‘Lor, sir!’ exclaimed Susan, ‘I, and all the house, pray for you; and young Master Simon here does ever call you Father!’
The widow did not seem to be in haste to ratify the relationship. Viscount Lumley’s chariot was at her door five times in one week. My Lord went to St. Olave’s, and escorted her home after service. All London began to take part in the comedy. New lovers again went to the Old Jewry only to meet denial. Lumley himself, who was but a ragged sort of viscount, was constrained, at last, to take reluctant leave, after his hopes had been buoyed up by interference in his favour by no less a person than the Earl of Dorset, the Queen’s Lord Chamberlain. Sir Edward did not benefit by the withdrawal of the Viscount. Reports reached him that the widow had expressed some liking for him, but not enough to induce her to marry with him. Driven to the extreme of perplexity, Sir Edward engaged another supporter, namely, the Cheapside mercer, Izaak Walton. Izaak celebrated Dering’s praises; mutual friends reported small incidents with much exaggeration. Cousin Cradock knew how Sir Edward might win her; another knew that she was already won, but was coy to confess it. One Master Catesby swore that Dering should both ‘win and wear.’ Lady Cleere told Dering’s father, Sir Anthony, that such a capricious widow was hardly worth the wearing; but Lady Wroth stood up for her as a good and wise gentlewoman, whom any lover might be proud to make his wife.
The grand scene of the comedy occurred when Sir Edward was admitted to see the widow, on condition that he made no reference to the subject of marrying. The interview was a scene for Frith to paint. Sir Edward, with formal low bow, acknowledged the graciousness which admitted him to this interview; but he hoped it would not be the last of that sort of happiness which he might enjoy. Mistress Bennett murmured that chance might still bring them within sight of one another. Then the lover stretched the contract a little, without breaking it. He touched upon his love, her happiness, and cleverly thanked her for forbidding him to pursue making further proposals, as therein might lie the fact that she need not forbid what she, perhaps, had resolved to grant. Some more word-fencing went on; but it ended with a denial on the lady’s part, and a request from the gentleman that she would authorise him to give a public reason for the denial.
‘Say,’ she replied, ‘that you left me, and take the glory of it.’
‘Nay!’ said Sir Edward; ‘I will never withdraw my affection nor my respect till I see you give your hand to another.’
We fear the widow was a dreadful coquette, for subsequent to the above ‘last sight,’ as the interview was called, Mistress Bennett granted an audience to Lord Lumley, when she went so far as to accept a ring from him—a step which almost implied a contract. But this roused the anxiety of her friends, and particularly of Viscount Campden, whose viscountship was just as new as Lumley’s. Lord Lumley, however, was an older member of the peerage. Lord Campden, like the deceased Bennett, had been a mercer; his name then was Baptist Hicks. Even after he had been knighted, Sir Baptist served customers in his open shop in Cheapside. He was now a peer, and people who were unable to attain the same dignity laughed at him. What was the use of Sir Baptist Hicks being a peer, when he had no son to inherit the title? But Lord Campden had a daughter; and the Cheapside mercer’s fair daughter (she was his eldest) was married to Edward, Baron Noel, of Ridlington. The mercer was resolved that Baron Edward should not dream of having derogated by such a match. Accordingly, the ex-shopkeeper succeeded in having the ‘remainder,’ that is, succession to the title, settled in the said son-in-law. In due time, Lord Noel became Viscount Campden, and then gained a step in the peerage by wedding with Juliana, the richest heiress of Cheapside. From them is descended the present Earl of Gainsborough, one of whose daughters, Lady Blanche Noel, made that romantic marriage two years ago with her father’s organist, Mr. Murphy.
But, we have to get back to the first ennobled of the Hickses and his friend, the widow. Lord Campden and Sir George Croke united in insisting that she should return to Lord Lumley the ring she had accepted, and therewith give him his coup de grâce. Ring and letter were despatched on St. Valentine’s Day, and Lord Lumley made his final exit. All London was busy with wondering what the next move would be. It seemed in favour of Sir Edward. Sir Henry Wotton met him in the presence chamber, and wished him ‘full sail.’ The mother of Sir Edward’s late wife, accompanied by that deceased wife’s sister, were indefatigable in lauding Dering’s conjugal virtues in the widow’s ear. Beneficed clergymen, church dignitaries, London gentlemen, country squires, met in the best room in the widow’s house and sang the chorus of his praise. The provoking beauty could not be brought to a decision. She had made a selection, she said, but she really could not say of whom. All in good time. And so this singular love affair proceeded, till the widow consented to grant one more interview, positively for the last time, to her pertinacious suitor, and failed to perform her promise.
‘I will go to Sir Heneage Finch,’ cried the perplexed wooer.
It is very clear that all along Finch perplexed Dering quite as much as the widow did. The Recorder spoke well of Sir Edward to himself and to his friends, and promised to speak well of him to the widow. And perhaps he did; but at the same time Sir Heneage did not neglect his own interests. One morning the bells of St. Dunstan’s in the West, the fashionable church for marriages, rang out a merry wedding peal. Dr. Raven came out of prison, where he was some time in durance for his silly assault, just in time to hear the peal. Sir Edward may be supposed to have put his head out inquiringly from his window. If so, he must have enjoyed a pretty sight—that of Sir Heneage Finch, in holiday array, leading into the beautiful widow Bennett’s house that most tantalising of fair women, as his bride—Lady Finch! Bow bells took up the peal, as if to announce to all Cocagne that they had all the while known what was going on. Cockneydom protested that it had never expected any other issue to the City comedy. Indeed there was a double marriage. While the widow had been playing with her suitors, her niece, pretty Mary Croke, daughter of Sir George, had been indulging in pretty love passages with Harbottle, afterwards Sir Harbottle Grimstone, Master of the Rolls. On April 16, 1629, aunt and niece, with their respective lovers, met at St. Dunstan’s, and were then and there happily married.
The marriage of Sir Heneage with the fair widow was productive of two daughters,[1] of whom one, Anne, married that Earl of Conway so celebrated by Burnet for his ignorance. When a foreign minister once spoke to him of the Circles of Germany, my lord laughed, and asked, ‘What have circles to do with affairs of state?’ We may appropriately add that Mrs. Bennett’s son, Simon, became a man of immense wealth—wealth which his three daughters carried into as many noble families, very much to the satisfaction of the latter. But what of the disappointed lover in this comedy? Well, the curtain went down merrily for him also. He happened to see pretty Unton Gibbes, daughter of the Warwickshire Sir Ralph, and Sir Edward, having an alacrity in falling in love, was ‘over head and ears’ immediately. The lady went straightway to the same depths. They came up together, happy man and wife, and lived like young lovers. He was passionately attached to her to the last; but she survived him full thirty years, finding solace at the affectionate hands of two sons and two daughters. For Unton, Sir Edward had one of those pet names which, outside the circle of love, sound so unlovely. It was Numps! ‘My ever dear Numps,’ he says, in a letter addressed to her from London, in 1640, full of political intelligence, ‘thy pretious and hearty letter I received with that ardor that it was written.... I shall not see thee so soon as I wish.... God preserve my pretty children and send thee ease of thy troublesome cough.... I thank thee for the length of thy welcome letters, wherein I confess that I cannot equal thy love;’ and he ends with ‘Thine, more and more, if possibly,’ &c. One passage of public news in this letter brings a well-known incident before us. ‘The scaffolds are up in Westminster Hall, and Strafford comes to the barre on Monday morning.’ Some of Sir Edward’s letters to his wife are subscribed ‘to thy best self the heart of thine own Edward Dering.’ And if he writes ‘thine in haste,’ he adds, ‘but heartily,’ and writes outside, ‘To my best and dearest friend the Lady Dering,’ while my lady endorses them, ‘From my dearest.’ One letter quaintly begins with ‘My dear and my comfortable Numps, my happiness is (for the greatest part of it in this world) circuited in the same sphere with thine. Love and cheerfulness are blessings invaluable, and if perchance some excentricke motion interpose, all at last (as in the sphaeres) helpe to make up the harmony. So I hope with us every motion shall helpe the tune.’ It would seem that, in absence, they encouraged one another from Scripture. ‘I did presently, as you wished,’ he writes, ‘read over the 91 Spalme (as you call it). I did think to return you a text, but am in haste;’ and ‘Thine own, as ever, for ever.’ The same tone makes musical all his letters, and her own seem to have been attuned to the same melody. The former are full moreover of most interesting public intelligence.