This particular “celestiall creature” favours us with some more details of her own character. “I am gratefull, for I never received a curtesie but I am impatient, and troubled untill I can return it; also I am Chaste, both by Nature and Education, insomuch as I do abhorre an unchast thought; likewise I am seldom angry,” yet “when I am angry, I am very angry, but yet it is soon over, and I am easily pacified, if it be not such an injury as may create a hate”;—a highly significant reservation—“neither am I apt to be exceptious or jealous; but if I have the lest symptome of this passion, I declare it to those it concerns, for I never let it ly smothering in my breast to breed a malignant disease in the minde.” “I am neither spitefull, envious nor malicious; I repine not at the gifts that Nature or Fortune bestows upon others.” “My God,” she would almost seem to have said, “I thank Thee that I am not as other women are.”
Newcastle had heard a good deal of Margaret Lucas before he met her. He had been a friend and a patron of her brother, whom Charles I had made a peer. Lord Lucas had been in Newcastle’s army, and when Newcastle had asked him in what manner he could best serve him, Lucas had replied that he had no desires on his own account, being ready to suffer exile or death in the royal cause; but that he was anxious about his sister Margaret, at Queen Henrietta’s little Court in Paris, as her beauty exposed her to danger, and, owing to his losses through the civil war, he had no dowry to bestow upon her. At the same time he expatiated upon her character and virtues to such an extent as to arouse the curiosity of Newcastle.[127]
[127] Biog. Brit., Kippis’s Ed., vol. III, 337; Cibber’s Lives, II, 162-3.
With the paragon of perfection self-described in the preceding pages, the exiled Newcastle fell in love. The lady herself shall describe what happened:—
“My Lord ... was pleased to take some particular notice of me, and express more than an ordinary affection for me; insomuch that he resolved to chuse me for his Second Wife; for he, having but two Sons, purposed to marry me, a young Woman that might prove fruitful to him and encrease his Posterity by a Masculine-Offspring. Nay, He was so desirous of Male-Issue, that I have heard him say, He cared not (so God would be pleased to give him many Sons) although they came to be persons of the meanest Fortunes; but God (it seems) had ordered it otherwise, and frustrated his Designs”—here the Duchess becomes very plain-spoken—“which yet did never lessen his Love and Affection for me.”
Several of Margaret Lucas’s love-letters are in existence at Welbeck Abbey.[128] Let us look at a few of them.
[128] Welbeck MSS.
“Margaret Lucas to the Marquis of Newcastle.