but he must thinke of returning if any more of his congregation forsake this place.'

Mrs. Gee is devoted to her parents, and unable to leave them, owing to 'The good gentleman's indisposition, and the good lady's resolve to take the Spa waters in her velvet bed, rather then leave him without any other company then a troublesome gout and melancholy considerations of the inconveniency of her absence.' Sir Ralph makes particular inquiries after the bride's health, and her husband writes: 'My wife is much your servant, but when I told her of your question, she looked nine waies at once, and gave you noe answer.' He then writes affectionately about her and their happy hopes. 'God blesse the Babby that is coming,' replied Sir Ralph.

you

Old Aunt Ursula,

busy in the same

Mr. Spencer concludes his letter with a little joke, common to all Sir Ralph's friends during the next forty years: 'I guesse you are looking out for a Cornelia to governe your house, and keepe you warme next winter, so that will need none of my woodpile, jambon, nor tongue.' Sir Francis Verney's widow, is direction. 'She is much your humble servant, and is providing you with a wife; a virgine about 30 yeares old, £1000 p. ann: in possession, £1000 p. ann: more in reversion, all in England; and £1000 per ann: more in Ireland. But she is a papist. I hope you will not be such a clowne, as not to take notice of it in a letter to her.' But, adds Dr. Denton drily, this will be

'a motive as stronge as a Loadstone to bringe you home.'

'Teach me to answer to my Catechize,' writes Cousin Gee. Quest: Is not your freind Sir Ralph Verney married?

'Answ: Wherere I goe I am posed and must bee soe till you informe me, nor till then will I wish you

joy.'

The object of so much solicitude replies: 'As yet I can answere your Worshipp's Question and saifly say: Your servant R. V. is not married, nor for ought hee knowes, (notwithstanding your good example) one jott nearer it, then when you left him. Neverthelesse hee cannot justly complaine of any Woeman's unkindnesse, since none did ever yet deny him.' For the best of all reasons, as Mrs. Gee reminded him, for he had never asked another woman to fill Mary's place in his heart and home.

CHAPTER III.

CONCERNING CHILDREN AND THEIR BREEDING.

1650-1654.

'Is the framing of young minds so mean a point of cunning?'

MULCASTER, 1581.

BEFORE Sir Ralph gets back to Claydon and plunges into his home business a word must be said of the children of the family, about whom he was now specially concerned his own two boys, Mun and Jack, their cousins Peg and Moll Eure, and his god-daughter Nancy Denton, Doctor's girl,' whom both these judicious men combined to pet and spoil.

6

Sir Ralph was devoted to girls : his love for his own little daughter had been so great he had often thought right to 'dissemble' lest his boys should regard her as his favourite; he ceased not to mourn her loss, but he extended this fatherly love to his numerous nieces, 'she-cousins,' and god-daughters. He was never too busy to answer the childish letters they wrote him in large text hand; and when the children grew up into maidens, he was still the kind adviser and wise confidant to whom they poured out the more complicated troubles of youth, and appealed if the older members of the family were to be coaxed

into granting a favour, or they themselves were to be forgiven some girlish indiscretion. Sir Ralph was their humble servant, whether he was wanted to choose them some 'modish' lace and ribbons, or to prevent an invitation being sent by their parents to an unwelcome suitor. Nancy, his god-daughter and special favourite, still continued to address him as 'Deare Parent' when she was herself a matron with a son at Oxford and a marriageable daughter. His relations with Margaret and Mary Eure were equally affectionate they asked his advice in their difficulties, as their mother had done before them, and indeed still did, though she was now under the protection of a third husband, Captain the Honourable Philip Sherard.

While girls of all ages excited Sir Ralph's reverent admiration, and could always command his services, boys were a trouble and a weariness to him : he had never been a boy himself, and did not understand the species. He was far too good a man not to perform conscientiously all the graver duties of a father, and the intimate correspondence between him and his sons when they came to man's estate shows the solid friendship that existed between them. But he was over-anxious and severe; he would come down upon some childish fault with a sledge-hammer blow which Mary's tact would have warded off; and because of his desire that his eldest son should maintain the traditions of the family, and be a worthy owner of Claydon, he judged him more

Edmund and

severely than his younger brother. John Verney belonged to the unhappy generation of young Englishmen who were cut off from that public school and college life which has provided England (as Canning believed) with an uninterrupted succession of men qualified for the performance of parliamentary and other public work. The discipline of Eton and Winchester, the noisy fun of the playing-fields, the rivalries and friendships of Oxford and Cambridge, were all unknown to boys whose parents were dragging out weary years of exile in the provincial towns of France and the Low Countries, or dancing attendance on the Stuarts in Paris and at the Hague. Sir Ralph spared no expense for tutors. 'Mun's breeding costs me more than you imagen,' he wrote to Dr. Denton, and I would

rather save it in anything then that.

6

But at least one French master, Durand, turned out badly, and had to be dismissed for his Drinking and Lyeing,' and Sir Ralph discovered later, to his infinite vexation, that some of those who had been about the boys had neglected their proper work, and tried to infuse into their minds the poison of 'Popish doctrine.'

Edmund was not quite seven years old when he was taken from home. During the eighteen months that Mary was attending to her husband's business in England, he sadly missed his mother's tender care, and at thirteen he lost her altogether. Instead of spending his holidays in scampering on his pony about the