s, there was
little to counterbalance the restless feeling that London and the
precincts of the Court were her natural element. So she wrote her
letters according to her mother's desire, and waited anxiously for
the replies, feeling as if anything would be preferable to her
present unhappiness and solitude.

The answers came in due time. Mrs. Evelyn promised to try to find a
virtuous and godly lady who would be willing to receive Mistress
Anne Woodford into her family, and Lady Oglethorpe wrote with vaguer
promises of high preferment, which excited Anne's imagination during
those lonely hours that she had to spend while her strict mourning,
after the custom of the time, secluded her from all visitors.

Meantime, in that anxious spring of 1688, when the Church of England
was looking to her defences, the Doctor could not be much at home,
and when he had time to listen to private affairs, he heard reports
which did not please him of Peregrine Oakshott. That the young men
in the county all abhorred his fine foreign airs was no serious
evil, though it might be suspected that his sharp ironical tongue
had quite as much to do with their dislike as his greater refinement
of manner.

His father was reported to be very seriously displeased with him,
for he openly expressed contempt of the precise ways of the
household, and absented himself in a manner that could scarcely be
attributed to aught but the licentious indulgences of the time; and
as he seldom mingled in the amusements of the young country
gentlemen, it was only too probable that he found a lower grade of
companions in Portsmouth. Moreover his talk, random though it might
be, offended all the Whig opinions of his father. He talked with
the dogmatism of the traveller of the glories of Louis XIV, and
broadly avowed his views that the grandeur of the nation was best
established under a king who asked no questions of people or
Parliament, 'that senseless set of chattering pies,' as he was
reported to have called the House of Commons.

He sang the praises of the gracious and graceful Queen Mary
Beatrice, and derided 'the dried-up Orange stick,' as he called the
hope of the Protestants; nor did he scruple to pronounce Popery the
faith of chivalrous gentlemen, far preferable to the whining of
sullen Whiggery. No one could tell how far all this was genuine
opinion, or simply delight in contradiction, especially of his
father, who was in a constant state of irritatio