Note 492 — Chapter X · (continued 3)

Lord Hatton, an old royalist, suggested this humiliating proposition in terms scarcely less so to the heir of Cerdic and Fergus. "The race is a very good gentleman's family, and kings have condescended to marry subjects. The lady is pretty, of an extraordinary sweetness of disposition, and very virtuously and ingenuously disposed; the father is a person, set aside of his unhappy engagement, of very great parts and noble inclinations."—Clarendon State Papers, 592. Yet, after all, Miss Lambert was hardly more a mis-alliance than Hortense Mancini, whom Charles had asked for in vain.