She was a most exquisite beautie, as finely shaped as nature could frame; and had a delicate witt. She was soon taken notice of at London, and her price was very deare—a second Thais. Richard, earle of Dorset, kept her (whether before or after Venetia[494], I know not, but I guesse before). At last she grew common and infamous and gott[495] the pox, of which she died.
I remember thus much of an old song of those dayes, which I have seen in a collection—'twas by way of litanie—viz.:—
From the watch at twelve a clock,
And from Bess Broughton's buttond[496] smock,
Libera nos, Domine.
In Ben Johnson's execrations against Vulcan, he concludes thus:—
Pox take thee, Vulcan! May Pandora's pox
And all the ills that flew out of her box
Light on thee. And if those plagues will not doe
Thy wive's pox take thee, and Bess Broughton's too.
—In the first edition in 8vo her name is thus at length.
I see that there have been famous woemen before our times.
Vixêre fortes ante Agamemnona
Multi, etc.
Horace, lib. 4, ode 9.
I doe remember her father (1646), neer 80, the handsomest shaped man that ever my eies beheld, a very wise man and of an admirable elocution. He was a committee-man in Herefordshire and Glocestershire. He was commissary to colonel Massey. He was of the Puritan party heretofore; had a great guift in praying, etc. His wife (I have heard my grandmother say, who was her neighbor) had as great parts as he. He was the first that used the improvement of land by soape-ashes when he lived at Bristowe, where they then threw it away.