is son was in arms for
King Charles, and he himself was a gentleman of approved loyalty, he had
done nothing of an overt kind to favour King or Parliament. He thus
hoped, having ever been a peaceable and law-worthy gentleman, to
preserve his lands from peril, and himself and family from prosecution;
and it is a great error to suppose that many honest gentlemen did not so
succeed in the very fiercest frenzy of the civil wars in keeping their
houses over their heads, and their heads upon their shoulders. Witness
worthy Mr. John Evelyn of Wotton and Sayes Court, and many other persons
of repute.

While the Esquire was intent on his business at Westminster, and
settling the terms of a Fine, without which it seemed even his peaceable
behaviour could not be compounded, he lay at the house of a friend, Sir
Fortunatus Geddings, a Turkey merchant, who had a fair house in the
street leading directly to St. Paul's Church, just without Ludgate. The
gate has been pulled down this many a day, and the place where he dwelt
is now called Ludgate Hill. As he had much going to and fro, and was
afraid that his daughter might come to hurt, both in the stoppage to her
schooling, and in the unquietness of the times, he placed her for a
while at a famous school at Hackney, under that notable governante Mrs.
Desaguiliers. And here Mrs. Greenville had not been for many weeks ere
the strangest adventure in the world--as strange as any one of my
own--befel her. The terrible battle of Naseby had by this time been
fought, and the King's cause was wholly ruined. Among other Cavaliers
fortunate enough to escape from that deadly fray, and who were in hiding
from the vengeance of the usurping government, was the Lord Francis
V----s, younger son to that hapless Duke of B----m who was slain at
Portsmouth by Captain F----n. It seems almost like a scene in a comedy
to tell; and, indeed, I am told that Tom D'Urfey did turn the only merry
portion of it into a play; but it appears that, among other shifts to
keep his disguise, the Lord Francis, who was highly skilled in all the
accomplishments of the age, was fain to enter Mrs. Desaguiliers' school
at Hackney in the habit of a dancing-master, and that as such he taught
corantoes and rounds and qyres to the young gentlewomen. Whether the
governante, who was herself a stanch royalist, winked at the deception,
I know not; but her having done so is not improbable. Stranger to
relate, the Lord Francis brought with