The Proud Earl of Somerset's two Wives. 107 Somerset, she being then little beyond fifteen, and he of not more than twenty years. A golden-haired blonde, in the perfection of her beauty, she evidently loved her stately, dark, handsome husband. She shared many of his ideas, but her own pride never became offensive like his notorious arrogance, which was so excessive as to become ridiculous. Anecdotes are numerous in regard to this, such as the rebuke administered by a countryman, who, while driving a pig, had been ordered to stand aside-" My Lord Duke is coming and does not choose to be looked upon!" to which he answered, lifting his pig to the carriage-window, "But I will see him, and my Pig shall see him too! Also, that, when his second wife, Lady Charlotte Finch (daughter of Daniel, Earl of Winchilsea), in 1725, had playfully tapped his shoulder with her fan, he had haughtily told the bride, "Madam, my first wife was a Percy, and she never took such a liberty!" Dean Swift wrote that "he had not a grain of good judgement, hardly common sense;" but Swift was evidently prejudiced against Somerset, desiring his downfall. In our Collection of Manuscript Satires is "Ogle's History,' beginning, "A Widow young, whose name was Bess," already given, on p. 96. It is of date 1681. On p. 110 is another libel. She had other and earlier slanderers than Swift, for in the manuscript satire, beginning " You Scribblers that writ of Widdowes and Maids," and entitled "Lady Fretchwell's song of the Wives," are these malicious lines upon her, evidently written in 1682, soon after her third marriage; the tune is the ever-popular Packington's Pound:-marked as Four able Physicians have lately come down: Great titles of Honour wee all doe adore, : For the name of a Dutchess had so taken place That she lay with her Count, tho' she marri'd his Grace. And Albemarle can dispense with her man, Now she's marri'd a Duke, let him help't if he can. Another, of much later date, 1711, and on the same lady, was written by Dean Swift (as he himself boasts to Stella). He was not left unpunished for the libel, but is believed to have suffered under the supposition that he wrote it, even to the losing the the Bishopric of Hereford in consequence; as the story goes that the victim of the satire took it to Queen Anne and implored her not to allow the author of so virulent an insult to be raised to the Bench. It deserves a place here in connection with Tom Thynne. wrote, moreover, in 1713, concerning this lady and himself: Swift Now angry Somerset her vengeance vows [Thynne. The Queen, incens'd, his services forgot, Leaves him a victim to the vengeful Scot. [Argyle. The Windsor Prophecy. "About three months ago, at Windsor, a poor Knight's widow was buried in the cloisters. In digging the grave, the sexton struck against a small leaden coffer, about half a foot in length, and four inches wide. The poor man, expecting he had discovered a treasure, opened it with some difficulty; but found only a small parchment rolled up very fast, put into a leathern case; which case was tied at the top, and sealed with a St. George, the impression in black wax, very rude and gothick. The parchment was carried to a gentleman of learning, who found in it the following lines, written in a black Old-English letter, and in the orthography of the age, which seems to be about two hundred years ago. I made a shift to obtain a copy of it; but the transcriber, I find, hath in many parts altered the spelling to the modern way. The original, as I am informed, is now in the hands of Dr. W- [no doubt Warburton], F.R.S., where, I suppose, the curious will not be refused the satisfaction of seeing it. "The lines seem to be a sort of Prophecy, and written in verse, as old prophecies usually are, but in a very hobbling kind of measure. Their meaning is very dark, if it be any at all; of which the learned reader can judge better than I however it be, several persons were of opinion that they deserved to be published, both as they discover somewhat of the genius of a former age, and may be an amusement to the present." Hen a holy black Swede, the Son of Bob,1 WHe With a saint at his chin, and a seal at his fob, Then shall the tall black Daventry Bird3 And dear Englond, if aught I understond, Their Conyngs mark thou; for I have been told And keep close to thee always that name Why the race was not to the Swift. 109 1 Dr. John Robinson, who was Bishop of Bristol, Dean of Windsor, Lord Privy Seal, and one of the Plenipotentiaries at Utrecht; setting out for that place at the end of December 1711, by reckoning of Old Style, but on his arrival in Holland, where the New Style had already been adopted, he found January well advanced so January the first had slipped away from him, and he fell between the two stools, we mean Styles. 2 That is, in Robinson, who held representative offices in Windsor and Bristol. Daniel Finch, second Earl of Nottingham, Baron Finch of Daventry, and sixth Earl of Winchilsea (father of the successor-bride to Carrots). He was known as "Don Dismallo." Swift had recently written a Grub-street ballad ridiculing him, as "the intended speech of a famous orator against Peace, 1711,” and tells Hester Johnstone that Finch [="the Daventry bird] was such an owl to complain of it in the House of Lords, who have taken up the printer for it."— Journal to Stella, Dec. 18. The ballad was made to order, for "Lord Wharton saysIt is Dismal (as they call him from his looks) will save England at last.' Lord Treasurer [Robert Harley] was hinting as if he wished a ballad was made on him, and I will get one against to-morrow."-Ibid. Dec. 5, 1711. It begins:An Orator dismal of Nottinghamshire, Who has forty years let out his conscience to hire, Is come up, vi et armis, to break the Queen's peace. He has vamp'd an old Speech, and the Court, to their sorrow, When once he begins, he never will flinch, But repeats the same note a whole day like a Finch. The end of the supposititious speech is this : I'll speech against Peace while Dismal's my name, [Matt. Prior. 4 John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough. "The Dead Sea" is Robert Harley. 5 Elizabeth, at present Countess of Somerset, daughter of Northumberland; widow of Lord Ogle and Thomas Thynne. She was Groom of the Stole, and first Lady of the Bedchamber at this time, in great favour with the Queen. 6 Count Königsmark, who had paid addresses to her during her first widowhood, and in rivalry or revenge contrived the murder of Tom Thynne. : 7 ANNA, the Queen whom he calls "A Royal Prude" in The Author on Himself. 8 Mistress Abigail Masham, the Queen's woman: in the Tory interest. • The Countess was golden-red-haired. Abigail's maiden name had been Hill. There can be no doubt entertained about the authorship, as the following extracts from Swift's Journal to Stella will prove: "I have written a Prophecy which I design to print; I did it to-day, and some other verses."-Dec. 23, 1711. "My Prophecy is printed, and will be published after Christmas-day. I like it mightily. I don't know how it will pass. You will never understand it at your distance without help. I believe everybody will guess it to be mine. My Lord Privy Seal [Robinson] set out this day for Holland."-Dec. 24. "I called at noon at Mrs. Masham's, who desired me not to let the Prophecy be published, for fear of angering the Queen about the Duchess of Somerset; so I writ to the printer to stop them. They have been printed and given about, but not sold.”Dec. 26. "I entertained our Society at the Thatched-House Tavern. The printer had not received my letter, and so brought up dozens apiece of the Prophecy; but I ordered him to part with no more. 'Tis an admirable good one, and people are mad for it."-Dec. 27. Long afterwards, he avenged himself on Queen Anne, for having been persuaded to rebuff him at the entreaty of Carrots, 110 Longleat, and its architect, John of Padua. by lampooning the "Royal Prude," in a travesty, as the Lilliputian Empress, the prudish enemy of Lemuel Gulliver for his method of putting out the conflagration in Lilliput Palace. Thus it was "The Prophecy" far more than the witty Tale of a Tub which formed the stumbling block; but Swift, despite his genius, was not wanted to fill a mitre. His sorely wasted life would not have been improved by a bishopric, though he grumbled at holding an Irish deanery. He would have coveted the Primacy, and found himself ever dissatisfied. It was a vile slander, an unmanly piece of scurrility against a woman, and Jonathan Swift richly deserved any amount of punishment which the spite of the fair Duchess could bring upon him. His insinuating that she was privy to the murder of her second husband, conniving at Königsmark's design because she intended to favour him, was a gratuitous insult, wholly unfounded in fact. No less. brutal was the innuendo that she, like a former predecessor Countess of Somerset, would be prepared to "poison when old." People remembered the great Oyer and Terminer case of Overbury's murder, which ruined handsome Carr and his shameless wife, the Divorcée of Devereux, third Earl of Essex. The maiden-widowhood of both Countesses would be classed together in men's talk, as an additional wrong against the golden or red-haired "Betsy." She had been lampooned in a Satyr ("This way of writing," etc), April, 1682: Ogle's return'd, and will consider further Who next she'll show her [f]ace to for a murther. All living creatures [err]-except the King! In 1863 George Walter Thornbury wrote the poem John of Padua, a Legend of Longleat (="John of Padua duly came, a grave wise man with a dark pale face"), which was charmingly illustrated by the late M. T. Lawless, showing the grandeur of Longleat, the building and gardens, with their Italian architect sitting dead on his bench, whence he was accustomed to survey the works, and surrounded by his revering labourers : And there were the long white terraces, And the great wide porch, like an open hand That rose like a fountain o'er the land; They found him there, when daybreak came, In the self-same posture, self-same place; And when they spoke, no word he said, For John de Padua sat there-dead. [Roxburghe Collection, IV. 60; Wood's, E. 25, fol. 98.] The Matchless Murder. Giving an Account of the most horrible and bloody murthering of the most worthy Gentleman Thomas Thin, Esq., who was on Sunday, February the twelfth, 1682, barbarously killed in his own Coach by some blood-thirsty outlandish Villains, who shot five or six Bullets into his Belly, whereof he quickly died: and the names of the murtherers now lying in Newgate, who have confessed the same, are as followeth: Capt. Christopher Furatz, a German, George Boroskie, a Polander, John Stern, a German, Frederick Harder and Amien Berg, accessories. TO THE TUNE OF, [When] Troy Town. [This tune belongs to the old ballad, "The Wandering Prince of Troy," "When Troy Town for ten years' Wars." Roxb. Coll., III. 43. To be given soon.] |