Lord Nithisdale, unlike Lord Widdrington and Lord Kenmure, who had referred in terms of anguish to their wives and children, had made no appeal on the plea of those family ties, to which few of his judges could have been insensible. He returned to the Tower, under sentence of death, to be saved by the heroism of a woman; according to some accounts, of his mother;[26] but actually, by the fearless, devoted affection of his wife.
Winifred, Countess of Nithisdale, appears, from her portrait by Kneller, to have conjoined to an heroic contempt of danger a feminine and delicate appearance, with great loveliness of countenance.[27] She was descended from a family who knew no prouder recollection than that their castle-towers had been the last to welcome the unhappy Charles the First in the manner suited to royalty. Her mother was the Lady Elizabeth Herbert, daughter of Edward, the second Marquis of Worcester, and author of "The Century of Inventions." Lady Nithisdale was therefore the great-granddaughter of that justly honoured Marquis of Worcester whose loyalty and disinterestedness were features of a character as excellent in private life, as benevolent, as sincere, as it was conspicuous in his public career. Yet, so universal, so continual has been the popular prejudice against Popery in this country, that even the virtues of this good man could scarcely rescue him from the imputation, as Lord Clarendon expresses it, of being "that sort of Catholics, the people rendered odious, by accusing to be most Jesuited."
The maternal family of Lady Nithisdale were, therefore, of the same faith with her husband, and, like his family, they had suffered deeply for the cause of the Stuarts; and it is remarkable that, with what some might deem infatuation, many descendants of those who had seen their fairest possessions ravaged, their friends and kindred slain, should be ready to suffer again. It is impossible for any reasoning to dispel the idea that this must be a true and fixed principle, independent, in many noble instances, of the hope of reward,—a far less enduring motive, and one which would be apt to change with every change of fortune.
Lady Nithisdale, on her father's side, was descended from the Herberts of Powis Castle, who were ennobled in the reign of James the First. She was the fourth daughter of William, Marquis of Powis, who followed James the Second, after his abdication, to France, and was created by that monarch Duke of Powis, a title not recognised in England.[28] The titular Duke of Powis, as he is frequently called in history, chose to remain at St. Germains, and was at length outlawed for not returning within a certain period. He died at St. Germains in 1696. Upon the death of her father, Lady Winifred Herbert was placed with her elder sister, the Lady Lucy, in the English convent at Bruges, of which Lady Lucy eventually became Abbess. A less severe fate was, however, in store for the younger sister.
Under these adverse circumstances, so far as related to the proper maintenance of her father's rank in England, was Winifred Herbert reared. How and where she met with Lord Nithisdale, and whether the strong attachment which afterwards united them so indissolubly, was nurtured in the saloons of St. Germains, or in the romantic haunts of Nithisdale, we have no information to decide, neither have the descendants of the family been able even to ascertain the date of her marriage.
It is not improbable, however, that, before his marriage, Lord Nithisdale visited Paris and Rome, since the practice of making what was called "the grand tour" not only prevailed among the higher classes, but especially among the Jacobite nobility, many of whom, as in the case of Lord Derwentwater, were educated abroad; and this is more especially likely to have been the case in the instance of Lord Nithisdale, since, as Lady Nithisdale remarks in her narrative, her husband was a Roman Catholic in a part of Scotland peculiarly adverse to that faith, "the only support," as she calls him, "of the Catholics against the inveteracy of the Whigs, who were very numerous in that part of Scotland."
In her participation of those decided political opinions, which were inbred in Lady Nithisdale, she appears not to have departed from that feminine character which rises to sublimity when coupled with a fearless sacrifice of selfish considerations. It was the custom of the day for ladies to share in the intrigues of faction, more or less. Lady Fauconbridge, the Countess of Derwentwater, Lady Seaforth, all appear to have taken a lively part in the interests of the Jacobites. The Duchess of Marlborough was, politically speaking, extinct; but the restless love of ascendancy is never extinct. The fashionable world were still divided between her, and the rival whom she so despised, Catherine Sedley, Duchess of Buckingham.
But Lady Nithisdale, living in the North, and possibly occupied with her two children, remained, as she affirms, in the country, until the intelligence of her lord's committal to the Tower brought her from her seclusion years afterwards; she writes thus to her sister, the Lady Lucy Herbert, Abbess of the English Augustine Nuns at Bruges, who had, it seems, requested from her an account of the circumstances under which Lord Nithisdale escaped from the Tower.
"I first came to London," Lady Nithisdale writes, "upon hearing that my lord was committed to the Tower. I was at the same time informed that he had expressed the greatest anxiety to see me, having, as he afterwards told me, no one to console him till I came. I rode to Newcastle, and from thence took the stage to York. When I arrived there, the snow was so deep that the stage could not set out for London. The season was so severe, and the roads so bad, that the post itself was stopped: however, I took horses and rode to London, though the snow was generally above the horses' girths and arrived safe without any accident."
After this perilous journey, the determined woman sought interviews with the reigning Ministers, but she met with no encouragement; on the contrary, she was assured that, although some of the prisoners were to be saved, Lord Nithisdale would not be of the number.