dispositions of nature (besides others hereafter to be mentioned) and these his private ends, made him of all men most fit for this Irish employment, wherein the Queen and State longed for an end of the war, and groaned under the burden of an unsupportable expense.

"He loved retiredness, good fare, and some few friends. He delighted in study, in gardens, a house richly furnished and delectable rooms of retreat; in riding on a pad to take the airs; in playing at shovelboard or at cards; in reading play-books for recreation; and especially in fishing and fish-ponds; seldom using any other exercises, and using these for pastimes only for a short and convenient time, with great variety of change from one to the other.

"He was a close concealer of his secrets, sparing in speech, but judicious, if not eloquent. He hated swearing, which I have seen him often control at his table with a frowning brow and an angry cast of his black eye; slow to anger, but, once provoked, spoke home; a gentle enemy, easily pardoning, and calmly pursuing revenge; as a friend, if not cold, yet not to be used much out of the highway. Lastly, in his love to women he was faithful and constant, if not transported with self-love more than the object, and therein obstinate."

And a curious assertion is included of his mixture of \evasiveness and fidelity:

"He kept his word in public affairs inviolably, without which he could never have been trusted of the Irish; but otherwise in his promises he was dilatory and doubtful, so as in all events he was not without an evasion."

Nor is he represented as generous:

"To his servants he was mild, seldom reproving them, and never with ill. I cannot say that he was bountiful to them. His gifts to them were rare and sparing. Yet . . . at his death he gave £1000 by

will to be divided by his executors' discretion among them."

A strange, complex being, compounded of great strength and some weakness,-no altruist, yet rather self-concentrated than selfish; a man with immense sense of his responsibilities, whether towards himself or the authority he served; of deeply serious nature, intensely cool and far-sighted-except in the early stage of his love-story. And here his fidelity and that of his lady triumph over all criticism, all censure. That which Dudley Carleton was pleased to call "the scandal" was in truth the least scandalous ingredient of the whole. The true error was the irresponsible begetting of a family all of whom were illegitimate. The marriage itself was an act of supreme courage, a conscientious. confession of the facts, with the desire to secure a social future and heritage to these children. It was Mountjoy's hour of supreme strength, and the world jeeringly converted it into the hour of his supreme weakness. It has been recorded by historians that for a year after the social ban was laid upon the pair "they kept a sad house together," at Wanstead. The ban did not divide them. For it is also on record that his last caresses were on her lips and hands, that, utterly broken, she refused to leave his chamber, and long after he had passed away lay in a corner of it, prostrate, refusing alike bread, meat, and wine.'

1 Johnstone's Historia Rerum Britannicarum.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE WIDOW'S PART

HOWSOEVER the world might disapprove of his

marriage, Court and Nation made an effort at atonement in according Devonshire a gorgeous funeral and interment in St. Paul's Chapel, Westminster Abbey. Nevertheless, even in connection with this, public insult was offered to his wife in the most gratuitous fashion. The following extract from correspondence between Dudley Carleton and John Chamberlain on the 17th April, 1606, narrates the incident :

"My Lord of Devonshire's funeral will be performed in Westminster about three weeks hence. There is much dispute among the heralds, whether his lady's arms shall be impaled with his, which brings in question the lawfulness of the marriage, and that is said to depend on the manner of the divorce; while though it run in these terms, that she was to be separated from her late husband a thoro et mensa propter varia et diversa adulteria confessata et commissa ea in suburbis quam intra muros civitatis London, yet they are two in the conclusion not to marry any other. Her estate is much threatened with the King's account, but it is thought she will find good friends, for she is visited daily by the greatest, who profess much love to her for her Earl's sake; meantime, amongst the meaner sort, you may guess in which credit she is, when Mrs. Bluenson complains that she hath made her cousin of Devonshire shame her and the whole kindred."

"2nd May. My Lord of Devonshire's funeral will be performed on Wednesday next, in which my Lord of Southampton is chief mourner, my Lord of Suffolk and Northampton assistants, and three other Earls. It is determined that his arms shall be set up in single, without his wife's."

It is not clear whether Penelope, bowed down with grief, was able to face the Abbey ceremony. Certain it is that the woman who had not been crushed by the death of the splendid Sidney, or even by the execution of her brilliant and well-beloved brother, had now received her death stroke of sorrow. Very little that was not bitter seems to have been spared to her in the closing of her life. Despite the scorn of the Court and Society, this creature of undying courage, of beauty yet unmarred, of perfect constitution and health, might well have looked for a ripe middle age spent in rich seclusion, had her husband summoned strength enough at the last to forget the evils of the world, the rottenness of the entourage of the new King. At Wanstead he and she, with their five children, could have gathered up the threads of life again, sending their roots deep down into the rich peace of the country, while the master of the house lived much with the books that he loved, the books which are our best friends, since they neither slander nor conspire.

A bitterer cup than any that Penelope had ever drunk was now thrust to her lips. All the influence which she had used in so many ways in previous years amongst men and women, all the tenderness she had shed upon brother and lover, all the inspiration which her mere existence and her high spirit had radiated, all the combined forces of her nature seem to have been powerless to reconstruct life for her second husband.

Of his end she had, as we know, but little warning. Condolences poured in upon her, and her friends rallied about her. Nor did the poets who had always strewn flowers on her path remain dumb. Yet small comfort was it to her that elegy writers extolled her lover's life and death and wove into their poems delicately audacious allusions to her romance. These lines remain to interest lovers of history. In addition to that striking memorial of Charles Blount in Fynes Moryson's Itinerary, the eulogies of the two well-known contemporary poets, Samuel Daniel and John Ford, portions of whose funeral poems are subjoined, relieve a little the stormy gloom in which Devonshire's life closed.

Samuel Daniel expatiates on his patron's love of books and the glories of the once famous library at "solitary Wanstead."

"Which shew'd thou hadst not books as many have

For ostentation, but for use, and that

Thy bounteous memory was such as gave
Á large revenue of the good it gat.

Witness so many volumes, whereto thou
Hast set thy notes under thy learned hand
And marked them. . .

That none would think if all thy life had been
Turn'd into leisure thou could'st have attain'd
So much of time, to have perused and seen
So many volumes that so much contain'd."

And on his self-knowledge and control :

In consort with thyself in perfect love;
And never man had heart more truly serv'd
Under the regiment of his own care.

This action of our death especially
Shews all a man.