elder daughter, who like her father became a convert to the Roman catholic faith, married Baron Moll, a Flemish nobleman. Anne, the younger daughter, on whom the family estates devolved on her brother John's death, became the wife of Robert, earl of Sunderland. Digby was a man of extraordinary ability, and one of the greatest orators of his day. Ambitious and headstrong, he was utterly wanting in steadiness of principle and consistency of purpose. Horace Walpole has smartly described Digby's character in the following words: ‘A singular person, whose life was one contradiction. He wrote against popery, and embraced it; he was a zealous opposer of the court, and a sacrifice for it; was conscientiously converted in the midst of his prosecution of Lord Strafford, and was most unconscientiously a persecutor of Lord Clarendon. With great parts, he always hurt himself and his friends; with romantic bravery, he was always an unsuccessful commander. He spoke for the Test Act, though a Roman catholic, and addicted himself to astrology on the birthday of true philosophy’ (Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors, iii. 191–2). His house at Chelsea, formerly Sir Thomas More's, and afterwards known as Buckingham House, was sold by his widow in January 1682 to Henry, marquis of Worcester, afterwards duke of Beaufort. It then acquired the name of Beaufort House, and in 1736 was purchased by Sir Hans Sloane, by whom it was pulled down in 1740. The gate, which was built by Inigo Jones, was given to the Earl of Burlington, who erected it in an avenue near his house at Chiswick. Besides a number of speeches and letters, Digby published ‘Elvira: or the Worst not always True. A Comedy. Written by a Person of Quality’ (London, 1667, 4to). According to Downes, he wrote, with Sir Samuel Tuke, ‘The Adventures of Five Hours,’ which was published in 1663, and, being played at Sir William D'Avenant's theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, ‘took successively thirteen days together, no other play intervening’ (Roscius Anglicanus, 1789, pp. 31–2). According to the same authority, Digby adapted two comedies from the Spanish, viz. ‘'Tis better than it was,’ and ‘Worse and Worse,’ which were also acted at the same theatre between 1662 and 1665 (ib. p. 36). Neither of these plays appears to have been printed, but it is possible that one of them may have been the comedy of ‘Elvira’ under a new title. It is also worthy of notice that the title-page of the first edition of ‘The Adventures of Five Hours’ bears no author's name, while in the third ‘impression’ (1671) it is stated that the play had been ‘revised and corrected by the author, Samuel Tuke, kt. and bart.’ According to Walpole, Digby translated from the French the first three books of ‘Cassandra,’ and was said to have been the author of ‘A true and impartial Relation of the Battle between his Majestys Army and that of the Rebels near Ailesbury, Bucks, Sept. 20, 1643.’ Walpole also states that he found under Digby's name, ‘though probably not of his writing,’ ‘Lord Digby's Arcana Aulica: or Walsingham's Manual of Prudential Maxims for the Statesman and the Courtier, 1655.’ Digby's name, however, does not appear upon the title-page of either of the editions of 1652 and 1655, and it seems from the preface that the book owed its existence to one Walsingham, who, ‘though very young, in a little time grew up, under the wings and favour of the Lord Digby, to such credit with the late king, that he came to be admitted to the greatest trusts.’ Digby is also said to have left a manuscript behind him entitled ‘Excerpta e diversis operibus Patrum Latinorum.’ From the fact that his name appears in the third verse of Sir John Suckling's ‘Sessions of the Poets,’ it is evident that he must have been known as a verse writer before Suckling's poem was written. But few of his verses, however, have come down to us, and the song extracted from ‘Elvira’ is the only piece of his which is included in Ellis's ‘Specimens of the Early English Poets’ (1811, iii. 399–400), while some lines addressed to ‘Fair Archabella,’ taken from a manuscript in Dr. Rawlinson's collection in the Bodleian Library, are given in ‘Athenæ Oxon.’ A portrait of Digby with his brother-in-law, William, fifth earl of Bedford, by Vandyck, was exhibited by Lord Spencer at the first exhibition of national portraits in 1866 (Catalogue, No. 728). This was the picture which Evelyn records seeing ‘in the great house’ at Chelsea, when dining with the Countess of Bristol on 15 Jan. 1679. Bliss says that ‘the best head of Lord Digby is that by Hollarc, in folio, dated 1642; there is a small one by Stent, which is curious, and one by Houbraken, from a picture of Vandyke's.’ A strikingly handsome portrait, engraved by Bocquet, probably after Vandyck's picture, will be found in the third volume of Walpole's ‘Royal and Noble Authors’ (opp. p. 191).
[Clarendon's History of the Rebellion (1849); Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss, 1817), iii. cols. 1100–5; Biographia Britannica (1793), v. 210–38; Walpole's Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors (Park, 1806), iii. 191–200; Lodge's Portraits (1850), vi. 23–39; Chalmers's Biog. Dict. (1813), xii. 79–82; Cunningham's Lives of Eminent and Illustrious Englishmen (1837), iii. 29–32; Baker's Biographia Dramatica (1812), i. 190; Burke's
