It was fortunate, that Sir Samuel, whose naïveté and rascality are most amusingly mingled, did not take the “snake into his bosome,” notwithstanding the advice of those “eminent divines,” whose counsel is almost ever too celestial, for the practical occasions of the present world.
The issue of Sir Samuel’s fatal plunge into the abyss of matrimony, in pursuit of “£500 per annum in land and £4000 in ready money,” and of all that befell the Lady Morland, until she lost her title, is recorded, in the third and last letter to Pepys, in vol. v., page 330.
“19 July, 1688. Sir: I once more begg you to give yourself the trouble of acquainting His Majesty that upon Munday last, after many hott disputes between the Doctors of the Civil Law, the sentence of divorce was solemnly pronounced in open Court against that strumpet”—Lady Morland—“for living in adultery with Sir Gilbert Gerrard, for six months last past; so that now, unless shee appeal, for which the law allows her 15 days, I am freed from her for life, and all that I have to do, for the future, will bee to gett clear of her debts, which she has contracted from the day of marriage to the time of sentence, which is like to give me no small trouble, besides the charge, for severall months in the Chancery. And till I gett cleared of these debts, I shall bee little better than a prisoner in my own house. Sir, believing it my duty to give His Majesty this account of myselfe and of my proceedings, and having no other friend to do it for mee, I hope you will forgive the trouble thus given you, by, yours, &c.,
S. Morland.”
This must have interested His Majesty, very deeply. Poor James had then enough of care. If he had possessed the hands of Briareus, they would have been full already. In less than four months, after the date of this letter, William of Orange had landed at Torbay, Nov. 5, 1688, and the last days of the last of the Stuarts were at hand.
If Miss Bungs were living, even that inexorable hater of all fortune-hunters would admit, that the punishment of Sir Samuel Morland was sufficient for his crimes. Few will pretend, that his sufferings were more than he deserved. A more exact retribution cannot well be imagined. It was his intention to apply “£4000 ready money,” belonging to “a very vertuous, pious, and sweet disposition’d lady,” to the payment of his pre-contracted debts. Instead of effecting this honorable purpose, he becomes the husband of a low-born strumpet, who is not worth a shilling, and for whose debts, contracted before, as well as after marriage, he is liable; for the law decrees, that a man takes his wife and her circumstances together.
There are few individuals, of either sex, however constitutionally grave, who have not a little merriment to spare, for such happy contingencies as these. Retributive justice seldom descends, more gracefully, or more deservedly, or more to universal acceptance, upon the crafty heads of unprincipled projectors. For all, that may befall him, the fortune-hunter has little to expect, from male or female sympathy. The scolding tongue—those bewitching tresses, nocturnally deposited on the bedpost—those teeth of pearly brilliancy, which Keep or Tucker could so readily identify—the perpetual look of distrust—the espionage of jealousy—these and all other tormina domestica are the allotments of the fortune-hunter, by immemorial prescription, and without the slightest sympathy, from man or woman.
The case of Sir Samuel Morland is a valuable precedent, on account of his station in society, and the auto-biographical character of the narrative. But there are very few of us, who have not the record of some similar catastrophe, within the compass of our knowledge, though, probably, of a less aggravated type.
There is a pleasant legend, in the humbler relations of life, to which I have listened, in earlier days, and which illustrates the principle, involved in these remarks. Molly Moodey was an excellent cook, in the family of an avaricious old widower, whose god was mammon, and who had been deterred, by the expensiveness of the proceeding, from taking a second goddess.
The only sentiment, in any way resembling the tender passion, which had ever been awakened, in the bosom of Molly Moodey, was a passion for lotteries.