man, with so infatuated a passion, that, on her marriage, his frenzy acquired the mastery over his reason; and retiring to an inn in the town in which the Earl and Countess were staying, he composedly drew up a copy of verses, which he transcribed in his own blood, sent to the object of his extravagant ardour, and then ran himself through with his sword. She next married Ludowick Stuart, Duke of Lenox and Richmond. “After his decease,” says Wilson, “Lenox and Richmond, with the great title of Duchess, gave period to her honour, which could not arrive at her mind, she having the most glorious and transcendant heights in speculation; for finding the King a widower, she vowed, after so great a Prince as Richmond, never to be blown with the kisses, or eat at the table of a subject, and this vow must be spread abroad that the King might take notice of the bravery of her spirit. But this bait would not catch the old King, so that she missed her aim; and to make good her resolution, she speciously observed her rule to the last.”
Davenant next resided in the household of Sir Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, a poet and philosopher, a patron of learning, and the friend of Sir Philip Sydney. His stay there was but short, as that nobleman fell in 1628 by the hand of one of his servants, who stabbed him in a fit of discontent, and afterwards, “to save the law a trouble,” as Winstanley tersely expresses it, put an end to his own existence. This melancholy event was a severe blow to the hopes of Davenant. He was thereby thrown upon his own resources; and, as frequently happens, misfortune begat success, as it necessitated the attempt to achieve it. Bereft of his patron, without fortune or position, he addressed himself seriously to the business of life, and his predilections pointed to the theatre. In the following year, he presented for representation his “Albovine, King of the Lombards,” a tragedy written in prose, the plot taken
