“I hope the Queen and I shall be very good friends again, and may be the better for the differences we have had. It was reported here that you would be with us before we could be with you, and be assured I will bring none to our wedding but those you please. I find to satisfy the opinion that we are not married already we must be married by one of the priests here, of which I think Cousens is the fittest. We shall not come till Monday.”
The marriage received the approval of Margaret’s mother; for she wrote:—[129]
“ELIZABETH, LADY LUCAS, TO THE EARL OF NEWCASTLE.
“1645. DECEMBER 20. You have been pleased to honour me by your letter, my daughter much more by marriage, and thereby made her extremely happy. The state of the kingdom is such that her mother cannot give unto her that which is hers nor can I shew my love and affection towards my daughter as I would, in respect of the great burdens we groan under.”
Margaret thus analyses her love for Newcastle:—
“He was the onely Person I ever was in love with;
Neither was I ashamed to own it, but gloried therein, for it was not Amorous Love, I never was infected therewith, it is a Disease, or a Passion, or both, I only know by relation, not by experience; neither could Title, Wealth, Power, or Person entice me to love; but my love was honest and honourable, being placed upon Merit, which Affection joy’d at the fame of his Worth, pleas’d with delight in his Wit, proud of the respects he used to me, and triumphing in the affections he profest for me.”
This sounds rather an arctic sort of love; but, be that as it may, the wedding took place, and, according to Evelyn, in the chapel of Evelyn’s father-in-law, Sir Richard Brown, the English Ambassador.
Although married to one who had been among the wealthiest of English noblemen, the bride found herself in poverty. Her husband was unable to obtain a penny from England; the Parliament had taken possession of his estates and he was living with money borrowed upon, what looked at that time, exceptionally bad security. The Duchess says that “the ordinary Use” was then “at Six in the Hundred,” i.e. that the usual interest on good securities was 6 per cent. Then what rate of interest were lenders in Holland and France likely to have charged an exile whose chance of ever regaining his property seemed very remote? The question summons up visions of something nearer sixty than “six in the hundred”.