“(1645, November.) I fear others foresee we shall be unfortunate though we see it not ourselves, or else there would not be such pains taken to untie the knot of our affection. I must confess that as you have had good friends to counsel you, so I have had good friends to counsel me and tell me they hear of your professions of affection to me, which they bid me take heed of, for you had assured yourself to many and were constant to none. I said my Lord Newcastle was too wise and too honest to engage himself to many. I heard the Queen would take it ill I did not make her acquainted before I had resolved.”
From this it is evident that Newcastle’s friends had been trying to dissuade him from the marriage, and that Margaret’s friends were also trying to prevent it. It is not surprising that they should have done so. Newcastle was then living entirely on credit and was borrowing wherever he could. However agreeable a man’s conversation may be, if it ends in his saying, “By the way, I wonder whether you would kindly lend me £ ... for a few days,” he is not likely to be very popular.
As Margaret writes that the Queen would take it ill unless informed before Margaret “resolved,” the engagement was probably not yet definitely made. In her next letter Margaret begins to fear that she may have been immodestly forward in her flirtations with Newcastle. Yet, under cover of ostentatious bashfulness, she takes the opportunity of asking Newcastle to propose his suit to the Queen.
“The Same to (the Same).
“(1645, November.) My Lord Widdrington in his advice has done as a noble and true affectionate friend would do.
“I do not send to you to-day, for if I do, they will say I pursue you for your affections, for though I love you extremely I never feared my modesty so small as it would give me leave to court any man. If you please to ask the Queen I think it would be well understood. I thank you for the fear you have of my ruin.” Let us hope that this was not written in the same spirit in which people say: “I thank you for the fear you have of my damnation”: but it has rather that look.
In another letter she says: “Saint Germains is a place of much slander, and thinks I send too often to you”. From the next letter it would seem that Newcastle had been a little jealous of Porter; but no courtship would be complete without a lover’s quarrel!
“I hope you are not angry for my advice about Saint Germans. I gave it simply for the best. As for Mr. Porter he was a stranger to me, for before I came to France I never saw him or at least knew him to be Mr. Porter or my Lord Newcastle’s friend. I never speak to any man before they address themselves to me nor look so much in their face as to invite their discourse, and I hope I never was uncivil to any person of whatsoever degree; but to-morrow the Queen comes to Paris and then I hope to justify myself.”
In one letter she seems annoyed at hearing that Newcastle had announced the engagement before it was quite settled:—
“It was said to me you had declared your marriage to Lord Jermyn. I answered it was more than I could do.”