In 1668, I hired a house and ground, of sixty pounds a year, at Hartingfordbury, in Hertfordshire, to be near my father, being but two miles from Balls, both because I would have my father's company, and because the air was very good for my children; but when God took my father, I let my time in it, and never saw it more.
About this time Sir Philip Warwick retired himself from public business, to his house at Frogpool, in Kent; his son and daughter-in- law lived with him some time, until this year, 1669, they went into France. She was the daughter and coheir of the Lord Freschville.
In my brother Warwick's house, in London, in 1666, died my sister Bedell, and was carried down into Huntingdonshire, to Hamerton, and was there buried by her husband in the chancel. She was a most worthy woman, and eminently good, wise, and handsome; she never much enjoyed herself since the death of her eldest daughter, who married Sir Francis Compton, and, in her right, he had Hamerton, in Huntingdonshire. She died five years before my sister, a most dutiful daughter, and a very fine-bred lady, and excellent company, and very virtuous.
About this time died my brother Lord Fanshawe's widow. She was a very good wife and tender mother, but else nothing extraordinary. She was buried in the vault of her husband's family in Ware church. Within a year after this, his son, Lord Fanshawe, sold Ware Park for 26,000 pounds to Sir Thomas Byde, a brewer, of London.
Thus, in the fourth generation, the chief of our family, since they came into the south, for their sufferings for the Crown, sold the flower of their estates, and near 2000 pounds a year more. There remains but the Remembrancer's place of the Exchequer office: and very pathetical is the motto of our arms for us—'The victory is in the Cross.' [Footnote: "In Cruce Victoria." Another motto of the Fanshawe family was, "Dux vitae ratio." Of these mottoes a Correspondent in the Gentleman's Magazine for July 1796, tells the following story. "When Sir Richard was ambassador, and was travelling in Spain, in an English carriage, with his arms upon it, surrounded by the two mottoes belonging to them—Dux vitae Ratio—In Cruce Victoria; a crowd of peasants gathering round the unusual sight of so many foreigners, in a town where they stopped for refreshment, were very anxious with a priest, who happened to be amongst them, for an explanation of the Latin, which being beyond his skill, he informed them that the coach belonged to the Duke of Vitae Ratio, who had done great things for the Cross.">[
I had, about this time, some trouble with keeping the lordships of Tring and Hitching, which your father held of the Queen-Mother; but I not being able to make a considerable advantage of them, gave them up again: and then I sold a lease of the Manor of Burstalgarth, which was granted for thirty-one years to your father from the King. Dean Hicks bought it, it being convenient for him, lying upon Humber. There was a widow, one Mrs. Hiliard, hired this manor, and had so done long. She was very earnest to buy it at a very under rate. When she saw it sold, she, as was suspected, fired the house, which was burnt down to the ground within two months after I had sold it.
In this year my brother Harrison married the eldest daughter of the Lord Viscount Grandison. I let in this year a lease of eleven years of Fanton Hall, in Essex, to Jonathan Wier, which I held of the Bishopric of London: this lease was bought the first year the King came home, of Doctor Sheldon, then Bishop of London, who was exceeding kind to us, and sold it for half the worth, which I will ever acknowledge with thankfulness.
My dear father departed this life, upon the 28th of September, 1670, being above eighty years of age, in perfect understanding, God be praised! He left five hundred pounds to every one of my four daughters; and gave me three thousand pounds for a part of the manor of Scallshow, near Lynn, in Norfolk, but the year before he died, to make my sister Harrison a jointure. The 11th I christened the eldest daughter of my brother Harrison, with Lord Grandison, and Sir Edmund Turner.
The death of my father made so great an impression on me, that with the grief, I was sick half a year almost to death; but through God's mercy, and the care of Doctor Jasper Needham, a most worthy and learned physician, I recovered; and as soon as I was able to think of business, I bought ground in St. Mary's Chapel, in Ware Church, of the Bishop of London, and there made a vault for my husband's body, which I had there laid by most of the same persons that laid him before in my father's vault, in Hertford Church deposited, until I could make this vault and monument, which cost me two hundred pounds; and here, if God pleases, I intend to lie myself.
He had the good fortune to be the first chosen, and the first returned member of the Commons' House of Parliament, in England, after the King came home; and this cost him no more than a letter of thanks, and two brace of bucks, and twenty broad pieces of gold to buy them wine. Upon St. Stephen's day the King shut the