clothes of my back.' And in this condition the sad little band of women and children walked across the fields, weeping as they went, to take refuge at Claydon. Sir Alexander himself died in the Tower, overwhelmed by grief at the destruction of his house and the ruin of his family, and the loss of his eldest son, Colonel John Denton, who was killed in a gallant attempt to recover Hillesden from the rebels. Ralph wrote to his uncle from Rouen full of concern for that 'good young man that you and I did love soe well,' but not without envying him his fate. 'Hee lived and died most gallantly, and questionlesse is now most happy.' For his part, he is quite of his cousin Doll's opinion that these are miserable times we live in, and sartainly those are happiest that goes first.' And to his brother Edmund he wrote in a still sadder strain, how sorely he was afflicted for the ruine of sweet Hillesden, and the distresses that hapened to my aunt and sisters.' In the midst of these tragic events we hear of two romantic love stories which sprang out of the siege. Colonel Smith, the gallant Royalist commander of the garrison, fell in love with Sir Alexander Denton's fair daughter, Margaret, and pursued his courtship in the Tower with so much success that he married her and afterwards succeeded in making his escape. At the same time Sir Alexander's sister Susan, an elderly spinster, inspired a rough captain in the besieging army, one Jaconiah Abercrombie, with tender admiration. "Tis him as did first plunder Hilsden,' observes her sister, Mrs. Isham. Strange as was this wooing, he married her on the spot; and being killed in a skirmish a year later, was buried with the long series of Church and Royalist Dentons under the shadow of the beautiful old church at Hillesden.

Meanwhile, Sir Ralph and his wife and children were spending dreary months in exile, far away from their beloved Buckinghamshire home.

'Only one member of the House of Commons,' says Mr. Gardiner in his 'History of the Civil War,'' amongst those who had remained at their posts at Westminster after the first months of the Civil War-Sir Ralph Verney-refused the Covenant at the end of 1643, preferring the miseries of exile to the soiling of his conscience.'

His resolution was assailed on all sides. His best friends told him the course he had taken would leave him no hope of indemnity on either side, but certaynty of greate losse and blame from both' His brother Henry politely observes that

1 Gardiner's Great Civil War, ii. 10.

Ralph has played the bird called the goose.' And Doll Leeke wrote to Mary Verney:

'I have heard severall parliment men call your husband a delinquent. Some say he has 3 thousand pound a yeare, and that they resolve to have it sudenly. All the mischief that they can do him, he must expect, which apeares to me a straing cruilty and an ill reward for his good opinion of them' (ii. 213).

Her words were but too true. That same year, 1644, an ordinance was issued by Parliament naming Sir Ralph a delinquent, and in the following September he was voted out of the House of Commons, which he calls one of the greatest and most inexpressible afflictions that ever befell me.' His friends advised him to come home and compound, but to do this he must first take the Covenant, and that he could not do. So the exiles remained abroad, and Blois became their headquarters from the summer of 1645. Ralph's chief solace was the letters he received from his friends in England, and the books which his uncle, Dr. Denton, sent out to him. Milton's Iconoclasta, Bishop Andrewes' two manuals, Hooker his 6 and 8 Books,' are among his studies at this time; and his uncle advises him, if he would doe a good worke, to translate Canterbury [Laud] and Chillingworth their books into French, for certainly never any books gave a greater blow to papacy than these two' (ii. 222). Sometimes the requests for books and groceries are curiously blended together: I pray send me,' writes Sir Ralph, 'the harmony of confession of faith of all Churches, and let me know the price of new currants and raisins. If you can, help me to Dr. Vane's book entitled, "The Lost Sheep is Found"' (ii. 285). Mary occupied herself teaching her children. They have French and dancing lessons, and are soon to begin music. Mun is to be taught to 'play the gittarr and singe'; Peg is to learn the lute. She finds time to keep up her own music, and is engaged on so elaborate a piece of embroidery that when a year later she goes to England, Ralph writes that if her business in London is to take her as long to finish as her 'wrought sheete,' he must not expect her back at present. Housekeeping cares, too, filled much of her time and thoughts. This was by no means always an easy task, as the exiles found. The French page they engaged was up to all sorts of pranks, and before long the graceless boy' had to be dismissed. The two English maids they had brought with them grumbled at foreign living, and begged to go home.

'I know noe English maids,' wrote Ralph, 'will ever bee content

to fare as these French servants fare. No English maide will bee content with our diet and way of liveing. For my part, since this time twelvemoneth, I have not had one bit of Rost meate to dinner, and now of late, I rost but one night in a weeke for Suppers, which were strange in an English maide's opinion' (ii. 225).

hard to find

They look about for a French maid, but it is one here of our religion;' and when a 'civil wench, who playes the lute, and is well clad and well bred,' applies for the place, she turns out raw to service, and 'full of the Itch.' Cleanliness, as Lady Verney remarks, evidently ranks very far in Sir Ralph's eyes after godliness, for he is much more concerned to inquire into her theological opinions, than to recommend the use of soap and water! In the end both the English maids Besse and Luce remain, and learn French; and Besse declares that she will stay with her master and mistress if they are half a dozen years abroad-an assurance which so delights Sir Ralph that he presents her with a 'pair of trimed gloves' worth five-and-twenty shillings.

Lady Verney herself was a notable housekeeper, famous for the excellent bread she baked. She carries a portable oven for roasting apples back to England with her, and orders raisins and currants for Christmas puddings from Amsterdam. 'Sirrup of violets' and 'a firkin of country butter' are, it is amusing to find, sent out to Blois from Buckinghamshire; and when Mary goes home, Ralph begs her to bring him some of the old sack from Claydon. Mary's English friends, on their part, even in these troublesome times, are just as anxious for the latest Paris novelties, a black calash or hood, such as is now the fashion, wooden combs or 'fannes' which are bought at the Palais Royal for two francs apiece; and Sir Ralph is begged to inquire in Paris for those little brushes for making clean of the teeth, most covered with sylver and some few with gold twiste, together with some Petits Bouettes [boîtes] to put them in' (ii. 235). Our old friend, Lady Sussex, in spite of frequent protestations that she is reduced to beggary, cannot help writing to Mary: 'Swite madam, if you make any stay in Paris and see any prity thinges that is not to chargable, fitt for my waringe being a wido, send me worde.' And her daughter, Nan Lee, will make no new clothes till she hears what the 'new fashones in Pares [Paris] be,' and asks Mary to buy her a 'prity coulred stoffe,' and 'bestoe 30 shelings in anie prety thing for my head, to sote me out a litell' (ii. 235).

But Lady Verney was now to turn her thoughts to weightier matters. Ralph's uncle Dr. Denton, and his other

friends, strongly advised that Ralph's wife should come over to England and plead with the Parliamentary Committee for the removal of the sequestration of Claydon. 'Women,' observes the shrewd old Court physician, 'were never soe useful as now;' and 'if she can but bring her spirit to a soliciting temper and sometimes use the juice of an onion to soften hard hearts,' much may be effected. It cost Ralph a hard pang to let his beloved Mischiefe' set out alone on this perilous errand, and his letters during her absence are full of grief at what he calls their fatall separation' and of anxiety on her account. The brave woman landed in England at the end of November 1646, and did not rejoin her husband in France until April 10, 1648. During those weary months she was busily engaged, in spite of illness and suffering, of delays and hindrances of every kind, in her husband's cause. She applied herself with characteristic spirit and tact to the difficult task, secking out foes and friends, waiting on Lords and Commons in turn, administering French toys' in one direction, hard money in another to timid members and their wives. One day she has to stand up for her husband's rights against the men who owed him money, another she has to meet his creditors and satisfy them as best she can. Now it is Lady Warwick-'Old men's wife' as she is called in the cipher agreed upon between Ralph and Mary-and her' vinaigre-faced husband,' who are cold and slow to help, and have to be cajoled into better humour, now the cowardly brothers Tom and Henry, who torment her with their insolent threats, and of both of whom, she tells Ralph, she has a worse opinion than she has room to express. And in the midst of all these toilsome efforts and wearisome delays she gives birth to a son at her lodging in town on June 3, 1647. The honest Doctor,' as she calls him, who remains through all 'Mischiefe's' devoted servant and helper, writes to tell Sir Ralph the good news, and Mary adds in her own hand, 'I have borne you a lusty boy.' Even before the child was born, there had been a loving dispute over his name between the husband and wife. If it were a girl Ralph insisted it should be Mary, but he demurred strongly to a boy bearing his name, which was only likely to bring him ill fortune. Mary, however, had her way, and the babe was christened Ralph on June 17. Sir Ralph sent her many directions about the ceremony, begging Mary not to give needless offence to the State, 'for soe it bee doun with common ordinarie water and the right words used, the child well be well baptized.' And he begs his wife on no account to put off receiving Holy Com

munion at home, if she cannot get to church before her confinement. My Budd,' he adds, touchingly, this is a Greate Worke, therfore chuse a time when you have least Businesse, that you may considder it more seariously' (ii. 260). We have also a charming little French letter, which Mary's ten-yearold boy addresses to his mother on this occasion. Miss Peg, it appears, had wished for a sister, and pouts when she is told of her little brother's arrival :

'Madame ma bonne mère. Mad1le ma sœur est extrèmement courroucée contre vous par ceque vous avez eue un garçon et non pas une fille. Je prie continuellement pour vous comme mon devoir me le commande. Vous baiserez pour moi Monsieur mon petit frère. Madle ma sœur vous baise humblement la main quoique vous l'ayez grandement désobligée' (ii. 266).

By August, Mary managed to get down to Claydon, but the visit was a very sad one. There were soldiers quartered in the house when she arrived, and the state of the furniture and general confusion was lamentable to see. The linen was all worn out, the feather-beds were eaten with rats, the muskcoloured stools spoiled, the dining-room chairs in rags. The rector and agent had quarrelled hopelessly, and Ralph's own sisters had repaid his efforts and anxieties on their behalf by more than one shabby trick, carrying off Mary's best-wrought sheets, her green furniture and side-saddle, and having a battle royal over the 'great looking-glass' which the old steward and housekeeper had stoutly refused to give up. Three of the girls, Susan, Peg, and Pen, had married in the course of the last twelve months; and although Sue's husband, Mr. Alport, was lodged in the Fleet for debt a week or two after the wedding, and Peg's husband, Sir Thomas Elmes of Green's Norton, is described as a cross humoursome boy,' yet as far as money and position went they had not done badly, considering the state of the country and their forlorn condition. But Mary was severe both on her sisters-in-law and their husbands, and complains in her letters to Ralph of their wild conduct and ill behaviour, and declares that never in her life did she see and hear of soe much indiscretion as is amongst them. Mary or Mall is, on the whole, the best of them, very playne, but thrifty and willing, and with a great deal of wit.' Lady Verney was in hopes of finding her a husband during her stay in town, but her plans were disappointed, and Mall did not marry for several years to come. As for Betty, she was 'the worst-natured and wilfullest of them all,' and after both Ralph and his wife had taken endless trouble for her welfare, she was sent to school, where Ralph