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INTRODUCTION
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a Beadle.[1] Gaysworth, too, will be able to entertain you—that was my great grandfather's: but my Lord Macclesfield complains that the old house is ready to fall upon his head. I love Gaysworth,
- ↑ It is possible the Beadle and the Constable may have been very necessary guards upon the occasion alluded to; for this lady had a spirit which, when roused, made her very formidable. The following letter to her cousin. Lord Brandon, is a proof of this—"Sept. 7th. —82.
"My Lord
"I am sorry I have any occasion to give you trouble, but much more to hear that you and Mr. Sidney are not good friends, for I am sure he has ever loved and honoured you: but, my Lord, all the things in this world are fickle and inconstant as fortune herself; but I was a little afflicted to hear Mr. Sidney say he believes I was bribed to go to Whitehall, and that he suspected you set me to work; to which I only answered, that I never had the honour yet to see your face, and that I did not know whether you had a face or no * * * I am sorry Mr. Sidney is so credulous as to believe all the idle inventions of malicious people against me and my son, which, if he were not perfectly blind, he might see is only pure spite and malice. He treats me with a great deal of cruelty, which I think is very severe, first to have spent my precious youth so dismally as I have done, and now, for a reward of all my sufferings, to be abused and despised, and my son rejected, as if he were none of his, and all this to please his great Mistress; but he will find I have more than an ordinary soul, and, though I cannot manage a sword, a pistol I can; and, if he does not think good to make me some better satisfaction for the many years of my youth which he has obliged me to spend with him, I shall pistol him and be hanged for him, which I had rather
