h was not a little taken notice of.
Cromwell was certainly fond of her, and she took care to entertain him
in it; till he, finding what was said upon it, broke it off. Upon the
King's Restoration she thought that Lord Lauderdale made not those
returns she expected. They lived for some years at a distance. But upon
her husband's death she made up all quarrels; so that Lord Lauderdale
and she lived so much together that his Lady was offended at it and went
to Paris, where she died about three years after." This was in 1672, and
soon afterwards Lady Dysart and Lord Lauderdale were married. She had
great power over him, and employed it in trafficking with such State
patronage as was in Lord Lauderdale's power to bestow.

Cousin Hammond, who was going to take Ludlow's place in Ireland, would
be the Colonel Robert Hammond who commanded Carisbrooke when the King
was imprisoned there. He was one of a new council formed in August and
sent into Ireland about the end of that month.

Lady Vavasour was Ursula, daughter of Walter Gifford of Chillington,
Staffordshire. Her husband was Sir Thomas Vavasour, Bart. The Vavasours
were a Roman Catholic family, and claimed descent from those who held
the ancient office of King's Valvasour; and we need not therefore be
surprised to find Lady Vavasour engaged in one of the numerous plots
that surrounded and endangered the Protector's power. The plot itself
seems to have created intense excitement in the capital, and resulted in
three persons being tried for high treason, and two executed,--John
Gerard, gentleman, Peter Vowel, schoolmaster of Islington, and one
Summerset Fox, who pleaded guilty, and whose life was spared. "Some wise
men," writes one Thomas Gower in a contemporary letter (still
unprinted), "believe that a couple of coy-ducks drew in the rest, then
revealed all, and were employed to that purpose that the execution of a
few mean persons might deter wiser and more considerable persons." This
seems not improbable. On June 6th the official _Mercurius Politicus_
speaks of this plot as follows:--"The traitorous conspiracy mentioned
heretofore it appears every day more desperate and bloody. It is
discovered that their design was to have destroyed his Highness's
person, and all others at the helm of Government that they could have
laid hands on. Immediately upon the villainous assassination, they
intended to have proclaimed Charles Stuart by the assistance of a
tumult," etc. etc. This w