to lead the tarnished beauty to the altar. And with this mockery
of wedding bells "Messalina's" history practically ended as far as the
world, outside the Somersetshire village, where the remainder of her
life was mostly spent, was concerned. The fires of her passion had now
died out, and the restless and still ambitious woman exchanged love for
political intrigue. She became the most ardent of Jacobites, and plotted
as unscrupulously for the restoration of the Stuarts, as in earlier
years she had planned the capture and ruin of her lovers.

Not content with treading the shady and dangerous path of intrigue
herself, she set to work to undermine the loyalty of her only son, the
young Earl of Shrewsbury, one of the most trusted ministers and friends
of the Orange King; and such was her influence over the high-principled,
if weak Earl that she infected him with her own treachery, until the
man, whom William III. had called "the soul of honour," stood branded to
the world as a spy, leagued with the King's enemies, and was compelled
to leave England for ten years of exile and disgrace.

This corruption and ruin of her own son was the crowning infamy of one
of the worst women who ever enlisted their beauty, of their own free
will, in the service of the devil.

CHAPTER VII

A PROFLIGATE PRINCE

Of the sons of the profligate Frederick, Prince of Wales, Henry
Frederick, Duke of Cumberland, was, by universal consent, the most
abandoned, as his eldest brother, George III., of "revered memory," in
spite of his intrigue with the fair Quakeress, was the least vicious.
Each brother had his amours--many of them highly discreditable; but for
unrestrained and indiscriminate profligacy Henry Frederick took the
unenviable palm.

Even the verdict of posterity is unable to credit this Princeling with a
solitary virtue, unless a handsome face and a passion for music can be
placed to his credit. In his career of female conquest, which began as
soon as he had emancipated himself from his mother's apron strings, he
left behind him a wake of ruined lives; not the least tragic of which
was that of the lovely and foolish Henrietta Vernon, Countess Grosvenor,
whom he dragged through the mire of the Divorce Court, only to fling her
aside, a soiled and crushed flower of too pliant womanhood.

And yet, when his passion was in full flame, no woman was ever wooed
with apparently more sincere ardour and devotion.

"My dear Angel," h