tolerable health, being in a deep consumption, and not like to have lived so long by many months. It is very true, the Lord Falkland had an extraordinary esteem of her, and exceedingly loved her conversation, as most of the persons of eminent parts of that time did; for she was in her understanding, and discretion, and wit, and modesty, above most women; the best of which had always a friendship with her."1

Of Letice, Lady Falkland, our knowledge, apart from Clarendon's scattered hints, is derived mainly from a small devotional work by the Rev. John Duncon, a "sequestered" parson who appears to have acted as the lady's chaplain or confessor at Great Tew after her husband's death. He draws a picture of Lady Falkland which, even making allowance for obvious partiality and probable exaggeration, is singularly beautiful and pathetic. Originally printed in 1649 as a letter to Lady Morison (her mother) "containing many remarkable passages in the most holy life and death of the late Lady Letice, Vi-Countess Falkland,” it ran through several editions. "This elect lady set out very early," says Duncon, "in the ways of God in the dawn or morning of her age." A simple and touching picture is drawn of her upbringing "in the nurture and admonition of the Lord," and her exemplary conduct as daughter and wife. Aubrey's calumnies shrink into their due proportion when placed side by side with such a passage as the following:

"Now these riches, of her piety, wisdom, quickness of wit, discretion, judgment, sobriety, and gravity of behavior, being once perceived by Sir Lucius Cary, seemed Portion enough to him: these were they he prised above worldly Inheritances, and those other fading accessions, which most men court. And she, being married to him, riches and honour, and 1 Life, i., 202.

2 Alluded to by Tulloch with curious inaccuracy as John Duncan Parson.

all other worldly prosperity, flow in upon her and consequently to proceed in holinesse and godliness grows an harder task, then before it seemed to be; it being much more difficult when riches and honor thus increase, then, not to set her heart upon them. Yet God enabled her by his grace for this also; for when possession was given her of stately Palaces, pleasantly seated, and most curiously and fittly furnished, and of revenues and royalties answerable, yet was not her heart any whit exalted with joy for them."

In the company of this wife whom "he passionately loved," and of his three young boys, Falkland spent the years -all too brief-before the bursting of the political storm. In retrospect we can see that the Parliament which met in 1640 merely gave expression to feelings long pent up; that the storm had been gathering long before it burst. But to the eye of the contemporary the prospect was fair. Clarendon, who had no reason to minimise any discontent which might at that time have existed, declares that the country "enjoyed the greatest calm and fullest measure of felicity that any people in any age have been blessed with ".1 Even May admits that "the times were jolly for the present"; that any one would verily believe that "a nation that looked so cheerfully in the face could not be sick in any part". "Serious and just men could not but entertain sad thoughts and presages," but "another sort of men and especially lords and gentlemen . . . did nothing but applaud the happiness of England." Among the "lords and gentlemen," Falkland may surely be counted. Laud, it is true, was becoming increasingly influential with the King; and against the Archbishop Falkland had, as Clarendon tells us, "unhappily contracted some prejudice". But there is no

1i., 122.

evidence that the innovating hand of Laud pressed heavily on Great Tew, and such anxieties as Falkland felt at this time were intellectual rather than political.

For the most part the days at Great Tew were spent in the pleasant converse described with incomparable felicity by Clarendon. Thanks to his consummate art the picture has obtained a unique hold upon the imagination of cultured men: a hospitality offered freely but without ostentation, accepted simply and without embarrassment; no social constraint upon host or guest; unrestrained freedom of intellectual intercourse; no end to be served, save the sharpening of wits, and the attainment of truth; admission to that choice society gained "by other rules than were prescribed to the young nobility of that time"; no regard paid to mere conventionality, and less to stupid unconventionality; above all, no disregard of the laws of good taste and sound morality. The passages which contain the picture have been quoted almost ad nauseam, but it would be unpardonable in a biography of Falkland to omit them :

"It cannot be denied though he admitted some few to his friendship for the agreeableness of their natures, and their undoubted affection to him, that his familiarity and friendship, for the most part, was with men of the most eminent and sublime parts, and of untouched reputation in point of integrity; and such men had a title to his bosom. He was a great cherisher of wit, and fancy, and good parts in any man; and, if he found them clouded with poverty or want, a most liberal and bountiful patron towards them, even above his fortune; of which, in those administrations, he was such a dispenser, as, if he had been trusted with it to such uses, and if there had been the least of vice in his expense, he might have been thought too prodigal. . . . In this time, his house being within ten miles of Oxford, he contracted familiarity and friendship with the most

polite and accurate men of that university; who found such an immenseness of wit, and such a solidity of judgment in him, so infinite a fancy, bound in by a most logical ratiocination, such a vast knowledge, that he was not ignorant in any thing, yet such an excessive humility, as if he had known nothing, that they frequently resorted, and dwelt with him, as in a college situated in a purer air; so that his house was a university in a less volume; whither they came not so much for repose as study; and to examine and refine those grosser propositions, which laziness and consent made current in vulgar conversation."1

And again :

"Truly his whole conversation was one continued convivium philosophicum or convivium theologicum enlivened and refreshed with all the facetiousness of wit, and good humour, and pleasantness of discourse, which made the gravity of the argument itself, (whatever it was) very delectable. His house where he usually resided (Tew, or Burford in Oxfordshire) being within ten or twelve miles of the university looked like the university itself, by the company that was always found there. There were Dr. Sheldon, Dr. Morley, Dr. Hammond, Dr. Earles, Mr. Chillingworth, and indeed all men of eminent parts and faculties in Oxford, besides those who resorted thither from London; who all found their lodgings there, as ready as in the colleges; nor did the lord of the house know of their coming and going, nor who were in his house, till he came to dinner, or supper, where all still met; otherwise, there was no troublesome ceremony or constraint, to forbid men to come to the house, or to make them weary of staying there; so that many came thither to study in a better air, finding all the books they could desire in his library, and all

1 History.