Their fruits of all kinds are extraordinary good and fair; their wine rough for the most part, but very wholesome; their corn dark and gritty; water bad, except some few springs far from the city. Their flesh of all kinds indifferent; their mules and asses extraordinary good and large, but their horses few and naught. They have little wood and less grass.
At my coming away I visited several nunneries, in one whereof I was told, that the last year there was a girl of fourteen years of age burnt for a Jew. She was taken from her mother as soon as she was born, in prison, her mother being condemned, and brought up in the Esperanca; although she never heard, as they did to me affirm, what a Jew was, she did daily scratch and whip the crucifixes, and run pins into them in private; and when discovered confessed it, and said she would never adore that God.
On Thursday, August 25th, 1663,[Footnote: The 25th of August, 1663, fell on a Tuesday.] we set sail for England. On the 4th of September, our style, being Friday, we landed at Deal, all in good health, God be praised!
Saturday 5th, we went to Canterbury, and there tarried Sunday, where we went to church, and very many of the gentlemen of Kent came to welcome us into England.
And here I cannot omit relating the ensuing story, confirmed by Sir Thomas Barton, Sir Arnold Braeme, the Dean of Canterbury, with many more gentlemen and persons of this town.
There lives not far from Canterbury a gentleman, called Colonel Colepeper,[Footnote: Lady Barbara, daughter of Robert Sydney, Earl of Leicester, and widow of Thomas, first Viscount Strangford, married secondly Sir Thomas Colepeper, by whom she had Colonel Colepeper, and a daughter, Roberta Anna, who married Major Thomas Porter, and died issueless, June 16th, 1661, more than two years before Lady Fanshawe was told this story, the circumstances of which she states to have happened only three months previously. The Colonel was a most extraordinary character, and though a man of genius and erudition, was very nearly a madman. A voluminous collection of his MSS. is preserved in the British Museum, whence it appears that he was in the habit of committing his most private thoughts to paper; that there was scarcely a subject to which his attention was not directed; and that the Government and eminent persons were continually tormented with his projects and discoveries, embracing among others the Longitude. His quarrel with the Earl of Devonshire, which led to the imposition upon that nobleman of the exorbitant fine of, L30,000, is well known. But he was always involved in disputes and law-suits, and not unfrequently he was a prisoner for debt. He filed affidavits in Chancery, denying his sister's marriage, with the view of justifying his refusal to pay her portion to her husband; but the only thing which in any way bears on the anecdote of the vault, is the fact that one of the Colonel's conceits was a plan for embalming dead bodies. The horrible suspicion alluded to by Lady Fanshawe is unsupported by any other statement, and it may be hoped that she was as misinformed on the subject as she was about the time of Mrs. Porter's decease. Part of Colonel Colepeper's papers relate to the particulars of a secret marriage, which he says, in a petition to the Court of Chancery, had taken place between him and the daughter and heiress of Alexander Davies, of Ebury, the widow of Sir Thomas Grosvenor; the unusual engagement into which they entered on the wedding-night; the pretended capture of the lady by the Algerines; his correspondence with the French Government to procure her release; the various attempts to violate her person by one Fordwich; her refusal after her return to England to acknowledge the Colonel as her husband, and his efforts to effect that recognition. His wife's letters to him during his imprisonment, which are preserved in the Harleian MS. 7005, and the account of her efforts to procure his release, exhibit proofs of the most touching and devoted affection, and cannot be read without the highest esteem for her character. She was one of the co-heiresses of the last Lord Frecheville.] whose mother was widow unto the Lord Strangford: this gentleman had a sister, who lived with him, as the world said, in too much love. She married Mr. Porter. This brother and sister being both atheists, and living a life according to their profession, went in a frolic into a vault of their ancestors, where, before they returned, they pulled some of their father's and mother's hairs. Within a very few days after, Mrs. Porter fell sick and died. Her brother kept her body in a coffin set up in his buttery, saying it would not be long before he died, and then they would be both buried together; but from the night after her death, until the time that we were told the story, which was three months, they say that a head, as cold as death, with curled hair like his sister's, did ever lie by him wherever he slept, notwithstanding he removed to several places and countries to avoid it; and several persons told us they had felt this apparition.
On Monday, the 7th of September, we went to Gravesend, and from thence by water to Dorset House, in Salisbury Court, where we stayed fifteen days. The 8th of September, 1663, within two hours after our arrival, we were visited by very many kindred and friends, amongst whom his Grace of Canterbury, who came the next day and dined with us. The same day came the Bishop of Winchester, as did many others of the greatest clergy in England.
Upon the 10th of September, my husband went to Bath, to wait upon his Majesty, who was then there: his Majesty graciously received him, and for a confirmation that he approved his service in his negotiation in Portugal, he was pleased to make him a Privy Counsellor. He was also very graciously received by her Majesty the Queen. Being indisposed with a long journey, my husband fell sick, but it continued but two days, thanks be to God!
On the 17th he went by Cornbury, where the Lord Chancellor then was, and so to London, and, in his absence, I, on the 16th, took a house in Boswell Court, near Temple Bar, for two years, immediately moving all my goods thereto, as well those, which were many, that I had left with my sister Turner in her house in my absence, as those that I brought with me out of Portugal, which were seventeen cart-loads.
Upon Saturday, the 19th, my husband returned from his Majesty, and met me at our new house in Boswell Court.