ate of anxiety Lucy Hutchinson applied to her brother
for assistance and advice. Sir Allen Apsley was naturally in high
favour at court, where his gallant fight for Charles I. was well known,
and he was glad of an opportunity to help the brother-in-law who had
protected him in time of danger. Moreover, there was another reason
why he was anxious to help Colonel Hutchinson--he, Sir Allen, had
recently married his sister.

Sir Allen Apsley worked exceedingly hard to obtain his brother-in-law's
pardon, and at last he had the joy of telling his sister that her
husband's name was inserted in the Act of Oblivion, and his estates
unconditionally freed to him.

Great was Lucy Hutchinson's joy at the pardon of her husband, and she
looked forward to spending the remainder of their days in peace at
their beloved Owthorpe. Alas! this was not to be. There were many
Royalists who were highly displeased at Colonel Hutchinson's receiving
a pardon, and they determined to ruin him. Very conveniently they
discovered, or said that they had discovered, a Puritan plot for a
rising, and that Colonel Hutchinson was one of the conspirators. As
far as Colonel Hutchinson was concerned the story was utterly untrue,
but, nevertheless, on the strength of it, he was arrested for treason,
carried to London and placed in the Tower. After ten months in the
Tower, during which his wife visited him regularly, he was removed to
Sandown Castle, where, in a damp cell against the walls of which the
sea washed, he contracted ague. Lucy Hutchinson implored the governor
to be permitted to share her husband's prison, but he refused, and
treated both her and him with brutality.

Sir Allen Apsley, hearing of the treatment accorded to his
brother-in-law, used his influence to bring about a change in his
condition, but the alteration came too late, and he died on September
11, 1664. Lucy Hutchinson was not present when he died, but the
message he sent to her was:--'Let her, as she is above other women,
show herself on this occasion a good Christian, and above the pitch of
ordinary minds.'

Little is known of Lucy Hutchinson after her husband's death, beyond
that she soon sold Owthorpe, and that some years later she referred to
herself as being in adversity. By adversity she probably referred to
her widowed state, for it is very unlikely that with many rich
relatives a woman of simple tastes would be in want of money. But of
this we may be sure: that,