Note 44 — HAM HOUSE, SURREY.

The Duchess of Lauderdale was one of the “busiest” women of the busy age in which she lived. Burnet insinuates, that during the life-time of her first husband “she had been in a correspondence with Lord Lauderdale that had given occasion for censure.” She succeeded in persuading him that he was indebted for his escape after “Worcester fight” to “her intrigues with Cromwell.” “She was a woman,” continues the Historian, “of great beauty, but of far greater parts. She had a wonderful quickness of apprehension, and an amazing vivacity in conversation. She had studied not only divinity and history, but mathematics and philosophy. She was violent in every thing she set about; a violent friend, but a much more violent enemy. She had a restless ambition, lived at a vast expense, and was ravenously covetous; and would have stuck at nothing by which she might compass her ends.” Upon the accession of her husband to political power, after the Restoration, “all applications were made to her; she took upon her to determine everything; she sold all places; and was wanting in no methods that could bring her money, which she lavished out in a most profuse vanity.”