But something should be said of the domestic affairs of the subject of these observations. He lived, I believe, near that part of the old Court of Whitehall where Scotland Yard now stands; and, whilst there, married his first wife, Cecilia, daughter of Sir James Croft—a maid of honour to Henrietta Maria, and a lady whose portrait by Vandyck is in her present Majesty's collection.
The weather was rude and boisterous on the wedding-day, which gave rise to the following lines by Thomas Carew:
'Such should this day be; so the sun should hide
His bashfull face, and let the conquering bride
Without a rivall shine, whilst he forbeares
To mingle his unequall beames with hers;
Or if sometime he glance his squinting eye
Betweene the parting clouds, 'tis but to spye,
Not emulate her glories; so comes drest
In vayles, but as a masquer to the feast.'
I fear their wedded life must have been stormy throughout; the very first thing we hear of their courtship is a dispute in which they became engaged; and by-and-by we hear of Madam Killigrew's 'Case,' which sets forth that she brought her husband a fortune of £10,000, which Tom, writing from the Hague in 1654[83] (the year in which his wife died of small-pox), solemnly promised not to waste or otherwise dispose of. Two houses in Scotland Yard were built with the money, or part of it. Francis Quarles thus bemoaned the hapless lady's fate: 'Sighes at the contemporary deaths of those incomparable Sisters—the Countesse of Cleaveland and Mistrisse Cicily Killegreue.' (They appear to have been buried in the same tomb, and to have died within twice two days of each other.) The little poem ends thus:
'My pen,
Thou hast transgrest;
Archangels, and not Men
Should sing the story of their Rest:
But we have done, we leave them to the trust
Of heaven's eternall Towre, and kisse their sacred Dust.'
About this time we come across a characteristic little story about Tom Killigrew in Evelyn's 'Diary.'
Sir Richard Browne, writing from Nantes, 1st November, 1653, to Hyde, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, says that he has sent to him, carriage paid, three barrels of canary wine to Mr. Thomas Killigrew's care. But Hyde does not seem to have got them, at any rate for a very long time. He heard of the arrival of the consignment at Paris, and that it was there 'conceaved to be Mr. Killigrew's own wyne'!—very possibly, it may be feared, from the use to which the consignee was putting it.
Thomas Killigrew was associated with Dryden, Sir William Davenant, and others, in obtaining a license (which, by the way, Sir Henry Herbert, his predecessor in the office of Master of the Revels, vainly endeavoured to get revoked) for a company of players, and a playhouse which was called the Theatre Royal, and which was situated somewhere between Drury Lane and Bridge Street.[84]
In fact, Killigrew was playhouse mad, as may be further seen by this extract from Pepys, date 1664:
'To King's playhouse: saw Bartholomew Fayre. I chanced to sit by Tom Killigrew, who tells me that he is setting up a nursery: that is, is going to build a house in Moorefields, wherein he will have common plays acted. But four operas it shall have in the year, to act six weeks at a time, where we shall have the best scenes and machines—the best musique, and everything as magnificent as is in Christendome, and to that end hath sent for voices and painters, and other persons from Italy.'