There was prescience in that couplet. As early, at least, as 1607-8, the widow’s long privacy ended, probably while she was at her “howse at Charing Cross,” watching over the progress of her son George at Westminster School; and he that was “loved of her” was the grandson of the last Lord Latimer of the Nevilles, junior brother of a nobleman who perished with Essex in 1602, and brother and heir of that Sir Henry Danvers who was created Earl of Danby in 1625 for his services in Ireland, and who literally left a green memory as the founder of the pleasant Physic Gardens at Oxford. The name of Danvers, the kindly step-father, is one of the noteworthy omissions of Lord Herbert of Cherbury’s Autobiography. But George Herbert was devoted to him, as his many letters show, and turned to him, never in vain, during his restless years at Cambridge; and into his circle of relatives, with romantic suddenness, he afterwards married. Sir John Danvers, of Dauntsey, Wilts, was twenty years younger than his wife. It is worth while to quote the very deft and courtly statement of the case made at the last by Dr. Donne: “The natural endowments of her person were such as had their part in drawing and fixing the affections of such a person as by his birth and youth and interest in great favors at court, and legal proximity to great possessions in the world, might justly have promised him acceptance in what family soever, or upon what person soever, he had directed. . . . He placed them here, neither diverted thence, nor repented since. For as the well-tuning of an instrument makes higher and lower strings of one sound, so the inequality of their years was thus reduced to an evenness, that she had a cheerfulness agreeable to his youth, and he had a sober staidness conformable to her more advanced years. So that I would not consider her at so much more than forty, nor him at so much less than thirty, at that time; but as their persons were made one and their fortunes made one by marriage, so I would put their years into one number, and finding a sixty between them, think them thirty apiece; for as twins of one hour they lived.”[5]
In the August of 1607, a masque by John Marston was given in the now ruined castle of Ashby-de-la-Zouch, eighteen miles from Leicester, as an entertainment devised by Lord Huntingdon and his young wife, the Lady Elizabeth Stanley, to welcome her mother, Alice, Countess-Dowager of Derby,[6] “the first night of her honor’s arrival at the house of Ashby.” Fourteen noble ladies took part in the masque, and among them was “Mris Da’vers.” The name may, perhaps, be recognized as that of the subject of this sketch, for Sir John Danvers was not knighted until the following year; and it has been so recognized by interested scholars who have searched Nichols’s Progresses of James I. And yet we cannot be too sure that we have her before us, in the wreaths and picturesque draperies of the amateur stage; for there was another Mistress Da’vers at court, whose purported letter, dated February 3, 1613, signed with her confusing Christian names of “Mary Magdaline,” gave great trouble, thirty years ago, to the experts of the Camden Society. Besides, a letter of the good gossipy Chamberlain, dated March 3, 1608-9, mentions as if it were then a piece of fresh news: “Young Davers is likewise wedded to the widow Herbert, Sir Edward’s mother, of more than twice his age.” This would seem to preclude the possibility of the fair masquer being the same person.
The mother of many Herberts, the “more than forty” bride, was by nature a home-keeping character. Among the correspondence relating to Lord Herbert of Cherbury, privately printed in 1886 by the Earl of Powis, are a few pages which give us invaluable glimpses of the London household. Lady Danvers’s eldest son, who set off upon his travels soon after her second marriage, and who applied himself vigorously to the various diversions of body and mind catalogued in the Autobiography, found himself often pinched for money. In such a strait, not unfamiliar to other fine gentlemen of his day, he invariably appealed to the services of the step-father who was his junior, in England. The latter, writing how “wee are all some what after the olde manner, and doe hartely wish you well,” seems to have busied himself to some avail, in concert with his brother-in-law, Sir Francis Newport (the first Lord Newport), in securing letters of credit to Milan, Turin, the Netherlands, and elsewhere, and in explaining at length, in his long involved sentences, how matters could be bettered. Whether or not the absent Knight of the Bath had reason to suspect Sir John’s disinterested action when it came to the handling of pounds and pence, he does not seem, then or after, to have burdened him with any great harvest of thanks. But Sir John’s faithful wife knew how to defend him, in a script of May 12, 1615, which may be quoted precisely as it stands in the Herbert papers.
“To my best beloved sonn, S’r Edward Herbert, Knight,
“My deare Sonn,
it is straunge to me to here you to complayne of want of care of you in your absence when my thoughts are seldom removed from you which must assuredly set me aworkinge of any thinge may doe you good, & for writinge the one of us yf not both never let messenges pass without letter, your stay abroad is so short in any one place & we so unhappy in givinge you contentment as our letters com not to your hands which we are sorry for. And to tel you further of S’r John Da’vers Love which I dare sweare is to no man more, he is & hath beene so careful to keep you from lake of money now you are abroad as your Baylife faylinge payment as they continually doe & pay no man, he goeth to your Merchaunt, offers him self & all the powers he can make to supply you as your occasions may require, mistake him not, but beleeve me there was never a tenderer hart or a lovinger minde in any man then is in him towards you who have power to com’aund him & all that is his. Now for your Baylifs I must tell you they have not yet payed your brothers all their Anuities due at Midsom’er past & but half due at Christmas last and no news of the rest, this yf advauntage were taken might be preiuditiall to you and it is ill for your Brothers & very ill you have such officers.
“I hope it will bringe you home & that is all the good can com of this. your sister Johnes hath long beene sicke & within this 8 dayes hath brought a boy she is so weake as she is much feared by those aboute her. my Lady Vachell lyes now adyeinge the bell hath twice gone for her. your wife & sweet children are well & herein I send you little Florence letter to see what comfort you may have of your deare children, let them, my Dear sonn, draw you home & affoorde them your care and me your comfort that desire more to see you then I desire any thinge ells in the world, and now I end with my dayly prayer for your health and safe retorne to Your ever lovinge mother,
Magd: Da’vers.
“I have received the Pattent of your Br: William, & S’r John hath beene with the ambassatore who stayes for S’r James Sandaline[7] his cominge.”