clearly of opinion (and shall die in’t), that, as the more one sees and knows a person that one likes, one has still the more kindness for them, so, on the other side, one is but the more weary of, and the more averse to, an unpleasant humour for having it perpetually by one.  And though I easily believe that to marry one for whom we have already some affection will infinitely increase that kindness, yet I shall never be persuaded that marriage has a charm to raise love out of nothing, much less out of dislike.

This is next to telling you what I dreamed and when I rise, but you have promised to be content with it.  I would now, if I could, tell you when I shall be in town, but I am engaged to my Lady Diana Rich, my Lord of Holland’s daughter (who lies at a gentlewoman’s hard by me for sore eyes), that I will not leave the country till she does.  She is so much a stranger here, and finds so little company, that she is glad of mine till her eyes will give her leave to look out better.  They are mending, and she hopes to be at London before the end of this next term; and so do I, though I shall make but a short stay, for all my business there is at an end when I have seen you, and told you my stories.  And, indeed, my brother is so perpetually from home, that I can be very little, unless I would leave my father altogether alone, which would not be well.  We hear of great disorders at your masks, but no particulars, only they say the Spanish gravity was much discomposed.  I shall expect the relation from you at your best leisure, and pray give me an account how my medicine agrees with your cold.  This if you can read it, for ’tis strangely scribbled, will be enough to answer yours, which is not very long this week; and I am grown so provident that I will not lay out more than I receive, but I am just withal, and therefore you know how to make mine longer when you please; though, to speak truth, if I should make this so, you would hardly have it this week, for ’tis a good while since ’twas call’d for.

Your humble servant.

Letter 6.—­The journey that Temple is about to take may be a projected journey with the Swedish Embassy, which was soon to set out.  Temple was, apparently, on the look-out for some employment, and we hear at different times of his projected excursions into foreign lands.  As a matter of fact, he stayed in and near London until the spring of 1654, when he went to Ireland with his father, who was then reinstated in his office of Master of the Rolls.

Whether the Mr. Grey here written of made love to one or both of the ladies—­Jane Seymour and Anne Percy—­it is difficult now to say.  I have been able to learn nothing more on the subject than Dorothy tells us.  This, however, we know for certain, that they both married elsewhere; Lady Jane Seymour, the Duke of Somerset’s daughter, marrying Lord Clifford of Lonesborough, the son of the Earl of Burleigh, and living to 1679, when she was buried in Westminster Abbey.  Poor Lady Anne Percy, daughter of the Earl of Northumberland, and niece of the faithless Lady Carlisle of whom we read in these letters, was already married at this date to Lord Stanhope, Lord Chesterfield’s heir.  She died—­probably in childbed—­in November of next year (1654), and was buried at Petworth with her infant son.