in his conversation; his discourse ever
pleasant, mixed with the sayings of wise men, and their histories
repeated as occasion offered, yet so reserved that he never showed the
thought of his heart, in its greatest sense, but to myself only; and
this I thank God with all my soul for, that he never discovered his
trouble to me, but went from me with perfect cheerfulness and content;
nor revealed he his joys and hopes but would say, that they were
doubled by putting them in my breast. I never heard him hold a
disputation in my life, but often he would speak against it, saying it
was an uncharitable custom, which never turned to the advantage of
either party. He would never be drawn to the fashion of any party,
saying he found it sufficient honestly to perform that employment he
was in: he loved and used cheerfulness in all his actions, and
professed his religion in his life and conversation. He was a true
Protestant of the Church of England, so born, so brought up, and so
died; his conversation was so honest that I never heard him speak a
word in my life that tended to God's dishonour, or encouragement of
any kind of debauchery or sin. He was ever much esteemed by his two
masters, Charles the First and Charles the Second, both for great
parts and honesty, as for his conversation, in which they took great
delight, he being so free from passion, that made him beloved of all
that knew him, nor did I ever see him moved but with his master's
concerns, in which he would hotly pursue his interest through the
greatest difficulties.
He was the tenderest father imaginable, the carefullest and most
generous master I ever knew; he loved hospitality, and would often
say, it was wholly essential for the constitution of England: he loved
and kept order with the greatest decency possible; and though he would
say I managed his domestics wholly, yet I ever governed them and
myself by his commands; in the managing of which, I thank God, I found
his approbation and content.
Now you will expect that I should say something that may remain of us
jointly, which I will do though it makes my eyes gush out with tears,
and cuts me to the soul to remember, and in part express the joys I
was blessed with in him. Glory be to God, we never had but one mind
throughout our lives. Our souls were wrapped up in each other's; our
aims and designs one, our loves one, and our resentments one. We so
studied one the other, that we knew each other's mind by our looks.
Whatever was real happiness, God gave it me in him; but to commend my
better half, which I want sufficient expression for, methinks is to
commend myself, and so may bear a censure; but, might it be permitted,
I could dwell eternally on his praise most justly; but thus without
offence I do, and so you may imitate him in his patience, his
prudence, his chastity, his charity, his generosity, his perfect
resignation to God's will, and praise God for him as long as you live
here, and with him hereafter in the Kingdom of Heaven. Amen.
Your father was born in Ware Park, in the month of June, in the year
of our Lord 1608, and was the tenth child of Sir Henry Fanshawe, whose
father bought Ten, in Essex, and Ware Park, in Hertfordshire. This,
your great-grandfather, came out of Derbyshire from a small estate,
Fanshawe-Gate, being the principal part that then this family had,
which exceeded not above two hundred pounds a year, and about so much
more they had in the town and parish of Dronfield, within two miles of
Fanshawe-Gate, where the family had been some hundreds of years, as
appears by the church of Dronfield, in the chancel of which church I
have seen several grave-stones with the names of that family, many of
them very ancient; and the chancel, which is very old, was and is kept
wholly for a burying-place for that family.
There is in the town a free school, with a very good house and noble
endowment, founded by your great-grandfather, who was sent for to
London in Henry the Eighth's time, by an uncle of his, and of his own
name, to be brought up a clerk under his uncle Thomas Fanshawe, who
procured your great-grandfather's life to be put with his in the
patent of Remembrancers of his Majesty's Exchequer, which place he
enjoyed after the death of his uncle, he having left no male issue,
only two daughters, who had both great fortunes in land and money, and
married into the best families in Essex in that time. This was the
rise of your great-grandfather, who, with his office and his
Derbyshire estate, raised the family to what it hath been and now is.
He had one only brother, Robert Fanshawe, who had a good estate in
Derbyshire, and lived in Fanshawe-Gate, which he hired of his eldest
brother, your great-grandfather.
In this house my mother was born, Margaret, the eldest daughter of
Robert, your great-great-uncle: he married one of the daughters of
Rowland Eyes, of Bradway, in the same county of Derby, by whom he had
twelve sons and two daughters: that family remains in Dronfield to
this day.
Your great-grandfather married Alice Bourchier, of the last Earl of
Bath's family,[Footnote: This was not the fact. She was the daughter
of Anthony Bourchier, Esq., of the County of Gloucester, a family in
no way connected with the noble house of Bath.] by whom he had only
one son that lived, Henry, which was your grandfather; afterwards,
when he had been two years a widower, he married one of the daughters
of Customer Smythe, who had six sons and six daughters: his sons were
Sir John Smythe, Sir Thomas Smythe, Sir Richard Smythe, Sir Robert
Smythe, Mr. William Smythe, and Mr. Edward Smythe, who died young: two
were knighted by Queen Elizabeth, and two by King James; the eldest
was grandfather of the now Lord Strangford; the second had been
several times ambassador, and all married into good families, and left
great estates to their posterity, which remain to this day. The
daughters were Mrs. Fanshawe, your great-grandmother-in-law; the
second married Sir John Scott, of Kent; the third married Sir John
Davies, of the same county; the fourth married Sir Robert Poynz, of
Leicestershire; the fifth married Thomas Butler, of Herald, Esq.; and
the sixth married Sir Henry Fanshawe, your grandfather: these all left
a numerous posterity but Davies, and this day they are matched into
very considerable families. [Footnote: Lady Fanshawe is not quite
correct in her account of the Smythe family, and the statements in
Peerages are equally erroneous. Thomas Smythe, Esq. of Ostenhanger, in
Kent, Farmer of the Customs to Philip and Mary, and to Queen
Elizabeth, was the second son of John Smythe, Esq., (whose ancestors
were seated at Corsham, in Wiltshire, as early as the 15th century,)
by Joan, daughter of Robert Brounker, ancestor of the celebrated
Viscount Brounker. Customer Smythe died in 1591, and had by Alice,
daughter and heiress of Sir Andrew Judde, Lord Mayor of London, and
one of the representatives of Archbishop Chicheley, seven sons and six
daughters, 1. Andrew, who died young. 2. Sir John, of Ostenhanger,
father of Sir Thomas Smythe, K.B., who married Lady Barbara Sydney,
daughter of Robert first Earl of Leicester, K.G., was created Viscount
Strangford, in Ireland, in 1628, and was the ancestor of Percy Clinton
Sydney Smythe, sixth and present Viscount Strangford and first Baron
Penshurst, G.C.B. 3. Henry Smythe, of Corsham. 4. Sir Thomas Smythe,
of Bidborough, in the county of Kent, ambassador to Russia in 1604,
whose male descendants became extinct on the death of Sir Stafford
Sydney Smythe, Chief Baron of the Exchequer, in 1778. 5. Sir Richard
Smythe, of Leeds Castle, in Kent, whose son, Sir John, dying
issueless, in 1632, his sisters became his co-heiresses. 6. Robert
Smythe, of Highgate, who left issue. 7. Symon Smythe, killed at the
siege of Cadiz in 1597. Of the daughters of Customer Smythe, Mary
married Robert Davye, of London, Esq.; Ursula married, first, Simon
Harding, of London, Esq., and secondly William Butler, of Bidenham, in
Bedfordshire, Esq.; Johanna was the wife of Thomas Fanshawe, of Ware
Park, Herts, Esq.; Katherine was first the wife of Sir Rowland
Hayward, Lord Mayor of London, and secondly of Sir John Scott, of
Scott's Hall, in Kent; Alice married Edward Harris, of Woodham, in
Essex, Esq.; and Elizabeth, the sixth and youngest daughter, was the
wife of Sir Henry Fanshawe, Remembrancer of the Exchequer, father of
Sir Richard Fanshawe, the ambassador. Sir ROBERT Poyntz, of
Leicestershire, is a mistake of Lady Fanshawe's for Sir JAMES Poyntz,
of North Oxenden, in Essex, who married Mary, the sister and co-
heiress of Sir John Smythe, son of Sir Richard, of Bidborough, before
mentioned, and GRANDDAUGHTER of the Customer.]
Your great-grandfather had by his second wife, Sir Thomas Fanshawe,
Clerk of the Crown, and Surveyor-General of King James; to him he gave
his manor of Jenkins, in Essex, valued at near two thousand a year.
His second son by the same wife, William, he procured to be Auditor of
the Duchy, whose posterity hath in Essex, at Parslowes, about seven or
eight hundred pounds a year. His eldest daughter married Sir
Christopher Hatton, heir to the Lord Chancellor Hatton; his second
married Sir Benjamin Ayloffe, of Brackstead, in Essex; the third
married Mr. Bullock Harding, in Derbyshire; all men of very great
estates. As your grandfather inherited Ware Park and his office, the
flower of his father's estate, so did he of his wisdom and parts; and
both were happy in the favour of the princes of that time, for Queen
Elizabeth said that your grandfather was the best officer of accounts
she had, and a person of great integrity; and your grandfather was the
favourite of Prince Henry, and had the Prince lived to be King, had
been Secretary of State, as he would often tell him. Mr. Camden speaks
much in praise, as you may see, of Sir Henry Fanshawe's garden of Ware
Park, none excelling it in flowers, physic herbs, and fruit, in which
things he did greatly delight; also he was a great lover of music, and
kept many gentlemen that were perfectly well qualified both in that
and the Italian tongue, in which he spent some time. He likewise kept
several horses of manege, and rid them himself, which he delighted in,
and the Prince would say none did it better; he had great honour and
generosity in his nature, and to show you a little part of which I
will tell you this of him. He had a horse that the then Earl of Exeter
was much pleased with, and Sir Henry esteemed, because he deserved it.
My Lord, after some apology, desired Sir Henry to let him have his
horse and he would give him what he would; he replied, "My Lord, I
have no thoughts of selling him but to serve you; I bought him of such
a person, and gave so much for him, and that shall be my price to you
as I paid, being sixty pieces"; my Lord Exeter said, "That's too much,
but I will give you, Sir Henry, fifty," to which he made no answer;
next day my Lord sent a gentleman with sixty pieces, Sir Henry made
answer, "That was the price he paid and once had offered him, my Lord,
at, but not being accepted, his price now was eighty"; at the
receiving of this answer my Lord Exeter stormed, and sent his servant
back with seventy pieces. Sir Henry said, that "since my Lord would
not like him at eighty pieces, he would not sell him under a hundred
pieces, and if he returned with less he would not sell him at all";
upon which my Lord Exeter sent one hundred pieces, and had the horse.
His retinue was great, and that made him stretch his estate, which was
near if not full four thousand pounds a year; yet when he died, he
left no debt upon his estate. He departed this life at the age of
forty-eight years, and lies buried in the chancel, in a vault with his
father in the parish church of Ware; he was as handsome and as fine a
gentleman as England then had, a most excellent husband, father,
friend, and servant to his Prince. He left in the care of my lady his
widow, five sons and five daughters. His eldest son succeeded him in
his lands and office, and after the restoration of the King, he was
made Lord Viscount of Dromore in Ireland; he did engage his person and
estate for the crown, and fought in the battle of Edgehill, and this
ruined his estate, and was the cause of his sons selling Ware Park;
afterwards he tried, by the King's assistance, to be reimbursed, but
could not prevail. He was a very worthy, valiant, honest, good-natured
gentleman, charitable, and generous, and had excellent natural parts,
yet choleric and rash, which was only incommode to his own family: he
was a very pretty man, for he was but low, of a sanguine complexion,
much a gentleman in his mien and language; he was sixty-nine years of
age when he died, and is buried with his ancestors in Ware Church.
He married first the daughter of Sir Giles Allington, by whom he hath
a daughter called Anne, who remains a maid to this day; his second
wife was Elizabeth, daughter to Sir William Cockain, Lord Mayor of
London. She was a very good wife, but not else qualified extraordinary
in any thing. She brought him many children, whereof now remain three
sons and five daughters.
Thomas, Lord Viscount Fanshawe, his eldest son, died in May 1674; he
was a handsome gentleman, of an excellent understanding, and great
honour and honesty. He married the daughter and sole heir of Knitton
Ferrers, of Bedford-bury, in the county of Hertford, Esq., by whom he
had no child. After his father's death he married the daughter of Sir
John Evelyn, widow to Sir John Wrey, of Lincolnshire; by this wife he
had several children, of which only two survived him, Thomas, now Lord
Viscount Fanshawe, and Katherine. His widow is lately married unto my
Lord Castleton, of Senbeck, in Yorkshire. He lies buried with his
ancestors in the Parish Church of Ware. Your uncle Henry, that was the
second, was killed in fighting gallantly in the Low Countries with the
English colours in his hand. He was very handsome and a very brave
man, beloved and lamented by all who knew him. The third died a
bachelor; I knew him not. The fourth is Sir Simon Fanshawe, a gallant
gentleman, but more a libertine than any of his family; he married a
very fine and good woman, and of a great estate; she was daughter and
coheir to Sir William Walter, and widow to Knitton Ferrers, son to Sir
John Ferrers, of Hertfordshire.
Your father, Sir Richard Fanshawe, Knight and Baronet, one of the
Masters of the Requests, Secretary of the Latin Tongue, Burgess for
the University of Cambridge, and one of his Majesty's most honourable
Privy Council of England and Ireland, and his Majesty's Ambassador to
Portugal and Spain, was the fifth and youngest son. He married me, the
eldest daughter of Sir John Harrison, Knight, of Balls, in the county
of Hertford; he was married at thirty-five years of age, and lived
with me twenty-three years and twenty-nine days; he lies buried in a
new vault I purchased of Humphry, Lord Bishop of London, in St. Mary's
Chapel in the Church of Ware, near his ancestors, over which I built
him a monument.
My dear husband had six sons and eight daughters, born and christened,
and I miscarried of six more, three at several times, and once of
three sons when I was about half gone my time. Harrison, my eldest
son, and Henry, my second son; Richard, my third; Henry, my fourth;
and Richard, my fifth, are all dead; my second lies buried in the
Protestant Church-yard in Paris, by the father of the Earl of Bristol;
my eldest daughter Anne lies buried in the Parish Church of
Tankersley, in Yorkshire, where she died; Elizabeth lies in the Chapel
of the French Hospital at Madrid, where she died of a fever at ten
days old; my next daughter of her name lies buried in the Parish of
Foot's Cray, in Kent, near Frog-Pool, my brother Warwick's house,
where she died; and my daughter Mary lies in my father's vault in
Hertford, with my first son Henry; my eldest lies buried in the Parish
Church of St. John's College in Oxford, where he was born; my second
Henry lies in Bengy Church, in Hertfordshire; and my second Richard in
the Esperanza in Lisbon in Portugal, he being born ten weeks before my
time when I was in that Court. I praise God I have living yourself and
four sisters, Katherine unmarried, Margaret married to Vincent
Grantham, Esq., of Goltho, in the county of Lincoln, Anne, and
Elizabeth.
Now I have shown you the most part of your family by the male line,
except Sir Thomas Fanshawe, of Jenkins, who has but one child, and
that a daughter, and two brothers, both unmarried. Their father as
well as themselves was a worthy honest gentleman and a great sufferer
for the Crown, wholly engaging his estate for the maintenance thereof;
and so is my cousin John Fanshawe, of Parslowes, in Essex, who hath
but two sons, one unmarried by his first wife, who was the daughter of
Sir William Kingsmill; and the other is a child whom he had by his
last wife, the daughter of my cousin, Thomas Fanshawe, of Jenkins.
I confess I owe Sir Thomas Fanshawe as good a character as I can
express, for he fully deserves it, both for his true honours, and most
excellent acquired and natural parts; and that which is of me most
esteemed, he was your father's intimate friend as well as near
kinsman; and during the time of the war he was very kind to us, by
assisting us in our wants, which were as great as his supports; which,
though, I thank God, I have fully repaid, yet must ever remain obliged
for his kindness and the esteem he hath for us.
He married the daughter and heir of Sir Edward Heath, a pretty lady
and a good woman; but I must here with thankfulness acknowledge God's
bounty to your family, who hath bestowed most excellent wives on most
of them, both in person and fortune; but with respect to the rest, I
must give with all reverence justly your grandmother the first and
best place, who being left a widow at thirty-nine years of age,
handsome, with a full fortune, all her children provided for, kept
herself a widow, and out of her jointure and revenue purchased six
hundred pounds a year for the younger children of her eldest son;
besides, she added five hundred pounds a piece to the portions of her
younger children, having nine, whereof but one daughter was married
before the death of Sir Henry Fanshawe, and she was the second, her
name was Mary, married to William Neuce, Esq., of Hadham, in
Hertfordshire; the eldest daughter married Sir Capell Bedells, of
Hammerton, in Huntingdonshire; the third never married; the fourth
married Sir William Boteler, of Teston, in Kent; the fifth died young.
Thus you have been made acquainted with most of your nearest relations
by your father, except your cousins german, which are the three sons
of your uncle, Lord Fanshawe, and William Neuce, Esq., and his two
brothers, and Sir Oliver Boteler, and my Lady Campbell, three maiden
sisters of hers, and my Lady Levingthorpe, of Blackware, in
Hertfordshire. There was more, but they are dead; and so are the most
part of them I have named, but their memories will remain as long as
their names, for honest, worthy, virtuous men and women, who served
God in their generations in their several capacities, and without
vanity none exceeded them in their loyalty, which cost them dear, for
there were as many fathers, sons, uncles, nephews, and cousins german,
and those that matched to them, engaged and sequestered for the Crown
in the time of the late rebellion as their revenue made nearly eighty
thousand pounds a year, and this I have often seen a list of and know
it to be true.
The use of which to you is, that you should not omit your duty to your
king and country, nor be less in your industry to exceed at least, not
shame, the excellent memory of your ancestors. They were all eminent
officers; and that, I believe, keeping them ever employed, made them
so good men. I hope in God the like parallel will be in you, which I
heartily and daily pray for.
I was born in St. Olave's, Hart-street, London, in a house that my
father took of the Lord Dingwall, father to the now Duchess of Ormond,
in the year 1625, on our Lady Day, 25th of March. Mr. Hyde, Lady
Alston, and Lady Wolstenholme, were my godfather and godmothers. In
that house I lived the winter times till I was fifteen years old and
three months, with my ever honoured and most dear mother, who departed
this life on the 20th day of July, 1640, and now lies buried in
Allhallow's Church, in Hertford. Her funeral cost my father above a
thousand pounds; and Dr. Howlsworth preached her funeral sermon, in
which, upon his own knowledge, he told before many hundreds of people
this accident following: that my mother, being sick to death of a
fever three months after I was born, which was the occasion she gave
me suck no longer, her friends and servants thought to all outward
appearance that she was dead, and so lay almost two days and a night,
but Dr. Winston coming to comfort my father, went into my mother's
room, and looking earnestly on her face, said "she was so handsome,
and now looks so lovely, I cannot think she is dead"; and suddenly
took a lancet out of his pocket and with it cut the sole of her foot,
which bled. Upon this, he immediately caused her to be laid upon the
bed again and to be rubbed, and such means as she came to life, and
opening her eyes, saw two of her kinswomen stand by her, my Lady
Knollys and my Lady Russell, both with great wide sleeves, as the
fashion then was, and said, Did not you promise me fifteen years, and
are you come again? which they not understanding, persuaded her to
keep her spirits quiet in that great weakness wherein she then was;
but some hours after she desired my father and Dr. Howlsworth might be
left alone with her, to whom she said, "I will acquaint you, that
during the time of my trance I was in great quiet, but in a place I
could neither distinguish nor describe; but the sense of leaving my
girl, who is dearer to me than all my children, remained a trouble
upon my spirits. Suddenly I saw two by me, clothed in long white
garments, and methought I fell down with my face in the dust; and they
asked why I was troubled in so great happiness. I replied, O let me
have the same grant given to Hezekiah, that I may live fifteen years,
to see my daughter a woman: to which they answered, It is done; and
then, at that instant, I awoke out of my trance;" and Dr. Howlsworth
did there affirm, that that day she died made just fifteen years from
that time. My dear mother was of excellent beauty and good
understanding, a loving wife, and most tender mother; very pious, and
charitable to that degree, that she relieved, besides the offals of
the table, which she constantly gave to the poor, many with her own
hand daily out of her purse, and dressed many wounds of miserable
people, when she had health, and when that failed, as it did often,
she caused her servants to supply that place.
She left behind her three sons, all much older than myself. The
eldest, John, married three wives: by his last, who was the daughter
of Mr. Ludlow, a very ancient and noble family, he left two daughters,
who are both unmarried. My second brother, William, died at Oxford
with a bruise on his side, caused by the fall of his horse, which was
shot under him, as he went out with a party of horse against a party
of the Earl of Essex, in 1643. He was a very good and gallant young
man; and they are the very words the king said of him, when he was
told of his death: he was much lamented by all who knew him. The
third, Abraham, hath left no issue; I was the fourth, and my sister
Margaret, the fifth, who married Sir Edmund Turner, of South Stock, in
Lincolnshire, a worthy pious man.
My father, in his old age, married again, the daughter of Mr.
Shatbolt, of Hertfordshire, and had by her a son, Richard, and a
daughter, Mary. The son married the eldest daughter of the now Lord
Grandison, and the daughter married the eldest son of Sir Rowland
Lytton, of Knebworth, in Hertfordshire. My father lived to see them
both married; and enjoyed a firm health, until above eighty years of
age. He was a handsome gentleman of great natural parts, a great
accomptant, vast memory, an incomparable penman, of great integrity
and service to his prince; had been a member of several Parliaments; a
good husband and father, especially to me, who never can sufficiently
praise God for him, nor acknowledge his most tender affection and
bounty to me and mine; but as in duty bound, I will for ever say, none
had ever a kinder and better father than myself. He died on the 28th
day of September, 1670; and lies buried by my mother in his own vault
in Allhallows Church, in Hertford.
My father was born at Bemond, in Lancashire; the twelfth son of his
father, whose mother was the daughter of Mr. Hippom, cousin german to
the old Countess of Rivers. I have little knowledge of my father's
relations more than the families of Aston, Irland, Sandis, Bemond, and
Curwen, who brought him to London and placed him with my Lord
Treasurer Salisbury, then Secretary of State, who sent him into Sir
John Wolstenholm's family, and gave him a small place in the Custom-
house, to enable him for the employment. He, being of good parts and
great capacity, in some time raised himself, by God's help, to get a
very great estate, for I have often heard him say that, besides his
education, he never had but twenty marks, which his father gave him
when he came to London, and that was all he ever had for a portion. He
made it appear with great truth that, during the time of the war, he
lost by the rebels above one hundred and thirty thousand pounds, and
yet he left his son sixteen hundred pounds a year in land, and gave
his daughter above twenty thousand pounds.
Now it is necessary to say something of my mother's education of me,
which was with all the advantages that time afforded, both for working
all sorts of fine works with my needle, and learning French, singing,
lute, the virginals and dancing, and notwithstanding I learned as well
as most did, yet was I wild to that degree, that the hours of my
beloved recreation took up too much of my time, for I loved riding in
the first place, running, and all active pastimes; in short, I was
that which we graver people call a hoyting girl; but to be just to
myself, I never did mischief to myself or people, nor one immodest
word or action in my life, though skipping and activity was my
delight, but upon my mother's death, I then began to reflect, and, as
an offering to her memory, I flung away those childnesses that had
formerly possessed me, and, by my father's command, took upon me
charge of his house and family, which I so ordered by my excellent
mother's example as found acceptance in his sight. I was very well
beloved by all our relations and my mother's friends, whom I paid a
great respect to, and I ever was ambitious to keep the best company,
which I have done, I thank God, all the days of my life. My father and
mother were both great lovers and honourers of clergymen, but all of
Cambridge, and chiefly Doctor Bamberge, Doctor Howlsworth,
Broanbricke, Walley, and Mickelthite, and Sanderson, with many others.
We lived in great plenty and hospitality, but no lavishness in the
least, nor prodigality, and, I believe, my father never drank six
glasses of wine in his life in one day.
About 1641, my brother, William Harrison, was chosen Burgess of ----,
and sat in the Commons' House of Parliament, but not long, for when
the King set up his standard he went with him to Nottingham; yet he,
during his sitting, undertook that my father should lend one hundred
and fifty thousand pounds to pay the Scots who had then entered
England, and, as it seems, were to be both paid and prayed to go home,
but afterwards their plague infected the whole nation, as to all our
sorrows we know, and that debt of my father's remained to him until
the restoration of the King. In 1642 my father was taken prisoner at
his house, called Montague House, in Bishopgate Street, and threatened
to be sent on board a ship with many more of his quality, and then
they plundered his house, but he getting loose, under pretence to
fetch some writings they demanded in his hands concerning the public
revenue, he went to Oxford in 1643, and thereupon the Long Parliament,
of which he was a member for the town of Lancaster, plundered him out
of what remained, and sequestered his whole estate, which continued
out of his possession until the happy restoration of the King.
My father commanded my sister and myself to come to him to Oxford
where the Court then was, but we, that had till that hour lived in
great plenty and great order, found ourselves like fishes out of the
water, and the scene was so changed, that we knew not at all how to
act any part but obedience, for, from as good a house as any gentleman
of England had, we came to a baker's house in an obscure street, and
from rooms well furnished, to lie in a very bad bed in a garret, to
one dish of meat, and that not the best ordered, no money, for we were
as poor as Job, nor clothes more than a man or two brought in their
cloak bags: we had the perpetual discourse of losing and gaining towns
and men; at the windows the sad spectacle of war, sometimes plague,
sometimes sicknesses of other kind, by reason of so many people being
packed together, as, I believe, there never was before of that
quality; always in want, yet I must needs say that most bore it with a
martyr-like cheerfulness. For my own part, I began to think we should
all, like Abraham, live in tents all the days of our lives. The King
sent my father a warrant for a baronet, but he returned it with
thanks, saying he had too much honour of his knighthood which his
Majesty had honoured him with some years before, for the fortune he
now possessed: but as in a rock the turbulence of the waves disperses
the splinters of the rock, so it was my lot, for having buried my dear
brother, William Harrison, in Exeter College Chapel, I then married
your dear father in 1644 in Wolvercot Church, two miles from Oxford,
upon the 18th day of May. None was at our wedding but my dear father,
who, at my mother's desire, gave me her wedding-ring, with which I was
married, and my sister Margaret, and my brother and sister Boteler,
Sir Edward Hyde, afterwards Lord Chancellor, and Sir Geoffry Palmer,
the King's Attorney. Before I was married, my husband was sworn
Secretary of War to the Prince, now our King, with a promise from
Charles I. to be preferred as soon as occasion offered it, but both
his fortune and my promised portion, which was made 10,000 pounds,
were both at that time in expectation, and we might truly be called
merchant adventurers, for the stock we set up our trading with did not
amount to twenty pounds betwixt us; but, however, it was to us as a
little piece of armour is against a bullet, which if it be right
placed, though no bigger than a shilling, serves as well as a whole
suit of armour; so our stock bought pen, ink and paper, which was your
father's trade, and by it, I assure you, we lived better than those
that were born to 2OOO pounds a year as long as he had his liberty.
Here stay till I have told you your father's life until I married him.
He was but seven years old when his father died, and his mother, my
Lady, designed him for the law, having bred him first with that famous
schoolmaster Mr. Farnaby, and then under the tuition of Dr. Beale, in
Jesus College in Cambridge, from whence, being a most excellent
Latinist, he was admitted into the Inner Temple; but it seemed so
crabbed a study, and disagreeable to his inclinations, that he rather
studied to obey his mother than to make any progress in the law. Upon
the death of his mother, whom he dearly loved and honoured, he went
into France to Paris, where he had three cousins german, Lord
Strangford, Sir John Baker of Kent, and my cousin Thornhill. The whole
stock he carried with him was eighty pieces of gold, and French silver
to the value of five pounds in his pocket; his gold was quilted in his
doublet; he went by post to lodgings in the Fauxbourg St. Germain,
with an intent to rest that night, and the next day to find out his
kindred; but the devil, that never sleeps, so ordered it, that two
friars entered the chamber wherein he was, and welcoming him, being
his countrymen, invited him to play, he innocently only intending
diversion, till his supper was ready; but that was not their design,
for having engaged him, they left him not as long as he was worth a
groat, which when they discovered, they gave him five pieces of his
money until he could recruit himself by his friends, which he did the
next day: and from that time forward never played for a piece. It came
to pass, that seven years after, my husband being in Huntingdonshire,
at a bowling-green, with Sir Capel Bedells, and many other persons of
quality, one in the company was called Captain Taller. My husband, who
had a very quick and piercing eye, marked him much, as knowing his
face, and found, through his peruke wig, and scarlet cloak and buff
suit, that his name was neither Captain nor Taller, but the honest
Jesuit called Friar Sherwood, that had cheated him of the greatest
part of his money, and after had lent him the five pieces; so your
father went to him, and gave him his five pieces, and said, 'Father
Sherwood, I know you, and you know this:' at which he was extremely
surprised, and begged of your father not to discover him, for his life
was in danger. After a year's stay in Paris, he travelled to Madrid in
Spain, there to learn that language; at the same time, for that
purpose, went the late Earl of Caernarvon, and my Lord of Bedford, and
Sir John Berkeley, and several other gentlemen. Afterwards, having
spent some years abroad, he returned to London, and gave so good an
account of his travels, that he was about the year 1630 made Secretary
of the Embassy, when my Lord Aston went Ambassador. During your
father's travels, he had spent a considerable part of his stock, which
his father and mother left him: in those days, where there were so
many younger children, it was inconsiderable, being 50 pounds a year,
and 1,500 pounds in money. Upon the return of the ambassador, your
father was left resident until Sir Arthur Hopton went Ambassador, and
then he came home about the year 1637 or 1638; and I must tell you
here of an accident your father had coming out of Spain in this
journey post: he going into a bed for some few hours to refresh
himself, in a village five leagues from Madrid, he slept so soundly,
that notwithstanding the house was on fire, and all the people of the
village there, he never waked; but the honesty of the owners was such,
that they carried him, and set him asleep upon a piece of timber on
the highway; and there he awaked, and found his portmanteau and
clothes by him, without the least loss, which is extraordinary,
considering the profession of his landlord, who had at that time his
house burnt to the ground. After being here a year or two, and no
preferment coming, Secretary Windebank calling him Puritan, being his
enemy, because himself was a Papist, he was, by his elder brother, put
into the place of the King's Remembrancer, absolutely, with this
proviso, that he should be accountable for the use of the income; but
if in seven years he would pay 8,000 pounds for it to his brother,
then it should be his, with the whole revenue of it; but the war
breaking out presently after, put an end to this design; for, being
the King's sworn servant, he went to the King at Oxford, as well as
his fellows, to avoid the fury of this madness of the people, where,
having been almost a year, we married, as I said before; and I will
continue my discourse where we left.
Now we appear on the stage, to act what part God designed us; and as
faith is the evidence of things not seen, so we, upon so righteous a
cause, cheerfully resolved to suffer what that would drive us to,
which afflictions were neither few nor small, as you will find. This
year the Prince had an established Council, which were the Earl of
Berkshire, Earl of Bradford, Lord Capel, Lord Colepeper, Lord Hopton,
and Sir Edward Hyde, Chancellor of the Exchequer. My husband was then,
as I said, newly entered into his office of secretary of the Council
of War, and the King would have had him then to have been sworn his
Highness's Secretary, but the Queen, who was then no friend to my
husband, because he had formerly made Secretary Windebank appear in
his colours, who was one of her Majesty's favourites, wholly
obstructed that then, and placed with the Prince Sir Robert Long, for
whom she had a great kindness; but the consequence will show the man.
The beginning of March 1645, your father went to Bristol with his new
master, and this was his first journey: I then lying-in of my first
son, Harrison Fanshawe, who was born on the 22nd of February, he left
me behind him. As for that, it was the first time we had parted a day
since we married; he was extremely afflicted, even to tears, though
passion was against his nature; but the sense of leaving me with a
dying child, which did die two days after, in a garrison town,
extremely weak, and very poor, were such circumstances as he could not
bear with, only the argument of necessity; and, for my own part, it
cost me so dear, that I was ten weeks before I could go alone; but he,
by all opportunities, wrote to me to fortify myself, and to comfort me
in the company of my father and sister, who were both with me, and
that as soon as the Lords of the Council had their wives come to them
I should come to him, and that I should receive the first money he
got, and hoped it would be suddenly. By the help of God, with these
cordials I recovered my former strength by little and little, nor did
I in my distressed condition lack the conversation of many of my
relations then in Oxford, and kindnesses of very many of the nobility
and gentry, both for goodness sake, and because your father being
there in good employment, they found him serviceable to themselves or
friends, which friendships none better distinguished between his place
and person than your father.
It was in May 1645, the first time I went out of my chamber and to
church, where, after service, Sir William Parkhurst, a very honest
gentleman, came to me, and said he had a letter for me from your
father and fifty pieces of gold, and was coming to bring them to me. I
opened first my letter, and read those inexpressible joys that almost
overcame me, for he told me I should the Thursday following come to
him, and to that purpose he had sent me that money, and would send two
of his men with horses, and all accommodation both for myself, my
father, and sister, and that Lady Capell and Lady Bradford would meet
me on the way; but that gold your father sent me when I was ready to
perish, did not so much revive me as his summons. I went immediately
to walk, or at least to sit in the air, being very weak, in the garden
of St. John's College, and there, with my good father, communicated my
joy, who took great pleasure to hear of my husband's good success and
likewise of his journey to him. We, all of my household being present,
heard drums beat in the highway, under the garden wall. My father
asked me if I would go up upon the mount to see the soldiers march,
for it was Sir Charles Lee's company of foot, an acquaintance of ours;
I said yes, and went up, leaning my back to a tree that grew on the
mount. The commander seeing us there, in compliment gave us a volley
of shot, and one of their muskets being loaded, shot a brace of
bullets not two inches above my head as I leaned to the tree, for
which mercy and deliverance I praise God. And next week we were all on
our journey for Bristol very merry, and thought that now all things
would mend, and the worst of my misfortunes past, but little thought I
to leap into the sea that would toss me until it had racked me; but we
were to ride all night by agreement, for fear of the enemy surprising
us as they passed, they quartering in the way. About nightfall having
travelled about twenty miles, we discovered a troop of horse coming
towards us, which proved to be Sir Marmaduke Rawdon, a worthy
commander and my countryman: he told me, that hearing I was to pass by
his garrison, he was come out to conduct me, he hoped as far as was
danger, which was about twelve miles: with many thanks we parted, and
having refreshed ourselves and horses, we set forth for Bristol, where
we arrived on the 2Oth of May.
My husband had provided very good lodgings for us, and as soon as he
could come home from the Council, where he was at my arrival, he with
all expressions of joy received me in his arms, and gave me a hundred
pieces of gold, saying, "I know thou that keeps my heart so well, will
keep my fortune, which from this time I will ever put into thy hands
as God shall bless me with increase." And now I thought myself a
perfect queen, and my husband so glorious a crown, that I more valued
myself to be called by his name than born a princess, for I knew him
very wise and very good, and his soul doted on me; upon which
confidence I will tell you what happened. My Lady Rivers, a brave
woman, and one that had suffered many thousand pounds loss for the
King, and whom I had a great reverence for, and she a kindness for me
as a kinswoman, in discourse she tacitly commended the knowledge of
state affairs, and that some women were very happy in a good
understanding thereof, as my Lady Aubigny, Lady Isabel Thynne, and
divers others, and yet none was at first more capable than I; that in
the night she knew there came a post from Paris from the Queen, and
that she would be extremely glad to hear what the Queen commanded the
King in order to his affairs; saying, if I would ask my husband
privately, he would tell me what he found in the packet, and I might
tell her. I that was young and innocent, and to that day had never in
my mouth what news, began to think there was more in inquiring into
public affairs than I thought of, and that it being a fashionable
thing would make me more beloved of my husband, if that had been
possible, than I was. When my husband returned home from Council,
after welcoming him, as his custom ever was he went with his handful
of papers into his study for an hour or more; I followed him; he
turned hastily, and said, "What wouldst thou have, my life?" I told
him, I had heard the Prince had received a packet from the Queen, and
I guessed it was that in his hand, and I desired to know what was in
it; he smilingly replied, "My love, I will immediately come to thee,
pray thee go, for I am very busy." When he came out of his closet I
revived my suit; he kissed me, and talked of other things. At supper I
would eat nothing; he as usual sat by me, and drank often to me, which
was his custom, and was full of discourse to company that was at
table. Going to bed I asked again, and said I could not believe he
loved me if he refused to tell me all he knew; but he answered
nothing, but stopped my mouth with kisses. So we went to bed, I cried,
and he went to sleep. Next morning early, as his custom was, he called
to rise, but began to discourse with me first, to which I made no
reply; he rose, came on the other side of the bed and kissed me, and
drew the curtains softly and went to Court. When he came home to
dinner, he presently came to me as was usual, and when I had him by
the hand, I said, 'Thou dost not care to see me troubled'; to which he
taking me in his arms, answered, 'My dearest soul, nothing upon earth
can afflict me like that, and when you asked me of my business, it was
wholly out of my power to satisfy thee, for my life and fortune shall
be thine, and every thought of my heart in which the trust I am in may
not be revealed, but my honour is my own, which I cannot preserve if I
communicate the Prince's affairs; and pray thee with this answer rest
satisfied.' So great was his reason and goodness, that upon
consideration it made my folly appear to me so vile, that from that
day until the day of his death I never thought fit to ask him any
business but what he communicated freely to me in order to his estate
or family. My husband grew much in the Prince's favour; and Mr. Long
not being suffered to execute the business of his place, as the
Council suspected that he held private intelligence with the Earl of
Essex, which when he perceived he went into the enemy's quarters, and
so to London, and then into France, full of complaints of the Prince's
Council to the Queen-Mother, and when he was gone your father supplied
his place.
About July this year, [1645,] the plague increased so fast in Bristol,
that the Prince and all his retinue went to Barnstaple, which is one
of the finest towns in England; and your father and I went two days
after the Prince; for during all the time I was in the Court I never
journeyed but either before him, or when he was gone, nor ever saw him
but at church, for it was not in those days the fashion for honest
women, except they had business, to visit a man's Court. I saw there
at Mr. Palmer's, where we lay, who was a merchant, a parrot above a
hundred years old. They have, near this town, a fruit called a
massard, like a cherry, but different in taste, and makes the best
pies with their sort of cream I ever eat. My Lady Capell here left us,
and with a pass from the Earl of Essex, went to London with her eldest
daughter, now Marquesse of Worcester. Sir Allan Apsley was governor of
the town, and we had all sorts of good provision and accommodation;
but the Prince's affairs calling him from that place, we went to
Launceston, in Cornwall, and thither came very many gentlemen of that
county to do their duties to his Highness: they were generally loyal
to the crown and hospitable to their neighbours, but they are of a
crafty and censorious nature, as most are so far from London. That
country hath great plenty, especially of fish and fowl, but nothing
near so fat and sweet as within forty miles of London. We were
quartered at Truro, twenty miles beyond Launceston, in which place I
had like to have been robbed. One night having with me but seven or
eight persons, my husband being then at Launceston with his master,
somebody had discovered that my husband had a little trunk of the
Prince's in keeping, in which were some jewels that tempted them us to
assay; but, praised be God, I defended, with the few servants I had,
the house so long that help came from the town to my rescue, which was
not above a flight shot from the place where I dwelt; and the next day
upon my notice my husband sent me a guard by his Highness's command.
From thence the Court removed to Pendennis Castle, some time commanded
by Sir Nicholas Slanning, who lost his life bravely in the King's
service [Footnote: He was killed at the siege of Bristol.], and left
an excellent name behind him. In this place came Sir John Granville
into his Highness's service, and was made a gentleman of his
bedchamber. His father was a very honest gentleman, and lost his life
in the King's service; and his uncle, Sir Richard, was a good
commander but a little too severe. I was at Penzance with my father,
and in the same town was my brother Fanshawe and his lady and
children. My father and that family embarked for Morlaix, in
Brittanny, with my father's new wife, which he had then married out of
that family. My cousin Fanshawe, of Jenkins, and his eldest son, being
with them, went also over, but being in a small vessel of that port
and surprised with a great storm, they had all like to have been cast
away, which forced them to land in a little creek, two leagues from
Morlaix, upon the 28th of March, 1646; and five days after the Prince
and all his council embarked themselves in a ship called the Phoenix,
for the Isles of Scilly. They went from the Land's-end, and so did we;
being accompanied with many gentlemen of that country, among whom was
Sir Francis Basset, Governor of the Mount, an honest gentleman, and so
were all his family; and in particular we received great civility from
them. But we left our house and furniture with Captain Bluet, who
promised to keep them until such a time as we could dispose of them;
but when we sent, he said he had been plundered of them,
notwithstanding it was well known he lost nothing of his own. At that
time this loss went deep with us, for we lost to the value of 2OO
pounds and more. But, as the proverb saith, an evil chance seldom
comes alone: we having put all our present estate into two trunks, and
carried them aboard with us in a ship commanded by Sir Nicholas
Crispe, whose skill and honesty the master and seamen had no opinion
of, my husband was forced to appease their mutiny which his
miscarriage caused; and taking out money to pay the seamen, that night
following they broke open one of our trunks, and took out a bag of 60
pounds and a quantity of gold lace, with our best clothes and linen,
with all my combs, gloves, and ribbons, which amounted to near 300
pounds more. The next day, after having been pillaged, and extremely
sick and big with child, I was set on shore almost dead in the island
of Scilly. When we had got to our quarters near the Castle, where the
Prince lay, I went immediately to bed, which was so vile, that my
footman ever lay in a better, and we had but three in the whole house,
which consisted of four rooms, or rather partitions, two low rooms and
two little lofts, with a ladder to go up: in one of these they kept
dried fish, which was his trade, and in this my husband's two clerks
lay, one there was for my sister, and one for myself, and one amongst
the rest of the servants. But, when I waked in the morning, I was so
cold I knew not what to do, but the daylight discovered that my bed
was near swimming with the sea, which the owner told us afterwards it
never did so but at spring tide. With this, we were destitute of
clothes,--and meat, and fuel, for half the Court to serve them a month
was not to be had in the whole island; and truly we begged our daily
bread of God, for we thought every meal our last. The Council sent for
provisions to France, which served us, but they were bad, and a little
of them. Then, after three weeks and odd days, we set sail for the
Isle of Jersey, where we safely arrived, praised be God, beyond the
belief of all the beholders from that island; for the pilot not
knowing the way into the harbour, sailed over the rocks, but being
spring tide, and by chance high water, God be praised, his Highness
and all of us came safe ashore through so great a danger. Sir George
Carteret was Lieutenant-Governor of the island, under my Lord St.
Albans: a man formerly bred a sea-boy, and born in that island, the
brother's son of Sir Philip Carteret, whose younger daughter he
afterwards married. He endeavoured, with all his power, to entertain
his Highness and Court with all plenty and kindness possible, both
which the island afforded, and what was wanting, he sent for out of
France.
There are in this island two castles, both good, but St. Mary's is
best, and hath the largest reception. There are many gentlemen's
houses, at which we were entertained. They have fine walks along to
their doors, double elms or oaks, which is extremely pleasant, and
their ordinary highways are good walks, by reason of the shadow. The
whole place is grass, except some small parcels where corn is grown.
The chiefest employment is knitting; they neither speak English nor
good French; they are a cheerful, good-natured people, and truly
subject to the present government. We quartered at a widow's house in
the market-place, Madame De Pommes, a stocking merchant: here I was
upon the 7th of March, [Footnote: Query, May or June. She did not
arrive in Jersey until April.] 1646, delivered of my second child, a
daughter, christened Anne. And now there began great disputes about
the Prince, for the Queen would have him to Paris, to which end she
sent many letters and messengers to his Highness and Council, who were
for the most part against his going, both to the Queen his mother, and
his going to France, for reasons of state, but the Queen having an
excellent solicitor in the Lord Colepeper, it was resolved by his
Highness to go: upon which Lord Capell, Lord Hopton, and the
Chancellor staid at Jersey, and with them my husband, whose employment
ceased when his master went out of his father's kingdom;--not that
your father sided with either party of the Council, but having no
inclination at that time to go to the Court, and because his brother,
Lord Fanshawe, was desperately sick at Caen, he intended to stay some
time with him. About the beginning of July, the Prince, accompanied
with the Earl of Bradford, a soldier of fortune, and Lord Colepeper,
and the Earl of Berkshire, and most of his servants, went to
Cotanville, and from thence to Paris, where he remained some little
time by his mother the Queen's council, and afterwards went into
Holland. Your father and I remained fifteen days in Jersey, and
resolved that he would remain with his brother in Caen, whilst he sent
me into England, whither my father was gone a month before, to see if
I could procure a sum of money. The beginning of August we took our
leave of the governor's family, and left our child with a nurse under
the care of the Lady Carteret; [Footnote: It was apparently this Lady,
of whom Pepys observes, 30th June, 1662. "Told my Lady Carteret, how
my Lady Fanshawe is fallen out with her only for speaking in behalf of
the French: which my Lady wonders at, they having been formerly like
sisters."--Diary, vol. i. p. 284.] and in four days we came to Caen,
and myself, sister, and maid went from Mr. Fanborne's house, where my
brother and all his family lodged, aboard a small merchantman that lay
in the river; and upon the 30th of August, I arrived in the Cowes,
near Southampton, to which place I went that night, and came to London
two days after. This was the first time I had taken a journey without
your father, and the first manage of business he ever put into my
hands, in which I thank God I had good success; for, lodging in Fleet
Street, at Mr. Eates, the Watchmaker, with my sister Boteler, I
procured by the means of Colonel Copley, a great Parliament-man, whose
wife had formerly been obliged to our family, a pass for your father
to come and compound for 300 pounds which was a part of my fortune,
but it was only a pretence, for your grandfather was obliged to
compound for it, and deliver it us free. And when your father was
come, he was very private in London; for he was in daily fears to be
imprisoned before he could raise money to go back again to his master,
who was not then in a condition to maintain him. Thus upon thorns he
stayed the October 1647. In the October before, 1646, my brother
Richard Harrison was born; and this year my sister Boteler married Sir
Philip Warwick, her second husband; for her first, Sir William
Boteler, was killed at Cropley-bridge, commanding a part of the King's
army: he was a most gallant, worthy, honest gentleman.
The 30th of July I was delivered of a son, called Henry, in lodgings
in Portugal-row, Lincoln's-inn-fields. This was a very sad time for us
all of the King's party, for by the folly, to give it no worse name,
of Sir John Berkeley, since Lord Berkeley, and Mr. John Ashburnham, of
the King's bedchamber, who were drawn in by the cursed crew of the
then standing army for the Parliament to persuade the King to leave
Hampton Court, to which they had then carried him, and to make his
escape, which design failing, as the plot was laid, he was tormented
and afterwards barbarously and shamefully murdered, as all the world
knows.
During his stay at Hampton Court, my husband was with him, to whom he
was pleased to talk much of his concerns, and give him there
credentials for Spain, with private instructions, and letters for his
service; but God for our sins disposed his Majesty's affairs
otherwise. I went three times to pay my duty to him, both as I was the
daughter of his servant, and wife of his servant. The last time I ever
saw him, when I took my leave, I could not refrain weeping: when he
had saluted me, I prayed to God to preserve his Majesty with long life
and happy years; he stroked me on the cheek, and said, 'Child, if God
pleaseth, it shall be so, but both you and I must submit to God's
will, and you know in what hands I am'; then turning to your father,
he said, 'Be sure, Dick, to tell my son all that I have said, and
deliver those letters to my wife; pray God bless her! I hope I shall
do well'; and taking him in his arms, said, 'Thou hast ever been an
honest man, and I hope God will bless thee, and make thee a happy
servant to my son, whom I have charged in my letter to continue his
love, and trust to you'; adding, 'I do promise you that if ever I am
restored to my dignity I will bountifully reward you both for your
service and sufferings.' Thus did we part from that glorious sun, that
within a few months after was murdered, to the grief of all Christians
that were not forsaken by God.
The October, as I told you, my husband and I went into France, by the
way of Portsmouth, where, walking by the sea side about a mile from
our lodgings, two ships of the Dutch, then in war with England, shot
bullets at us so near that we heard them whiz by us; at which I called
to my husband to make haste back, and began to run, but he altered not
his pace, saying, 'If we must be killed, it were as good to be killed
walking as running.' But, escaping, we embarked the next day; and that
journey fetched home our girl we had left in Jersey; and my husband
was forced to come out of France to Hamerton, in Huntingdonshire, to
my sister Bedell's, to the wedding of his nephew, the last Lord Thomas
Fanshawe, who then married the daughter of Ferrers: as I have said
before, she was a very great fortune, and a most excellent woman, and
brought up some time after her mother's death with my sister Bedell.
About two months after this, in June, I was delivered of a son on the
8th day, 1648. The latter end of July I went to London, leaving my
little boy Richard at nurse with his brother at Hartingfordbury. It
happened to be the very day after that the Lord Holland was taken
prisoner at St. Neot, and Lord Francis Villiers was killed; and as we
passed through the town, we saw Colonel Montague, afterwards Earl of
Sandwich, spoiling the town for the Parliament and himself. Coming to
London, I went to welcome the Marchioness of Ormond to town, that then
was come out of France, who received me with great kindness, as she
ever had done before, and told me she must love me for many reasons,
and one was, that we were both born in one chamber: when I left her,
she presented me with a ruby ring set with two diamonds, which she
prayed me to wear for her sake, and I have it to this day.
In the month of September my husband was commanded by the Prince to
wait on him in the Downs, where he was with a very considerable fleet;
but the fleet was divided, part being for the King, and part for the
Parliament. They were resolved to fight that day, which if they had,
would have been the most cruel fight that ever England knew; but God
by his will parted them by a storm, and afterwards it was said, Lord
Colepeper, and one Low, a surgeon, that was a reputed knave, so
ordered the business, that for money the fleet was betrayed to the
enemy. During this time my husband wrote me a letter, from on board
the Prince's ship, full of concern for me, believing they should
engage on great odds; but, if he should lose his life, advised me to
patience, and this with so much love and reason, that my heart melts
to this day when I think of it; but, God be praised, he was reserved
for better things.
In December [Footnote: This must be a mistake for NOVEMBER; for in
September he was on board the fleet in the Downs, and after passing
SIX WEEKS IN PARIS, he went to Calais with Lady Fanshawe on the 25th
of DECEMBER, 1649. The date of the year is also erroneous, as it is
evident from the context that it was 1648.] my husband went to Paris
on his master's business, and sent for me from London: I carried him
300 pounds of his money. During our stay at Paris, I was highly
obliged to the Queen-Mother of England. We passed away six weeks with
great delight in good company; my Lady Norton, that was governess to
the Lady Henrietta, Charles the First's youngest daughter, was very
kind. I had the honour of her company, both in my own lodging and in
the Palace Royal, where she attended her charge; likewise my Lady
Danby, and her daughter, my Lady Guilford, with many others of our
nation, both in the Court and out of it; amongst whom was Mr. Waller,
the poet, and his wife: they went with us to Calais, upon the 25th of
December, 1649. I, with my husband, kissed the Queen-Mother's hand,
who promised her favour, with much grace, to us both, and sent letters
to the King, then in Holland, by my husband. From her Majesty we
waited on the Princes, and afterwards took our leave of all that
Court.
When we came to Calais, we met the Earl of Strafford and Sir Kenelm
Digby, with some others of our countrymen. We were all feasted at the
Governor's of the castle, and much excellent discourse passed; but, as
was reason, most share was Sir Kenelm Digby's, who had enlarged
somewhat more in extraordinary stories than might be averred, and all
of them passed with great applause and wonder of the French then at
table; but the concluding one was, that barnacles, a bird in Jersey,
was first a shell-fish in appearance, and from that, sticking upon old
wood, became in time a bird. After some consideration, they
unanimously burst out into laughter, believing it altogether false;
and, to say the truth, it was the only thing true he had discoursed
with them: that was his infirmity, though otherwise a person of most
excellent parts, and a very fine-bred gentleman.
My husband thought it convenient to send me into England again, there
to try what sums I could raise, both for his subsistence abroad and
mine at home; and though nothing was so grievous to us both as
parting, yet the necessity both of the public and your father's
private affairs, obliged us often to yield to the trouble of absence,
as at this time. I took my leave with sad heart, and embarked myself
in a hoy for Dover, with Mrs. Waller and my sister Margaret Harrison,
and my little girl Nan; but a great storm arising, we had like to be
cast away, the vessel being half full of water, and we forced to land
at Deal, every one carried upon men's backs, and we up to the middle
in water, and very glad to escape so. About this time the Prince of
Orange was born. [Footnote: This is an error, as he was born on the
4th of November, 1650.]
My husband went from thence by Flanders into Holland to his master;
and, in February following, your father was sent into Ireland by the
King, there to receive such monies as Prince Rupert could raise by the
fleet he commanded of the King's; but a few months put an end to that
design, though it had a very good aspect in the beginning, which made
my husband send for me and the little family I had thither. We went by
Bristol very cheerfully towards my north star, that only had the power
to fix me; and because I had had the good fortune, as I then thought
it, to sell 300 pounds a year to him that is now Judge Archer, in
Essex, for which he gave me 4000 pounds, which at that time I thought
a vast sum; but be it more or less, I am sure it was spent in seven
years' time in the King's service, and to this hour I repent it not, I
thank God. Five hundred pounds I carried to my husband, the rest I
left in my father's agent's hands to be returned as we needed it.
I landed at Youghall, in Munster, as my husband directed me, in hopes
to meet me there; but I had the discomfort of a very hazardous voyage,
and the absence of your father, he then being upon business at Cork.
So soon as he heard I was landed, he came to me, and with mutual joy
we discoursed those things that were proper to entertain us both; and
thus, for six months, we lived so much to our satisfaction, that we
began to think of making our abode there during the war, for the
country was fertile, and all provisions cheap, and the houses good,
and we were placed in Red Abbey, a house of Dean Boyle's in Cork, and
my Lord of Ormond had a very good army, and the country seemingly
quiet; and, to complete our content, all persons were very civil to
us, especially Dean Boyle, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and Archbishop
of Dublin and his family, and the Lord Inchiquin, whose daughter
Elkenna I christened in 1650.
But what earthly comfort is exempt from change? for here I heard of
the death of my second son, Henry, and, within a few weeks, of the
landing of Cromwell, who so hotly marched over Ireland, that the fleet
with Prince Rupert was forced to set sail, and within a small time
after he lost all his riches, which was thought to be worth hundreds
of thousands of pounds, in one of his best ships, commanded by his
brother Maurice, who with many a brave man sunk and were all lost in a
storm at sea.
We remained some time behind in Ireland, until my husband could
receive his Majesty's commands how to dispose of himself. During this
time I had, by the fall of a stumbling horse, being with child, broke
my left wrist, which, because it was ill-set, put me to great and long
pain, and I was in my bed when Cork revolted. By chance that day my
husband was gone on business to Kinsale: it was in the beginning of
November 1650. [Footnote: These events happened in November 1649.] At
midnight I heard the great guns go off, and thereupon I called up my
family to rise, which I did as well as I could in that condition.
Hearing lamentable shrieks of men, women, and children, I asked at a
window the cause; they told me they were all Irish, stripped and
wounded, and turned out of the town, and that Colonel Jeffries, with
some others, had possessed themselves of the town for Cromwell, Upon
this, I immediately wrote a letter to my husband, blessing God's
providence that he was not there with me, persuading him to patience
and hope that I should get safely out of the town, by God's
assistance, and desired him to shift for himself, for fear of a
surprise, with promise that I would secure his papers.
So soon as I had finished my letter, I sent it by a faithful servant,
who was let down the garden-wall of Red Abbey, and, sheltered by the
darkness of the might, he made his escape. I immediately packed up my
husband's cabinet, with all his writings, and near 1000 pounds in gold
and silver, and all other things both of clothes, linen, and household
stuff that were portable, of value; and then, about three o'clock in
the morning, by the light of a taper, and in that pain I was in, I
went into the market-place, with only a man and maid, and passing
through an unruly tumult with their swords in their hands, searched
for their chief commander Jeffries, who, whilst he was loyal, had
received many civilities from your father. I told him it was necessary
that upon that change I should remove, and I desired his pass that
would be obeyed, or else I must remain there: I hoped he would not
deny me that kindness. He instantly wrote me a pass, both for myself,
family, and goods, and said he would never forget the respect he owed
your father. With this I came through thousands of naked swords to Red
Abbey, and hired the next neighbour's cart, which carried all that I
could remove; and myself, sister, and little girl Nan, with three
maids and two men, set forth at five o'clock in November, having but
two horses amongst us all, which we rid on by turns. In this sad
condition I left Red Abbey, with as many goods as were worth 100
pounds which could not be removed, and so were plundered. We went ten
miles to Kinsale, in perpetual fear of being fetched back again; but,
by little and little, I thank God, we got safe to the garrison, where
I found your father the most disconsolate man in the world, for fear
of his family, which he had no possibility to assist; but his joys
exceeded to see me and his darling daughter, and to hear the wonderful
escape we, through the assistance of God, had made.
But when the rebels went to give an account to Cromwell of their
meritorious act, he immediately asked them where Mr. Fanshawe was?
They replied, he was that day gone to Kinsale. Then he demanded where
his papers and his family were? At which they all stared at one
another, but made no reply. Their General said, 'It was as much worth
to have seized his papers as the town; for I did make account to have
known by them what these parts of the country are worth.'
But within a few days we received the King's order, which was, that my
husband should, upon sight thereof, go into Spain to Philip IV. and
deliver him his Majesty's letters; and by my husband also his Majesty
sent letters to my Lord Cottington and Sir Edward Hyde, his
Ambassadors Extraordinary in that Court. Upon this order we went to
Macrome to the Lord Clancarty, who married a sister of the Lord
Ormond; we stayed there two nights, and at my coming away, after a
very noble entertainment, my Lady gave me a great Irish greyhound, and
I presented her with a fine besel-stone.
From thence we went to Limerick, where we were entertained by the
Mayor and Aldermen very nobly; and the Recorder of the Town was very
kind, and in respect they made my husband a freeman of Limerick. There
we met the Bishop of Londonderry and the Earl of Roscommon, who was
Lord Chancellor of that Kingdom at that time. These two persons with
my husband being together writing letters to the King, to give an
account of the kingdom, when they were going down stairs from my Lord
Roscommon's chamber, striving to hold the candle at the stairs' head,
because the privacy of their despatch admitted not a servant to be
near, my Lord Roscommon fell down the stairs, and his head fell upon
the corner of a stone and broke his skull in three pieces, of which he
died five days after, leaving the broad seal of Ireland in your
father's hands, until such time as he could acquaint his Majesty with
this sad account, and receive orders how to dispose of the seals. This
caused our longer stay, but your father and I being invited to my Lord
Inchiquin's, there to stay till we heard out of Holland from the King,
which was a month before the messenger returned, we had very kind
entertainment, and vast plenty of fish and fowl. By this time my Lord
Lieutenant the now Duke of Ormond's army was quite dispersed, and
himself gone for Holland, and every person concerned in that interest
shifting for their lives; and Cromwell went through as bloodily as
victoriously, many worthy persons being murdered in cold blood, and
their families quite ruined.
From hence we went to the Lady Honor O'Brien's, a lady that went for a
maid, but few believed it: she was the youngest daughter of the Earl
of Thomond. There we stayed three nights. The first of which I was
surprised by being laid in a chamber, when, about one o'clock I heard
a voice that wakened me. I drew the curtain, and in the casement of
the window, I saw, by the light of the moon, a woman leaning into the
window, through the casement, in white, with red hair and pale and
ghastly complexion: she spoke loud, and in a tone I had never heard,
thrice, 'A horse'; and then, with a sigh more like the wind than
breath she vanished, and to me her body looked more like a thick cloud
than substance. I was so much frightened, that my hair stood on end,
and my night clothes fell off. I pulled and pinched your father, who
never woke during the disorder I was in; but at last was much
surprised to see me in this fright, and more so when I related the
story and showed him the window opened. Neither of us slept any more
that night, but he entertained me with telling me how much more these
apparitions were usual in this country than in England; and we
concluded the cause to be the great superstition of the Irish, and the
want of that knowing faith, which should defend them from the power of
the Devil, which he exercises among them very much. About five o'clock
the lady of the house came to see us, saying she had not been in bed
all night, because a cousin O'Brien of her's, whose ancestors had
owned that house, had desired her to stay with him in his chamber, and
that he died at two o'clock, and she said, 'I wish you to have had no
disturbance, for 'tis the custom of the place, that, when any of the
family are dying, the shape of a woman appears in the window every
night till they be dead. This woman was many ages ago got with child
by the owner of this place, who murdered her in his garden and flung
her into the river under the window, but truly I thought not of it
when I lodged you here, it being the best room in the house.' We made
little reply to her speech, but disposed ourselves to be gone
suddenly.
By this time my husband had received orders from the King to give the
Lord Inchiquin the seals to keep until farther orders from his
Majesty. When that business was settled, we went, accompanied by my
Lord Inchiquin and his family, four or five miles towards Galway,
which he did not by choice, but the plague had been so hot in that
city the summer before, that it was almost depopulated, and the haven
as much as the town. But your father hearing that, by accident, there
was a great ship of Amsterdam bound for Malaga, in Spain, and Cromwell
pursuing his conquests at our backs, resolved to fall into the hands
of God rather than into the hands of men; and with his family of about
ten persons came to the town at the latter end of February, [Footnote:
Probably January, as in a subsequent page Lady Fanshawe says, she
embarked for Galway in the beginning of February.] where we found
guards placed that none should enter without certificates from whence
they came; but understanding that your father came to embark himself
for Spain, and that there was a merchant's house taken for us, that
was near the sea-side, and one of their best, they told us, if we
pleased to alight, they would wait on us to the place; but it was long
from thence, and no horses were admitted into the town.
An Irish footman that served us, said, 'I lived here some years and
know every street, and likewise know a much nearer way than these men
can show you, Sir; therefore come with me, if you please.' We resolved
to follow him, and sent our horses to stables in the suburbs: he led
us all on the back side of the town, under the walls, over which the
people during the plague, which was not yet quite stopped, flung out
all their dung, dirt, and rags, and we walked up to the middle of our
legs in them, for, being engaged, we could not get back. At last we
found the house, by the master standing at the door expecting us, who
said, 'You are welcome to this disconsolate city, where you now see
the streets grown over with grass, once the finest little city in the
world.' And indeed it is easy to think so, the buildings being
uniformly built, and a very fine marketplace, and walks arched and
paved by the sea-side for their merchants to walk on, and a most noble
harbour.
Our house was very clean, only one maid in it besides the master; we
had a very good supper provided, and being very weary went early to
bed. The owner of this house entertained us with the story of the late
Marquis of Worcester, who had been there some time the year before: he
had of his own and other friends' jewels to the value of 8000 pounds,
which some merchants had lent upon them. My Lord appointed a day for
receiving the money upon them and delivering the jewels; being met, he
shows them to all these persons, then seals them up in a box, and
delivered them to one of these merchants, by consent of the rest, to
be kept for one year, and upon the payment of the 8000 pounds by my
Lord Marquis to be delivered him.
After my Lord had received the money, he was entertained at all these
persons' houses, and nobly feasted with them near a month: he went
from thence into France. When the year was expired, they, by letters
into France, pressed the payment of this borrowed money several times,
alleging they had great necessity of their money to drive their trade
with; to which my Lord Marquis made no answer; which did at last so
exasperate these men, that they broke open the seals, and opening the
box found nothing but rags and stones for their 8000 pounds at which
they were highly enraged, and in this case I left them.
At the beginning of February we took ship, and our kind host, with
much satisfaction in our company, prayed God to bless us and give us a
good voyage, for, said he, 'I thank God you are all gone safe aboard
from my house, notwithstanding I have buried nine persons out of my
house within these six months'; which saying much startled us, but,
God's name be praised, we were all well, and so continued.
Here now our scene was shifted from land to sea, and we left that
brave kingdom, fallen, in six or eight months, into a most miserable
sad condition, as it hath been many times in most kings' reigns, God
knows why! for I presume not to say; but the natives seem to me a very
loving people to each other, and constantly false to all strangers,
the Spaniards only excepted. The country exceeds in timber and sea-
ports, and great plenty of fish, fowl, flesh, and, by shipping, wants
no foreign commodities. We pursued our voyage with prosperous winds,
but with a most tempestuous master, a Dutchman, which is enough to
say, but truly, I think, the greatest beast I ever saw of his kind.
When we had just passed the Straits, we saw coming towards us, with
full sails, a Turkish galley well manned, and we believed we should be
all carried away slaves, for this man had so laden his ship with goods
for Spain, that his guns were useless, though the ship carried sixty
guns. He called for brandy; and after he had well drunken, and all his
men, which were near two hundred, he called for arms and cleared the
deck as well as he could, resolving to fight rather than lose his
ship, which was worth thirty thousand pounds. This was sad for us
passengers; but my husband bade us be sure to keep in the cabin, and
the women not to appear, which would make the Turks think that we were
a man-of-war, but if they saw women they would take us for merchants
and board us. He went upon the deck, and took a gun and bandoliers,
and sword, and, with the rest of the ship's company, stood upon deck
expecting the arrival of the Turkish man-of-war. This beast, the
Captain, had locked me up in the cabin; I knocked and called long to
no purpose, until, at length, the cabin-boy came and opened the door;
I, all in tears, desired him to be so good as to give me his blue
thrum cap he wore, and his tarred coat, which he did, and I gave him
half a crown, and putting them on and flinging away my night clothes,
I crept up softly and stood upon the deck by my husband's side, as
free from sickness and fear as, I confess, from discretion; but it was
the effect of that passion, which I could never master.
By this time the two vessels were engaged in parley, and so well
satisfied with speech and sight of each other's forces, that the
Turks' man-of-war tacked about, and we continued our course. But when
your father saw it convenient to retreat, looking upon me, he blessed
himself, and snatched me up in his arms, saying, 'Good God, that love
can make this change!' and though he seemingly chid me, he would laugh
at it as often as he remembered that voyage. And in the beginning of
March we all landed, praised be God, in Malaga, very well, and full of
content to see ourselves delivered from the sword and plague, and
living in hope that we should one day return happily to our native
country; notwithstanding, we thought it great odds, considering how
the affairs of the King's three kingdoms stood; but we trusted in the
providence of Almighty God, and proceeded.
We were very kindly entertained by the merchants, and by them lodged
in a merchant's house, where we had not been with our goods three
days, when the vessel that brought us thither, by the negligence of a
cabin-boy, was blown up in the harbour, with the loss of above a
hundred men and all our lading.
After we had refreshed ourselves some days, we went on our journey
towards Madrid, and lodged the first night at Velez Malaga, to which
we were accompanied by most of the merchants. The next day we went to
Grenada, having passed the highest mountains I ever saw in my life,
but under this lieth the finest valley that can be possibly described,
adorned with high trees and rich grass, and beautified with a large
deep clear river. Over the town and this standeth the goodly vast
palace of the King's, called the Alhambra, whose buildings are, after
the fashion of the Moors, adorned with vast quantities of jasper-
stone; many courts, many fountains, and by reason it is situated on
the side of a hill, and not built uniform, many gardens with ponds in
them, and many baths made of jasper, and many principal rooms roofed
with the mosaic work, which exceeds the finest enamel I ever saw. Here
I was showed in the midst of a very large piece of rich embroidery
made by the Moors of Grenada, in the middle as long as half a yard of
the true Tyrian dye, which is so glorious a colour that it cannot be
expressed: it hath the glory of scarlet, the beauty of purple, and is
so bright, that when the eye is removed upon any other object it seems
as white as snow.
The entry into this great Palace is of stone, for a Porter's-lodge,
but very magnificent, through the gate below, which is adorned with
figures of forestwork, in which the Moors did transcend. High above
this gate was a bunch of keys cut in stone likewise, with this motto:
'Until that hand holds those keys, the Christians shall never possess
this Alhambra.' This was a prophecy they had, in which they animated
themselves, by reason of the impossibility that ever they should meet.
But see, how true there is a time for all things! It happened that
when the Moors were besieged in that place by Don Fernando and his
Queen Isabella, the King with an arrow out of a bow, which they then
used in war, shooting the first arrow as their custom is, cut that
part of the stone that holds the keys, which was in fashion of a
chain, and the keys falling, remained in the hand underneath. This
strange accident preceded but a few days the conquest of the town of
Grenada and kingdom.
They have in this place an iron grate, fixed into the side of the
hill, that is a rock: I laid my head to the key-hole and heard a noise
like the clashing of arms, but could not distinguish other shrill
noises I heard with that, but tradition says it could never be opened
since the Moors left it, notwithstanding several persons had
endeavoured to wrench it open, but that they perished in the attempt.
The truth of this I can say no more to; but that there is such a gate,
and I have seen it.
After two days we went on our journey; and on the 13th of April 1650,
we came to the Court of Madrid, where we were the next day visited by
the two English ambassadors, and afterwards by all the English
merchants.
Here I was delivered of my first daughter, that was called Elizabeth,
upon the 13th of July. She lived but fifteen days, and lies buried in
the Chapel of the French Hospital. Your father had great difficulty to
carry on his business, without encroaching upon the Extraordinary
Ambassador's negotiation, and the performance of his Majesty's
commands to show his present necessities, which he was sent to Philip
IV. for, in hopes of a present supply of money, which our King then
lacked; but finding no good to be done on that errand, he and I,
accompanied by Dr. Bell, of Jesus College in Cambridge, who had been
his tutor, went a day's journey together towards St. Sebastian, there
to embark for France.
While we stayed in this Court we were kindly treated by all the
English; and it was no small trouble to your father's tutor to quit
his company, but, having undertaken the charge of that family of the
ambassador's as their chaplain, he said, he held himself obliged in
conscience to stay, and so he did. In a few months after he died
there, and lies buried in the garden-house, where they then lived.
Whilst we were in Madrid, there was sent one Askew, as resident from
the then Governor of England; he lay in a common eating-house where
some travellers used to lie, and being one day at dinner, some young
men meeting in the street with Mr. Prodgers, a gentleman belonging to
the Lord Ambassador Cottington, and Mr. Sparks, an English merchant,
discoursing of news, began to speak of the impudence of that Askew, to
come a public minister from rebels to a Court where there were two
Ambassadors from his King. This subject being handled with heat, they
all resolved to go without more consideration into his lodgings
immediately and kill him: they came up to his chamber door, and
finding it open, and he sat at dinner, seized him, and so killed him,
and went their several ways. Afterwards they found Mr. Sparks in a
church for rescue, notwithstanding it was contrary to their religion
and laws, and they forced him out from thence, and executed him
publicly, their fears of the English power were then so great.
There was at that time the Lord Goring, son to the Earl of Norwich: he
had a command under Philip the Fourth of Spain, against the
Portuguese: he was generally esteemed a good and great commander, and
had been brought up in Holland in his youth, of vast natural parts;
for I have heard your father say, he hath dictated to several persons
at once that were upon despatches, and all so admirably well, that
none of them could be mended. He was exceeding facetious and pleasant
company, and in conversation, where good manners were due, the
civilest person imaginable, so that he would blush like a girl. He was
very tall, and very handsome: he had been married to a daughter of the
Earl of Cork, but never had a child by her. His expenses were what he
could get, and his debauchery beyond all precedents, which at last
lost him that love the Spaniards had for him; and that country not
admitting his constant drinking, he fell sick of a hectic fever, in
which he turned his religion, and with that artifice could scarce get
to keep him whilst he lived in that sickness, or to bury him when he
was dead.
We came to St. Sebastian's about the beginning of September, and there
hired a small French vessel to carry us to Nantz: we embarked within
two days after our coming to this town. I never saw so wild a place,
nor were the inhabitants unsuitable, but like to like, which made us
hasten away, and I am sure to our cost we found the proverb true, for
our haste brought us woe. We had not been a day at sea before we had a
storm begun, that continued two days and two nights in a most violent
manner; and being in the Bay of Biscay, we had a hurricane that drew
the vessel up from the water, which had neither sail nor mast left,
and but six men and a boy. Whilst they had hopes of life they ran
swearing about like devils, but when that failed them, they ran into
holes, and let the ship drive as it would. In this great hazard of our
lives we were the beginning of the third night, when God in mercy
ceased the storm of a sudden, and there was a great calm, which made
us exceeding joyful; but when those beasts, for they were scarce men,
that manned the vessel, began to rummage the bark, they could not find
their compass anywhere, for the loss of which they began again such
horrible lamentations as were as dismal to us as the storm past.
Thus between hope and fear we passed the night, they protesting to us
they knew not where they were, and truly we believed them; for with
fear and drink I think they were bereaved of their senses. So soon as
it was day, about six o'clock, the master cried out, 'The land! the
land!' but we did not receive the news with the joy belonging to it,
but sighing said, God's will be done! Thus the tide drove us until
about five o'clock in the afternoon, and drawing near the side of a
small rock that had a creek by it, we ran aground, but the sea was so
calm that we all got out without the loss of any man or goods, but the
vessel was so shattered that it was not afterwards serviceable: thus,
God be praised! we escaped this great danger, and found ourselves near
a little village about two leagues from Nantz. We hired there six
asses, upon which we rode as many as could by turns, and the rest
carried our goods. This journey took us up all the next day, for I
should have told you that we stirred not that night, because we sat up
and made good cheer; for beds they had none, and we were so
transported that we thought we had no need of any, but we had very
good fires, and Nantz white wine, and butter, and milk, and walnuts
and eggs, and some very bad cheese; and was not this enough, with the
escape of shipwreck, to be thought better than a feast? I am sure
until that hour I never knew such pleasure in eating, between which we
a thousand times repeated what we had spoken when every word seemed to
be our last.
As soon as it was day, we began our journey towards Nantz, and by the
way we passed by a little poor chapel, at the door of which a friar
begged an alms, saying, that he would show us there the greatest
wonder in the world. We resolved to go with him. He went before us to
the altar, and out of a cupboard, with great devotion, he took a box,
and crossing himself he opened it, in that was another of crystal that
contained a little silver box; he lifting this crystal box up, cried,
'Behold in this the hem [Footnote: Thus in the MS.; but query if a
mistake of the transcriber.] of St. Joseph, which was taken as he
hewed his timber!' To which my husband replied, 'Indeed, Father, it is
the lightest, considering the greatness, that I ever handled in my
life.' The ridiculousness of this, with the simplicity of the man,
entertained us till we came to Nantz. We met by the way good grapes
and walnuts growing, of which we culled out the best.
Nantz is a passable good town, but decayed: some monasteries in it,
but none good nor rich. There was in a nunnery, when I was there, a
daughter of Secretary Windebank. There is English provisions, and of
all sorts, cheap and good. We hired a boat to carry us up to Orleans,
and we were towed up all the river of Loire so far. Every night we
went on shore to bed, and every morning carried into the boat wine and
fruit, and bread, with some flesh, which we dressed in the boat, for
it had a hearth, on which we burnt charcoal: we likewise caught carps,
which were the fattest and the best I ever eat in my life. And of all
my travels none were, for travel sake as I may call it, so pleasant as
this; for we saw the finest cities, seats, woods, meadows, pastures,
and champaign that I ever saw in my life, adorned with the most
pleasant river of Loire; of which, at Orleans, we took our leaves.
Arriving, about the middle of November 1650, at Paris, we went, so
soon as we could get clothes, to wait on the Queen-Mother and the
Princess Henrietta. The Queen entertained us very respectfully, and
after many favours done us, and discoursing in private with your
father about affairs of state, he received her Majesty's letters to
send to the King, who was then on his way to Scotland. We kissed her
hand and went to Calais, with resolution that I should go to England,
to send my husband more money, for this long journey cost us all we
could procure: yet this I will tell you, praised be God for his
peculiar grace herein, that your father nor I ever borrowed money nor
owed for clothes, nor diet, nor lodging beyond sea in our lives, which
was very much, considering the straits we were in many times, and the
bad custom our countrymen had that way, which did redound much to the
King's dishonour and their own discredit.
When we came to Calais, my husband sent me to England, and staying
himself there, intending, as soon as he had received money, to go and
live in Holland until such time as it should please Almighty God to
enable him again to wait on his Majesty, now in Scotland, both to give
him an account of his journey into Spain, as of the rest of his
employments since he kissed his hand. But God ordered it otherwise;
for the case being that the two parties in Scotland being both
unsatisfied with each other's ministers, and Sir E. Hyde and Secretary
Nicholas being excepted against, and left in Holland, it was proposed,
the state wanting a Secretary for the King, that your father should be
immediately sent for, which was done accordingly, and he went with
letters and presents from the Princess of Orange, and the Princess
Royal.
Here I will show you something of Sir Edward Hyde's nature: he being
surprised with this news, and suspecting that my husband might come to
a greater power than himself, both because of his parts and integrity,
and because himself had been sometimes absent in the Spanish Embassy,
he with all the humility possible, and earnest passion, begged my
husband to remember the King often of him to his advantage as occasion
should serve, and to procure leave that he might wait on the King,
promising, with all the oaths that he could express to cause belief,
that he would make it his business all the days of his life to serve
your father's interest in what condition soever he should be in: thus
they parted, with your father's promise to serve him in what he was
capable of, upon which account many letters passed between them.
When your father arrived in Scotland, he was received by the King with
great expressions of great content; and after he had given an account
of his past employment, he was by the King recommended to the York
party, who received him very kindly, and gave him both the broad seal
and signet to keep.
They several times pressed him to take the Covenant, but he never did,
but followed his business so close, with such diligence and temper,
that he was well beloved on all sides, and they reposed great trust in
him. When he went out of Holland, he wrote to me to arm myself with
patience in his absence, and likewise that I would not expect many
letters as was his custom, for that was now impossible; but he hoped,
that when we did meet again, it would be happy and of long
continuance, and bade me trust God with him, as he did me, in whose
mercy he hoped, being upon that duty he was obliged to, with a
thousand kind expressions.
But God knows how great a surprise this me, being great with child,
and two children with me not in the best condition to maintain them,
and in daily fears of your father upon the private account of
animosities amongst themselves in Scotland; but I did what I could to
arm myself, and was kindly visited both by my relations and friends.
About this time my cousin Evelyn's wife [Footnote: Evelyn frequently
mentions his "cousin Richard Fanshawe," in his Diary. On the 6th of
February, 1651-2, he says, "I went to visit my cousin Richard
Fanshawe, and divers other friends"; and on the 6th of March, in that
year, he observes, "My cousin Richard Fanshawe came to visit me, and
inform me of many considerable affairs." On the 23rd of November,
1654, he went to London to visit his "cousin Fanshawe."--Diary, vol.
ii. pp. 48, 49, 98. Lady Brown, Mr. Evelyn's mother-in-law, died at
Woodcot, in Kent, towards the end of October 1652.--Ibid. p. 61.] came
to London, and had newly buried her mother, my Lady Brown, wife to Sir
Richard Brown, that then was resident for the King at Paris. A little
before she and I and Doctor Steward, a Clerk of the closet to King
Charles the First, christened a daughter of Mr. Waters, near a year
old. About this time, Lord Chief Justice Heath died at Calais, and
several of the King's servants at Paris, amongst others Mr. Henry
Murray, of his bedchamber, a very good man.
I now settled myself in a handsome lodging in London. With a heavy
heart I stayed in this lodging almost seven months, and in that time I
did not go abroad seven times, but spent my time in prayer to God for
the deliverance of the King and my husband, whose danger was ever
before my eyes. I was seldom without the best company, and sometimes
my father would stay a week, for all had compassion on my condition. I
removed to Queenstreet, and there in a very good lodging I was upon
the 24th of June delivered of a daughter: in all this time I had but
four letters from your father, which made the pain I was in more
difficult to bear.
I went with my brother Fanshawe to Ware Park, and my sister went to
Balls, to my father, both intending to meet in the winter; and so
indeed we did with tears; for the 3rd of September following was
fought the battle of Worcester, when the King being missed, and
nothing heard of your father being dead or alive, for three days it
was inexpressible what affliction I was in. I neither eat nor slept,
but trembled at every motion I heard, expecting the fatal news, which
at last came in their news-book, which mentioned your father a
prisoner.
Then with some hopes I went to London, intending to leave my little
girl Nan, the companion of my troubles, there, and so find out my
husband wheresoever he was carried. But upon my coming to London, I
met a messenger from him with a letter, which advised me of his
condition, and told me he was very civilly used, and said little more,
but that I should be in some room at Charing-cross, where he had
promise from his keeper that he should rest there in my company at
dinner-time: this was meant to him as a great favour. I expected him
with impatience, and on the day appointed provided a dinner and room,
as ordered, in which I was with my father and some of our friends,
where, about eleven of the clock, we saw hundreds of poor soldiers,
both English and Scotch, march all naked on foot, and many with your
father, who was very cheerful in appearance, who after he had spoken
and saluted me and his friends there, said, 'Pray let us not lose
time, for I know not how little I have to spare. This is the chance of
war; nothing venture, nothing have; so let us sit down and be merry
whilst we may.' Then taking my hand in his and kissing me, 'Cease
weeping, no other thing upon earth can move me: remember we are all at
God's disposal.'
Then he began to tell how kind his Captain was to him, and the people
as he passed offered him money, and brought him good things, and
particularly Lady Denham, at Borstal-house, who would have given him
all the money she had in her house, but he returned her thanks, and
told her he had so ill kept his own, that he would not tempt his
governor with more, but if she would give him a shirt or two, and some
handkerchiefs, he would keep them as long as he could for her sake.
She fetched him two smocks of her own, and some handkerchiefs, saying
she was ashamed to give him them, but, having none of her sons at
home, she desired him to wear them.
Thus we passed the time until order came to carry him to Whitehall,
where, in a little room yet standing in the bowling-green, he was kept
prisoner, without the speech of any, so far as they knew, ten weeks,
and in expectation of death. They often examined him, and at last he
grew so ill in health by the cold and hard marches he had undergone,
and being pent up in a room close and small, that the scurvy brought
him almost to death's door.
During the time of his imprisonment, I failed not constantly to go,
when the clock struck four in the morning, with a dark lantern in my
hand, all alone and on foot, from my lodging in Chancery Lane, at my
cousin Young's, to Whitehall, in at the entry that went out of King
Street into the bowling-green. There I would go under his window and
softly call him: he, after the first time excepted, never failed to
put out his head at the first call: thus we talked together, and
sometimes I was so wet with the rain, that it went in at my neck and
out at my heels. He directed me how I should make my addresses, which
I did ever to their general, Cromwell, who had a great respect for
your father, and would have bought him off to his service upon any
terms.
Being one day to solicit for my husband's liberty for a time, he bade
me bring the next day a certificate from a physician, that he was
really ill. Immediately I went to Dr. Bathurst, that was by chance
both physician to Cromwell and to our family, who gave me one very
favourable in my husband's behalf. I delivered it at the Council
Chamber, at three of the clock that afternoon, as he commanded me, and
he himself moved, that seeing they could make no use of his
imprisonment, whereby to lighten them in their business, he might have
his liberty upon four thousand pounds bail, to take a course of
physic, he being dangerously ill. Many spake against it, but most Sir
Henry Vane, who said he would be as instrumental, for aught he knew,
to hang them all that sat there, if ever he had opportunity, but if he
had liberty for a time, that he might take the engagement before he
went out: upon which Cromwell said, 'I never knew that the ENGAGEMENT
[Footnote: Cromwell probably meant to pun upon this word.--In Ireland,
"engagement" means an ISSUE; "an engagement in the neck," arm, &c.,
i.e., an issue in those places.] was a medicine for the scorbutic.'
They, hearing their General say so, thought it obliged him, and so
ordered him his liberty upon bail. His eldest brother, and sister
Bedell, and self, were bound in four thousand pounds; and the latter
end of November he came to my lodgings, at my cousin Young's. He there
met many of his good friends and kindred; and my joy was
inexpressible, and so was poor Nan's, of whom your poor father was
very fond. I forgot to tell you, that when your father was taken
prisoner of war, he, before they entered the house where he was,
burned all his papers, which saved the lives and estates of many a
brave gentleman.
When he came out of Scotland, he left behind him a box of writings, in
which his patent of Baronet was, and his patent of additional arms,
[Footnote: A coat of augmentation was granted to Richard Fanshawe,
Esq., Remembrancer of the Exchequer, and to his family, by patent,
dated at Jersey, 8th of February, 2 Car. II. 1650, being "Cheeky
Argent and Azure, a Cross Gules." Grants of that kind to persons who
distinguished themselves in the service of the King were very common,
and consisted, in most cases, either of the lion of England, a fleur-
de-lis, or, as in the instance of Mr. Fanshawe, of the Cross of St.
George. Sir Richard was created a Baronet on the 2nd of September
1650.] which was safely sent after him, after the happy restoration of
the King. You may read your father's demeanour of himself in this
affair, wrote by his own hand, in a book by itself amongst your books,
and it is a great masterpiece, as you will find.
Within ten days he fell very sick, and the fever settled in his throat
and face so violently, that, for many days and nights, he slept no
more but as he leaned on my shoulder as I walked: at last, after all
the Doctor and Surgeon could do, it broke, and with that he had ease,
and so recovered, God be praised! In 1652, he was advised to go to
Bath for his scorbutic that still hung on him, but he deferred his
journey until August, because I was delivered on the 30th of July of a
daughter.
At his return, we went to live that winter following at Benfield, in
Hertfordshire, a house of my niece Fanshawe's. In this winter my
husband went to wait on his good friend the Earl of Strafford, in
Yorkshire; and there my Lord offered him a house of his in Tankersly
Park, which he took, and paid 120 l. a year for. When my husband
returned, we prepared to go in the spring to this place, but were so
confined, that my husband could not stir five miles from home without
leave. About February following, my brother Neuce died, at his house
at Much Hadham, in Hertfordshire. My sister, Margaret Harrison,
desired to go to London, and there we left her: she soon after married
Mr. Edmund Turner, afterwards Sir Edmund.
In March we with our three children, Anne, Richard, and Betty, went
into Yorkshire, where we lived a harmless country life, minding only
the country sports and country affairs. Here my husband translated
Luis de Camoens; and on October 8th, 1653, I was delivered of my
daughter Margaret. I found all the neighbourhood very civil and kind
upon all occasions; the place plentiful and healthful, and very
pleasant, but there was no fruit: we planted some, and my Lord
Strafford says now, that what we planted is the best fruit in the
North.
The house of Tankersly and Park are both very pleasant and good, and
we lived there with great content; but God had ordered it should not
last, for upon the 20th of July 1654, at three o'clock in the
afternoon, died our most dearly beloved daughter Ann, whose beauty and
wit exceeded all that ever I saw of her age. She was between nine and
ten years old, very tall, and the dear companion of my travels and
sorrows. She lay sick but five days of the smallpox, in which time she
expressed so many wise and devout sayings, as is a miracle for her
years. We both wished to have gone into the same grave with her. She
lies buried in Tankersly church, and her death made us both desirous
to quit that fatal place to us; and so the week after her death we
did, and came to Hamerton, and were half a year with my sister Bedell.
Then my husband was sent for to London, there to stay, by command of
the High Court of Justice, and not to go five miles from that town,
but to appear once a month before them. We then went again to my
cousin Young's, in Chancery Lane: and about Christmas my husband got
leave to go to Frog-Pool, in Kent, to my brother Warwick's; where,
upon the 22nd of February 1655, I was delivered of a daughter, whom we
named Ann, to keep in remembrance her dear sister, whom we had newly
lost. We returned to our lodgings in Chancery Lane, where my husband
was forced to attend till Christmas 1655; and then we went down to
Jenkins, to Sir Thomas Fanshawe's; but upon New Year's Day my husband
fell very sick, and the scorbutic again prevailed, so much that it
drew his upper lip awry, upon which we that day came to London, into
Chancery Lane, but not to my cousin Young's, but to a house we took of
Sir George Carey, for a year. There by the advice of Doctor Bathurst
and Doctor Ridgley, my husband took physic for two months together,
and at last, God be praised! he perfectly recovered his sickness, and
his lip was as well as ever.
In this house, upon the 12th day of July in 1656, I was delivered of a
daughter, named Mary; and in this month died my second daughter,
Elizabeth, that I had left with my sister Boteler, at Frog-Pool, to
see if that air would recover her; but she died of a hectic fever, and
lies buried in the church of Foots Cray. My husband, weary of the
town, and being advised to go into the country for his health,
procured leave to go in September to Bengy, in Hertford, to a little
house lent us by my brother Fanshawe.
It happened at that time there was a very ill kind of fever, of which
many died, and it ran generally through all families: this we and all
our family fell sick of, and my husband's and mine after some months
turned to quartan agues; but I being with child, none thought I could
live, for I was brought to bed of a son in November,[Footnote: "This
son, Henry, lies buried in Bengy church."] ten weeks before my time;
and thence forward until April 1658, I had two fits every day, that
brought me so low that I was like an anatomy. I never stirred out of
my bed seven months, nor during that time eat flesh, nor fish, nor
bread, but sage posset drink, and pancake or eggs, or now and then a
turnip or carrot. Your father was likewise very ill, but he rose out
of his bed some hours daily, and had such a greediness upon him, that
he would eat and drink more than ordinary persons that eat most,
though he could not stand upright without being held, and in perpetual
sweats, and that so violent that it ran down day and night like water.
This I have told you that you may see how near dying we were; for
which recovery I humbly praise God. He got leave in August to go to
Bath, which, God be praised! perfectly recovered us, and so we
returned into Hertfordshire, to the Friary of Ware, which we hired of
Mrs. Heydon for a year. This place we accounted happy to us, because
in October we heard the news of Cromwell's death, upon which my
husband began to hope that he should get loose of his fetters, in
which he had been seven years; and going to London, in company with my
Lord Philip, Earl of Pembroke, he lamented his case of his bonds to
him that was his old and constant friend. He told him that if he would
dine with him the next day, he would give him some account of that
business. The next day he said to him, 'Mr. Fanshawe, I must send my
eldest son into France; if you will not take it ill that I desire your
company with him and care of him for one year, I will procure you your
bonds within this week.' My husband was overjoyed to get loose upon
any terms that were innocent, so, having seen his bonds cancelled, he
went into France to Paris, from whence he by letter gave an account to
Lord Chancellor Clarendon of his being got loose, and desired him to
acquaint his Majesty of it, and to send him his commands, which was
about April 1659. He did to this effect, that his Majesty was then
going a journey, which afterwards proved to Spain; but upon his
return, which would be about the beginning of winter, my husband
should come to him, and that he should have, in present, the place of
one of the Masters of Request, and the Secretary of the Latin Tongue.
Then my husband sent me word of this, and bade me bring my son
Richard, and my eldest daughters with me to Paris, for that he
intended to put them to a very good school that he had found at Paris.
We went as soon as I could possibly accommodate myself with money and
other necessaries, with my three children, one maid, and one man. I
could not go without a pass, and to that purpose I went to my cousin
Henry Nevill, [Footnote: He was her cousin, being the second son of
Sir Harry Nevill the younger, of Billingbere, in Essex, by Elizabeth,
daughter of Sir John Smythe, of Ostenhanger, sister to the first
Viscount Strangford.] one of the High Court of Justice, where he was
then sitting at Whitehall. I told him my husband had sent for me and
his son, to place him there, and that he desired his kindness to help
me to a pass: he went in to the then masters, and returned to me,
saying, 'that by a trick my husband had got his liberty, but for me
and his children, upon no conditions we should not stir.' I made no
reply, but thanked my cousin, Henry Nevill, and took my leave. I sat
me down in the next room, full sadly to consider what I should do,
desiring God to help me in so just a cause as I then was in. I began
and thought if I were denied a passage then, they would ever after be
more severe on all occasions, and it might be very ill for us both. I
was ready to go, if I had a pass, the next tide, and might be there
before they could suspect I was gone: these thoughts put this
invention in my head.
At Wallingford House, the Office was kept where they gave passes:
thither I went in as plain a way and speech as I could devise, leaving
my maid at the gate, who was much a finer gentlewoman than myself.
With as ill mien and tone as I could express, I told a fellow I found
in the Office that I desired a pass for Paris, to go to my husband.
'Woman, what is your husband, and your name?' 'Sir,' said I, with
many courtesies, 'he is a young merchant, and my name is Ann
Harrison.' 'Well,' said he, 'it will cost you a crown:'--said I, 'That
is a great sum for me, but pray put in a man, my maid, and three
children.' All which he immediately did, telling me a malignant would
give him five pounds for such a pass.
I thanked him kindly, and so went immediately to my lodgings; and with
my pen I made the great H of Harrison, two ff, and the rrs, an n, and
the i, an s, and the s, an h, and the o, an a, and the n, a w, so
completely, that none could find out the change. With all speed I
hired a barge, and that night at six o'clock I went to Gravesend, and
from thence by coach to Dover, where, upon my arrival, the searchers
came and demanded my pass, which they were to keep for their
discharge. When they had read it, they said, 'Madam, you may go when
you please;' but says one, 'I little thought they would give a pass to
so great a malignant, especially in so troublesome a time as this.'
About nine o'clock at night I went on board the packet-boat, and about
eight o'clock in the morning landed safe, God be praised! at Calais. I
went to Mr. Booth's, an English merchant, and a very honest man. There
I rested two days; but upon the next day he had advice from Dover,
that a post was sent to stay me from London, because they had sent for
me to my lodgings by a messenger of the Court, to know why, and upon
what business, I went to France. Then I discovered to him my invention
of the changing my name, at which as at their disappointment we all
laughed, and so did your father, and as many as knew the deceit. We
hired a waggon-coach, for there is no other at Calais, and began our
journey about the beginning of June 1659.
Coming one night to Abbeville, the Governor sent his Lieutenant to me,
to let me know my husband was well the week before, that he had seen
him at Paris, and had promised him to take care of me in my going
through his government, there being much robbery daily committing;
that he would advise me take care of the garrison soldiers, and giving
them a pistole a piece, they would convey me very safely. This, he
said, the Governor would have told me himself, but that he was in bed
with the gout; I thanked him, and accepted his proffer. The next
morning he sent me ten troopers well armed, and when I had gone about
four leagues, as we ascended a hill, says some of these, 'Madam, look
out, but fear nothing.' They rid all up to a well-mounted troop of
horse, about fifty or more, which, after some parley, wheeled about
into the woods again. When we came upon the hill, I asked how it was
possible so many men so well armed should turn, having so few to
oppose them; at which they laughed, and said, 'Madam, we are all of a
company, and quarter in this town. The truth is, our pay is short, and
we are forced to keep ourselves this way; but we have this rule, that
if we in a party guard any company, the rest never molest them, but
let them pass free.'
I having passed all danger, as they said, gave them a pistole each
man, and so left them and went on my journey, and met my husband at
St. Dennis, God be praised! The 20th day of October, my then only son
died of the small-pox; he lies buried in the Protestant Church, near
Paris, between the Earl of Bristol and Doctor Steward. Both my eldest
daughters had the small-pox at the same time, and though I neglected
them, and day and night attended my dear son, yet it pleased God they
recovered and he died, the grief of which made me miscarry, and caused
a sickness of three weeks.
After this, in the beginnings of November, the King came to visit his
mother, who was at her own house at Combes, two leagues from Paris,
and thither went my husband and myself. I had not seen him in almost
twelve years: he told me that if it pleased God to restore him to his
kingdoms, my husband should partake of his happiness in as great a
share as any servants he had. Then he asked me many questions of
England, and fell into discourse with my husband privately two hours,
and then commanded him to follow him to Flanders. His Majesty went the
next day, my husband that day month, which was the beginning of
December. I went with our family to Calais, and my husband sent me
privately to London for money in January. I returned him one hundred
and fifty pounds, with which he went to the King, and I followed to
Newport, Bruges, and Ghent, and to Brussels, where the King received
us very graciously, with the Princess Royal and the Dukes of York and
Gloucester. After staying three weeks at Brussels, we went to Breda,
where we heard the happy news of the King's return to England. In the
beginning of May we went with all the Court to the Hague, where I
first saw the Queen of Bohemia, who was exceeding kind to all of us.
Here the King and all the Royal Family were entertained at a very
great supper by the States; and now business of state took up much
time.
The King promised my husband he should be one of the Secretaries of
State, and both the now Duke of Ormond, and the Lord Chancellor
Clarendon, were witnesses of it, yet that false man made the King
break his word for his own accommodation, and placed Mr. Norris, a
poor country gentleman of about two hundred pounds a year, a fierce
Presbyterian, and one that never saw the King's face: but still
promises were made of the reversion to your father.
Upon the King's restoration, the Duke of York, then made Admiral,
appointed ships to carry over the company and servants of the King,
who were very great. His Highness appointed for my husband and his
family a third-rate frigate, called the Speedwell; but his Majesty
commanded my husband to wait on him in his own ship. We had by the
States' order sent on board to the King's most eminent servants, great
store of provisions: for our family we had sent on board the Speedwell
a tierce of claret, a hogshead of Rhenish wine, six dozen of fowls, a
dozen of gammons of bacon, a great basket of bread, and six sheep, two
dozen of neats' tongues, and a great box of sweetmeats. Thus taking
our leaves of those obliging persons we had conversed with in the
Hague, we went on board upon the 23rd of May, about two o'clock in the
afternoon. The King embarked at four of the clock, upon which we set
sail, the shore being covered with people, and shouts from all places
of a good voyage, which was seconded with many volleys of shot
interchanged: so favourable was the wind, that the ships' wherries
went from ship to ship to visit their friends all night long. But who
can sufficiently express the joy and gallantry of that voyage, to see
so many great ships, the best in the world, to hear the trumpets and
all other music, to see near a hundred brave ships sail before the
wind with vast cloths and streamers, the neatness and cleanness of the
ships, the strength and jollity of the mariners, the gallantry of the
commanders, the vast plenty of all sorts of provisions; but above all,
the glorious majesties of the King and his two brothers, were so
beyond man's expectation and expression! The sea was calm, the moon
shone at full, and the sun suffered not a cloud to hinder his prospect
of the best sight, by whose light, and the merciful bounty of God, he
was set safely on shore at Dover in Kent, upon the 25th [Footnote:
Probably a mistake for the 26th] of May, 1660.
So great were the acclamations and numbers of people, that it reached
like one street from Dover to Whitehall: we lay that night at Dover,
and the next day we went in Sir Arnold Braem's [Footnote: Of a Dutch
family settled at Bridge, in Kent. The house at Dover, in which Lady
Fanshawe lay, was built by Jacob Braem, and is, or was in Hasted's
time, the Custom-house. The family is now extinct.] coach towards
London, where on Sunday night we came to a house in the Savoy. My
niece, Fanshawe, then lay in the Strand, where I stood to see the
King's entry with his brothers; surely the most pompous show that ever
was, for the hearts of all men in this kingdom moved at his will.
The next day I went with other ladies of the family to congratulate
his Majesty's happy arrival, who received me with great grace, and
promised me future favours to my husband and self. His Majesty gave my
husband his picture, set with small diamonds, when he was a child: it
is a great rarity, because there never was but one. We took a house in
Portugal Row, Lincoln's-inn Fields. My husband had not long entered
upon his office, but he found an oppression from Secretary Nicholas,
to his great vexation, for he, as much as in him lay, engrossed all
the petitions, which really, by the foundation, belonged to the Master
of the Requests; and in this he was countenanced by Lord Chancellor
Clarendon, his great patron, notwithstanding he had married Sir Thomas
Aylesbury's daughter, that was one of the Masters of the Requests.
This year I sent for my daughter Nan from my sister Boteler's, in
Kent, where I had left her; and my daughter Mary died in Hertfordshire
in August, and lies buried in Hertford church, in my father's vault.
In the latter end of the summer I miscarried, when I was near half
gone with child, of three sons, two hours one after the other. I think
it was with the hurry of business I then was in, and perpetual company
that resorted to us of all qualities, some for kindness and some for
their own advantage.
As that was a time of advantage, so it was of great expense, for on
April the 23rd, 1661, the King was crowned, when my husband, being in
waiting, rode upon his Majesty's left hand [Footnote: Evelyn says,
that at the coronation of Charles the Second were "Two persons,
representing the Dukes of Normandy and Aquitaine, viz., Sir Richard
Fanshawe and Sir Herbert Price, in fantastic habits."-Diary, vol. ii.
p. 168.] with very rich footcloths, and four men in very rich
liveries; and this year we furnished our house and paid all our debts
which we had contracted during the war.
The 8th day of May following, the King rode to the Parliament, and
then my husband rode in the same manner. His Majesty had commanded my
husband to execute the place of the Chancellor of the Garter, both
because he understood it better than any, and was to have the
reversion of it. The first feast of St. George, my husband was proxy
for the Earl of Bristol, and was installed for him Knight of the
Garter. The Duke of Buckingham put on his robes, and the Duke of
Ormond his spurs, in the stall of the Earl of Bristol.
Now it was the business of the Chancellor to put your father as far
from the King as he could, because his ignorance in state affairs was
daily discovered by your father, who showed it to the King; but at
that time the King was so content that he should almost and alone
manage his affairs, that he might have more time for his pleasure,
that his faults were not so visible as otherwise they would have been,
and afterwards proved. But now he sends to your father and tells him
that he was, by the King's particular choice, resolved on to be sent
to Lisbon with the King's letter and picture to the Princess, now our
Queen, which then, indeed, was an employment any nobleman would be
glad of; but the design from that time forth was to fix him here.
When your father was gone on this errand, I stayed in our house in
Portugal Row, and at Christmas I received the New Year's gifts
belonging to his places, which is the custom, of two tuns of wine at
the Custom-house, for Master of Requests, and fifteen ounces of gilt
plate at the Jewel-house, as Secretary of the Latin Tongue.
At the latter end of Christmas my husband returned from Lisbon, and
was very well received by the King; and upon the 22nd of February
following I was delivered of my daughter Elizabeth.
Upon the 8th of June,[Footnote: Query, 8th] 1662, my husband was made
a Privy Councillor of Ireland; and some time after my Lord and Lady
Ormond went into Ireland, and upon my taking leave of her Grace, she
gave me a turquoise and diamond bracelet, and my husband a fasset
[Footnote: A diamond cut into facets; a brilliant.] diamond ring. I
never parted from her upon a journey but she ever gave me some
present. When her daughter, the Lady Mary Cavendish, was married, none
were present but his grandmother and father, and my husband and self;
they were married in my Lord Duke's lodging in Whitehall, and given by
the King, who came privately without any train. [Footnote: According
to Collins' Peerage, Mary, second daughter of James Duke of Ormond,
married William Cavendish, ninth Duke of Devonshire, at Kilkenny in
Ireland, on the 27th of October, 1662. Lady Fanshawe's statement
proves that he was mistaken.]
As soon as the King had notice of the Queen's landing, he immediately
sent my husband that night to welcome her Majesty on shore, and
followed himself the next day; and upon the 21st of May the King
married the Queen at Portsmouth, in the presence-chamber of his
Majesty's house.
There was a rail across the upper part of the room, in which entered
only the King and Queen, the Bishop of London, the Marquis de Sande,
the Portuguese Ambassador, and my husband: in the other part of the
room there were many of the nobility and servants to their Majesties.
The Bishop of London declared them married in the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; and then they caused the
ribbons her Majesty wore to be cut in little pieces, and, as far as
they would go, every one had some.[Footnote: As it must be inferred
that Lady Fanshawe derived her information from her husband, who, she
says, was present, her account of the ceremony is deserving of
attention, because some doubts have been entertained as to the manner
in which it was solemnised.-See Bishop Kennett's Historical Register,
p. 693.]
Upon the 29th of May their Majesties came to Hampton Court, where was
all that pretended to her Majesty's service, and all the King's
servants, ladies and other persons of quality, who received her
Majesty in several rooms, according to their several qualifications.
The next morning, about eleven o'clock, the Duchess of Ormond and her
daughter, the now Lady Cavendish, and myself, went to wait on her
Majesty as soon as her Majesty was dressed; where I had the honour
from the King, who was then present, to tell the Queen who I was,
saying many kind things of me to ingratiate me with her Majesty,
whereupon her Majesty gave her hand to me to kiss, with promises of
her future favour. After this we remained in Hampton Court, in the
Requests' lodgings, my husband being then in waiting until the 10th
day of August, upon which day he received his despatches for
Ambassador to Portugal.
His Majesty was graciously pleased to promise my husband his picture,
which afterwards we received, set with diamonds, to the value of three
or four hundred pounds, his Majesty having been pleased to give my
husband, at his first going to Portugal, his picture at length, in his
garter-robes: my husband had also by his Majesty's order, out of the
wardrobe, a crimson velvet cloth of state, fringed and laced with
gold, with a chair, a footstool, and cushions, and two other stools of
the same, with a Persian carpet to lay under them, and a suit of fine
tapestry hanging for that room, with two velvet altar-cloths for the
chapel, and fringed with gold, with surplices, altar cloths, and
napkins, of fine linen, with a Bible, in Ogleby's print and cuts, two
Common Prayer-books, in folio and quarto, with eight hundred ounces of
gilt plate, and four thousand ounces of white plate; but there wanted
a velvet bed, which he should have had by custom.
Thus having perfected the ceremonies of taking leave of their
Majesties, and receiving their commands, and likewise taking our
leaves of our friends, as I said, upon Sunday the 10th of August we
took our journey to Portugal [Footnote: Evelyn says, "5th of August
1662, to London, and next day to Hampton Court, and took leave of Sir
R. Fanshawe, now going Ambassador to Portugal."--Diary, vol. ii. p.
195.] carrying our three daughters with us, Katherine, Margaret, and
Ann.
This night we lay at Windsor, where, on Monday the 11th, in the
morning, we went to prayers to the King's Chapel with Doctor Heavers,
my husband's Chaplain. On our return we were visited by the Provost of
Eton, and divers others of the clergy of that place, and Sir Thomas
Woodcock, the chief commander of that place, in the absence of Lord
Mordaunt, Lord Constable of Windsor Castle.
Upon the desire of some there, my husband left some of his coats-of-
arms, which he carried with him for that purpose, as the custom of
ambassadors is, to dispose of where they lodge.[Footnote: This custom
is still retained in the instances of the Lords Lieutenant of
Ireland.]
That night we lay at Bagshot; Tuesday the 12th, we dined at
Basingstoke, and lay at Andover; Wednesday the 13th, we dined at
Salisbury, and there lay that night, and borrowed in the afternoon the
Dean of Westminster's coach, being willing to ease all our own horses
for half a day, having a long journey to go.
We went in the Dean's coach to see Wilton, being but two miles from
Salisbury. We found Lord Herbert at home; he entertained us with great
civility and kindness, and gave my husband a very fine greyhound
bitch: his father, the Earl of Pembroke, being then at London. We
visited the famous church, and at our return to our lodgings, were
visited by the Right Reverend Father in God, Doctor Henchman, the
Bishop of that place, and Doctor Holles, the Dean of that place, and
Doctor Earle, Dean of Westminster, since, by the former Bishop's
remove to the See of London, now Bishop of Salisbury.
On Thursday the 14th, my husband and I, with our children, having
begged of the Bishop his blessing at his own house, dined at
Blandford, in Dorsetshire. Sir William Portman hath a very fine seat
within a mile of it. We lodged that night at Dorchester: on Friday the
15th we lay at Axminster, and Saturday the 16th at Exeter, and went to
prayers at the Cathedral church, accompanied by the principal divines
of that place. On Sunday the 17th, we stayed all that day, and on
Monday the 18th, we lay at a very ill lodging, of which I have
forgotten the name; and on Tuesday the 19th, we went to Plymouth,
where, within six miles of the town, we were met by some of the chief
merchants of that place, and of the chief officers of that garrison,
who all accompanied us to the house of one Mr. Tyler, a merchant.
Upon our arrival, the Governor of that garrison, one Sir John Skelton,
visited us, and did us the favour to keep us company, with many of his
officers, during our stay in that town. Sir John Hele, as soon as he
heard of our being there, sent my husband a fat buck; and my cousin
Edgcombe, of Mount Edgcombe, a mile from Plymouth, sent him another
buck, and came, as soon as he heard we were there, from a house of his
twelve miles from Mount Edgcombe, to which he came only to keep us
company. From whence, the next day after his arrival, he with his
Lady, and Sir Richard Edgcombe, his eldest son, and others of his
children, came to visit us at Plymouth; and the day after we dined at
Mount Edgcombe, where we were very nobly treated. At our coming home,
they would need accompany us over the river to our lodgings. The next
day the Mayor and Aldermen came to visit my husband; and the next day
we had a great feast at Mr. Seale's house, the father of our landlord.
Our being so well lodged and treated by the inhabitants of this town
was upon my father's score, whose deputies some of them were, he being
one of the Farmers of the Custom-house to receive the King's customs
of that port.
On Sunday the 30th, the wind coming fair, we embarked, accompanied by
my cousin Edgcombe and all his family, and with much company of the
town, that would show their kindness until the last. Taking our leave
of our landlord and landlady, we gave her twenty pieces of gold to buy
her a ring, and they presented my children with many pretty toys.
Thus, on Monday, at nine o'clock in the morning we were received on
board the Ruby frigate, commanded by Captain Robinson. We had very
many presents sent us on board by divers gentlemen, among which my
cousin Edgcombe sent us a brace of fat bucks, three milk goats, wine,
ale and beer, with fruit of several sorts, biscuit and sweetmeats.
On Monday the 31st of August 1662, we set sail for Lisbon, and landed
the 14th of September, our style, between the Conde de St. Laurence's
house and Belem, God be praised! all in good health. As soon as we had
anchored, the English Consul, with the merchants, came on board us;
but we went presently to a house of the Duke of Aveiros, where my
husband was placed by his Majesty when he was there before, in which
he had then left his chief Secretary and one other, with some others
of his family. The first that visited incognito there, for he w
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