to a confession of his and her own Counsel's making, touching a fault committed before your general pardon. Whereupon the sentence of divorce proceeded with as much rigour as ever was showed to the meanest in the like case.
Now if before GOD, the want of consent doth make a nullity in marriage; and the not-performing the duties doth break the conditions of marriage; and that dissension by PAUL'S doctrine doth make the woman free to marry again; and lastly, if a sentence of divorce be a judicial separation, not prohibited by the Law of GOD: this Lady remaineth divers ways free from her bond and free from her sin, if she repent, namely, impietas impii non nocebit ei, in quacunque die conversus fuerit ab impietate sua.
And you, dear lord!—that in the greatness of your place (but more in your wonderful gui[dance?]) resemble GOD- out of that clemency, wherein you imitate Him whose Mercy doth exceed all his works; lay by the rigour of your judgment and as you are both fidelis et prudens dispensator; at the least dispense and forgive them, though it were much, [seeing] they have ever loved you much: and, if no other fortune [honours], give them leave in their old age to live together like poor BAUCIS and PHILEMON; who will never entertain any other guests into their hearts, but GOD and you.
For me, if the laws of moral honesty—which in things not prohibited by GOD, I have ever held inviolable—do only move me now to prefer my own conscience before the opinion of the world; my own better fortunes [i.e. prospects of higher honours or greater possessions]; or the dear respect to my posterity: do but vouchsafe to think! what a servant the same rules of honesty must force me to be to you; whose merit to me is so infinitely beyond any other, and my love to you so much above the love to a woman, as JONATHAN'S was to DAVID, "whom he loved as his own soul." Lambeth Palace MSS. Vol. 943. Art. 6. fol. 47.
This holograph is virtually the dedication to the King of a very learned Defence of the subsequent marriage on the 26th December, 1605, at Wansted of the Earl of DEVONSHIRE with STELLA; after she had borne several children to him; had, as we have seen, received the King's general pardon; and had been promoted in her own right in the peerage (so well known at Court were the wrongs which Lord RICH offered to
