civil
war whilst fighting for his king. He is described as having, among other
gifts, "a faultless person," a boon, which descended to his only child,
the bewitching Barbara. In the earliest dawn of her womanhood she
encountered her first lover in the person of Philip Stanhope, second
Earl of Chesterfield. My lord was at this time a youthful widower, and
is described as having "a very agreeable face, a fine head of hair, an
indifferent shape, and a pleasant wit. He was, moreover, an elegant beau
and a dissolute man--testimony of which latter fact may be gathered from
a letter written to him in 1658, by his sister-in-law, Lady Essex, to
prevent the "ruin of his soule." Writes her ladyship: "You treate
all the mad drinking lords, you sweare, you game, and commit all the
extravagances that are insident to untamed youths, to such a degree that
you make yourselfe the talke of all places, and the wonder of those who
thought otherwise of you, and of all sober people."

When Barbara was sixteen, my lord, then in his twenty-third year,
inherited the title and estates of his grandfather: he therefore became
master of his own fortune and could bestow his hand where he pleased.
That he was in love with Barbara is, indeed, most true; but that his
passion was dishonourable is likewise certain: for though he wrote her
letters full of tenderness, and kept assignations with her at Butler's
shop, on Ludgate Hill, he was the while negotiating a marriage with one
Mrs. Fairfax, to whom he was not, however, united. His intrigue with
Barbara continued for upwards of three years, when it was temporarily
suspended by her marriage to one Roger Palmer, a student of the Inner
Temple, the son of a Middlesex knight, and, moreover, a man of the most
obliging temper, as will hereafter be seen. Barbara's loyalty to her
husband was but of short duration. Before she had been nine months a
wife, we find her writing to her old lover she is "ready and willing
to goe all over the world" with him--a sacrifice he declined to accept!
though eager to take advantage of the affection which prompted it. A
little while later he was obliged to quit England; for it happened
in the first month of the year 1660 he quarrelled with and killed one
Francis Woolley, a student at law, to avoid the consequences of which
act he speedily fled the country.

Arriving at Calais, he wrote to King Charles, who was then preparing to
return, throwing himself on his mercy, and beseechi