The Duchess was of graceful person, reserved, and reticent. Her piety, generosity, and charity, were proverbial, and, as we have before observed, when her husband’s affairs were involved, she went to England, where she spent a year and a half, endeavouring with the help of her brother and brother-in-law to get some compensation for the property seized by the Parliament. ‘Then I made haste to return to my Lord, with whom I had rather be as a poor beggar, than to be mistress of the world, absented from him.’ And they were happy, ‘though fortune did pinch their lives with poverty.’
It would seem that this picture must represent Margaret Lucas, since the first wife was never Duchess; the introduction of the horses, too, would surely imply that the portraits were painted after, or at the time, the book on Horsemanship was published; when we surmise also that Newcastle made the acquaintance of the painter Diepenbeke at Antwerp, though he accompanied the Duke to England.
No. 112.
SIR THOMAS OVERBURY.
By Zucchero.
BORN 1581, POISONED 1613.
Oval. Black coat. Red and white sash. Lace collar. Pointed beard.
WAS of a good family in Warwickshire. Born at Compton Scorfen, the home of his maternal grandfather. Entered Queen’s College, Oxford, as gentleman commoner, where he studied logic and philosophy, and afterwards went to the Middle Temple.