r,
acted as his best man at the wedding, which was celebrated with great
festivities at Nunappleton, Cowley contributing a poem. But surely
it was a most extraordinary marriage, and, though there had been
rumours of such a possibility for several years, it was heard of with
surprise. The only child and heiress of the great Parliamentarian
General, one of the founders of the Commonwealth, married to this
Royalist of Royalists, the handsome young insurgent in the Second
Civil War of 1648, the boon-companion of Charles II. for some time
abroad, his boon-companion and buffoon all through his dreary year of
Kingship among the Scots, his fellow-fugitive from the field of
Worcester, and ever since, though less in Charles's company than
before, and serving as a volunteer in the French army, yet a main
trump-card in Charles's lists! How had it happened? Easily enough.
The great Fairfax, with ample wealth of his own, had made most
honourable and chivalrous use of the accessions to that wealth that
had come in the shape of Parliamentary grants to him out of the
confiscated estates of Royalists. Now, one such grant, in lieu of a
money pension of L4000 a year, had been a portion of the confiscated
property of the young Duke of Buckingham, including an estate in
Yorkshire and York House in the Strand. The young Duke, stripped of
his revenues of L25,000 a year, had been living meanwhile on the
proceeds of a great collection of pictures, Titians and what not,
that had been made by his father, and which had been quietly conveyed
abroad for sale. But Fairfax had not forgotten the splendid young
man, and had every wish to retrieve his fortunes for him. There had
probably been communications to that end, not only with Buckingham
himself, but even with Charles II.; and the result had been the
Duke's return to England and appearance in Yorkshire, early in 1657,
to woo Mary Fairfax or to complete the wooing. Who could resist him?
It might have been better for Mary Fairfax had she died in her
girlhood, fresh from Marvell's teaching; but now she was Duchess of
Buckingham. York House and the estate in Yorkshire had been restored
to her husband by gift, and Nunappleton and other Fairfax estates
were to be settled on him and her for their lives, and on their heirs
should there be any.[1]

[Footnote 1: Markham's Life of Fairfax, 364-372.]

Naturally, the Protector might have something to say to the
arrangement. The great Fairfax was a man to who