s, but finding that rather artificial, he used
Voiture and Waller, who referred to her as the "bright Carlisle of the
Court of Heaven." It should be remembered that she had become a widow
and was considerably older at the time of her friendship with Wentworth
than when Voiture wrote of her, and was probably better balanced, and
truly worthy of Wentworth's own appreciation of her when he wrote, "A
nobler nor a more intelligent friendship did I never meet with in my
life." A passage in a letter to Laud indicates that Wentworth was well
aware of the practical advantage in having such a friend as Lady
Carlisle at Court. "I judge her ladyship very considerable. She is often
in place, and extremely well skilled how to speak with advantage and
spirit for those friends she professeth unto, which will not be many.
There is this further in her disposition, she will not seem to be the
person she is not, an ingenuity I have always observed and honoured her
for."

It is something of a shock to learn that even before the Wentworth
episode was well over, she became a friend of his bitterest foe, Pym.
Gardiner sums up her character in as fair a way as any one,--and not at
all inconsistent with Browning's portrayal of her.

"Lady Carlisle had now been for many years a widow. She had long been
the reigning beauty at Court, and she loved to mingle political intrigue
with social intercourse. For politics as a serious occupation she had no
aptitude; but, in middle age, she felt a woman's pride in attaching to
herself the strong heads by which the world was ruled, as she had
attached to herself in youth, the witty courtier or the agile dancer. It
was worth a statesman's while to cultivate her acquaintance. She could
make him a power in society as well as in Council, could worm out a
secret which it behoved him to know, and could convey to others his
suggestions with assured fidelity. The calumny which treated Strafford,
as it afterwards treated Pym, as her accepted lover, may be safely
disregarded. But there can be no doubt that purely personal motives
attached her both to Strafford and Pym. For Strafford's theory of
Monarchical government she cared as little as she cared for Pym's theory
of Parliamentary government. It may be, too, that some mingled feeling
may have arisen in Strafford's breast. It was something to have an ally
at Court ready at all times to plead his cause with gay enthusiasm, to
warn him of hidden dangers, and to offer h