and spirited young sister, and they had the company frequently of Anne's friend, Mistress Anne Howard, the daughter of Lord Howard of Escrick. They were waited on by a Biblical trio - Moses, Aaron, and Miriam, whom a jesting chance had thrown together beneath one roof. Here Anne led a life of enforced quietness, and her passionate devotion to the Royal cause must have yearned for an outlet long before opportunity came; but she was even now eminently practical, and capable, when serious issues were at stake, of discretion and enterprise beyond her years.

The seclusion of Charlton, however, did not entirely deprive her of the excitements of youth. In 1644, Romance, fresh and thrilling, came her way; and though her account, written long after, seems to be tinged with the uncertainties of self-justification, there seems little doubt that her feelings, as well as those of her lover, were deeply stirred from the first. The hero of the story was "Mr W. H.," William Howard, the brother of her friend. He had the disadvantage of being younger than Anne, but his addresses were unwelcome chiefly because a rich marriage was desirable for him, and to have encouraged his love would have meant ingratitude to his father, who had exercised his influence on behalf of the family in these evil days.

She gave him at first no encouragement whatever, but

and turn Capuchin was naturally disconcerting to a staunch Protestant, and finally she says: "I did yield so far to comply with his desires as to give him liberty one day when I was walking in the gallery to come there and speak to me. What he said was handsome and short, but much disordered, for he looked pale as death, and his hand trembled when he took mine to lead me, and with a great sigh said, ‘If I loved you less I could say more.' I told him I could not but think myself much obliged to him for his good opinion of me, but it would be a higher obligation to confirm his esteem of me by following my advice which I should now give him myself, since he would not receive it by his friend." The bracing quality of her advice was wasted, and at their next meeting Mr W. H. made the agitating announcement that whatever became of him that might make him displease either his father or his friends, I was the occasion of it, for if I would not give him hopes of marrying him, he was resolved to put himself out of a capacity of marrying any other and go immediately into a convent; and that he had taken order to have posthorses ready against the next day."

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Anne was as satisfactorily perturbed as Mr W. H. could have wished. As she expresses "Though I had had no respect for him, his sister, or his

it:

view, leaving Anne to face her mother, who "did solemnly vow that if she should hear I did see Mr H. she would turn me out of her doors and never own me again ❞—to which Anne demurely replied that it would be against her will if ever she heard of it! Lord Howard asked that another parting in terview should be arranged, but the vigilant mother would consent only on condition that she should be present; and it is scarcely surprising that her daughter continues: "This would not at all please Mr H., and therefore seemed to lay the desire of it aside.' Anne was now virtually a prisoner, guarded night and day by Miriam, who seems to have been at heart on the side of youth. One evening while walking in the hall with her little nephew, a message was brought by Miriam asking her to meet Mr H. at the gate, but from motives of policy she finally refused. Presently Miriam returned greatly perturbed, and announced that one Musgrove, a tenant of Sir Henry Newton's and a Parliamentary spy, had attacked Mr H. in the belief that he was Sir Henry returning privately to visit his wife, and that Mr H. had been carried to an ale-house to recover. Anne returned to the room where her mother and sister were, and professed suitable surprise when a few minutes later a letter arrived from Lord Howard announcing that his son had left for France; and the protestations of filial

love and duty which the circumstances provoked were cut short by her mother's icy response : "It seems you have a good opinion of yourself." However, Anne was immediately released from surveillance, and when a message came from Mr Howard asking her to meet him in the banqueting-house in the garden, she merely regretted that the place was unsuitable, because it was visible from her mother's room. She retired to her room to meditate how she was to solve the problem (of making either Mr H. or her mother forsworn!), and, as usually happened at critical junctures, was suddenly blessed with inspiration. In her own words, "In the midst of this dispute with myself what I should do, my hand being still upon my eyes, it presently came into my mind. that if I blindfolded my eyes that would secure me from seeing him, and so I did not transgress against my mother, and he might that way satisfy himself by speaking with me." The result was an interview in the cellar, at which Anne was accompanied by Moses and Miriam, and Mr Howard by his governor, Mr T. The young man vainly demanded that she should uncover her eyes, but passed on to the subject of a secret marriage and his fears for her constancy. Then Mr T., who with Moses and Miriam "had all this time been so civil as to retire at such a distance as not to hear what we said," interrupted him,

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treated me more like a friend than a child.”

Life at Charlton was no smoother after the departure of Mr H. Lord Howard tried in vain to improve matters. Anne had to submit for weary months to argument, reproaches, gibes, all hard to bear at any time, but rendered harder by the quietness of Charlton and the continued separation from Mr Howard, who remained in France, and had little success in his attempts at communication. Anne tells how her unhappiness grew. "My mother's anger against me increased to that height, that for fourteen months she never gave me her blessing, nor even spoke to me but when it was to reproach me; and one day she did say with much bitterness she did hate to see me." This was the last straw, and Anne wrote to her mother's relative, Sir Patrick Drummond, in Holland, to ask his help in entering a Protestant nunnery there. This gentleman was a kindly soul, with a good deal of influence over the implacable Jane, and a letter from him actually reduced her to such unwonted tenderness that her daughter says: From that time she received me again

Lord Howard, doubtless thoroughly tired of an affair which seemed to have entered a culde-sac, and of a lady as impregnable as her native mountains, resorted to his sister; the Countess of Banbury, who was then in France, to see if she could turn his son's affections into more profitable channels. This notorious lady, whose character is etched with apt economy of phrase in the words, she gloried much of her wit and contrivance, and used to say she never designed anything but she accomplished it,' brought Mr Howard to England early in 1646, and introduced to his attention a bevy of possible brides. He behaved oddly, twice cut his faithful Anne on the street, but sent an explanation by his cousin that he was in the meantime engaged in making love to all that came in his way, in order to mislead his friends, and that he was still faithful. This scanty news had to suffice, and Mr H. continued his attentions to other ladies, and especially to Lady Elizabeth Mordaunt, daughter of the Earl of Peterborough, who, according to Anne, was, like herself, no beauty. In six months the blow fell. Mr Howard and Lady Elizabeth were privately married, to the annoyance of their relatives and their own future unhappiness.

The news came to Anne in

a letter, and her reception of it- -at least as she describes it in her later years-was characteristic. She says: "I was alone in my sister's chamber when I read the letter, and flinging myself down upon her bed, I said: 'Is this the man for whom I have suffered so much? Since he hath made himself unworthy of my love, he is unworthy my anger or concern'; and rising immediately I went out into the next room to my supper as unconcernedly as if I had never had an interest in him nor had never lost it." But she suffered and her excellent mother laughed. Miriam, with a Biblical freedom of expression, called down misfortune upon the heads of the faithless lover and his bride, and was reproved by her young mistress, who, however, records, not without pious satisfaction, that "it seems the Lord thought fit to grant her request. . . which may be a lesson to teach people to govern their wishes and their tongue that neither may act to the prejudice of any, lest it be placed on their account at the day of reckoning."

The manuscript breaks off here, but life was not over for the disconsolate romantic, who was destined for further entanglements of the heart before sailing into the safe harbour of marriage with a sober Scots baronet of mature years. It can safely be assumed that the missing passage revealed her recovery from the faithlessness of Mr H. and a

growing enthusiasm for the King's cause; for in the new chapter the centre of the stage is occupied by a certain Colonel Bamfield or Bampfield, always alluded to as C. B. He was a friend of Will Murray and an active servant of the King, and presumably was attracted to the young courtier's sister by her evident devotion to the King and the keen and practical qualities which might be useful to the Royalist cause. A close but circumspect friendship rapidly developed. Anne regarded C. B. as a model of decorum and morality, "whose discourse was serious, handsome, and tending to impress the advantages of piety, loyalty, and virtue," and seems to have derived much solid benefit from his acquaintance. All through the Autobiography we see C. B. through the eyes of a woman, strong-willed and hot-headed, dazzled by the glitter of adventurous service to the King, loyal often to the point of wilful obstinacy, and yet clear-sighted and given to speaking her mind with unsparing candour in season and out of it. And it was not long before Anne found it necessary to tell C. B. that she thought his own practice contradicted much of his profession, for one of his acquaintances had told me he had not seen his wife in a twelvemonth, and it was impossible, in my opinion, for a good man to be an ill husband." But her disapproval was quenched by the confidential assurance that the cause of

'