No. 33. PORTRAIT. UNKNOWN.
By Titian.
No. 36. SIR KENELM DIGBY.
Black dress. Hand on his breast. A globe by his side.
BORN 1603, DIED 1665.
By Vandyck.
SON of Sir Everard Digby, born at Gothurst or Gayhurst, County Bucks, the property of his mother, daughter and sole heir of Sir William Mulsho. He was but a child when his father suffered death as one of the conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot. The Crown laid claim to the estates and revenues of the family; but the widowed Lady Digby, a woman of great energy and determination, not only saved her own dower by her strenuous efforts, but rescued a few hundreds for her son out of the wreck, and, although a rigid Roman Catholic, she suffered her boy to be educated as a Protestant from prudential motives. The romance of the loves of Kenelm Digby and Venetia Stanley, which made such a noise at the time, and has been the subject of curiosity and controversy ever since, whenever their names are mentioned, began at a very early age. Sir Edward Stanley, of the noble house of Derby, lived at Tong Castle, County Salop. He married the daughter and co-heir of the Earl of Northumberland, who brought him two daughters, ‘the divine Venetia’ being the youngest. Her mother died when she was a few months old. The widower gave himself up to grief, shunned the world, and could not even derive comfort from the society of his children. He sent them therefore (or at all events Venetia) to the care of a relative, who was a neighbour of Lady Digby’s. Thus began the acquaintance, and Sir Edward’s beautiful little girl and Lady Digby’s lovely boy met constantly, and played at love-making, jealousy, rivalry, coquetry, quarrels, reconciliations,—in fact a perfect rehearsal of all the drama that was to be enacted in good earnest a few years later. The marriage of the Princess Elizabeth with the Elector Palatine, afterwards King of Bohemia, called Sir Edward to London. With a violent wrench he tore himself away from his seclusion, and sending for Venetia carried her with him to the Court of King James, then the scene of great festivity.
In all these gaieties, according to Digby’s account, the juvenile beauty took part, and was the centre of admiration. In the meantime her young lover pursued his studies under the care of Laud, Dean of Gloucester, subsequently Archbishop of Canterbury, and afterwards with Dr. Thomas Allen, an eminent scholar, at Oxford.