Most faithful friends.

Letter 24.—­Tom Cheeke is Sir Thomas Cheeke, Knight, of Purgo, in the county of Essex, or more probably his son, from the way Dorothy speaks of him; but it is difficult to discriminate among constant generations of Toms after a lapse of two hundred years.  We find Sir Thomas’s daughter was at this time the third wife of Lord Manchester; and it appears that Dorothy’s great-grandfather married Catherine Cheeke, daughter of the then Sir Thomas.  This will assist us to the connection between Dorothy, Tom Cheeke, and Lord Manchester.  Sir Richard Franklin, Knight, married a daughter of Sir Thomas Cheeke.  He purchased Moor Park, Hertfordshire, about this time.  The park and the mansion he bought in 1652 from the Earl of Monmouth, and the manor in 1655 from Sir Charles Harbord.  The gardens had been laid out by the Countess of Bedford, who had sold the place in 1626 to the Earl of Pembroke.  The house was well known to Temple, who describes the gardens in his Essay on Gardening; and when he retired in later years to an estate near Farnham in Surrey, he gave to it the name of Moor Park.

Lord Manchester was Edward Montagu, second Earl of Manchester.  He was educated at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and sat for Huntingdonshire in the first two Parliaments of Charles I. He was called to the Upper House as Lord Kimbolton in 1626, and succeeded his father in 1642.  His name is well known in history as that of the leader of the Puritans in the House of Lords, and as the only peer joined with the five members impeached by the King.  He raised a regiment and fought under Essex at Edgehill, reconquered Lincolnshire, and took part in the battle of Marston Moor.  At this time Cromwell was his subordinate, and to his directions Lord Manchester’s successes are in all probability due.  At the second battle of Newbury, Lord Manchester showed some hesitation in following up his success, and Cromwell accused him of lukewarmness in the cause from his place in the House of Commons.  An inquiry was instituted, but the Committee never carried out their investigations, and in parliamentary language the matter then dropped.  He afterwards held, among other offices, that of Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, and inducted a visitation and reform of that University.  He resisted the trial of the King and the foundation of the Commonwealth, refused to sit in Cromwell’s new House of Lords, and was among those Presbyterians who helped to bring about the Restoration.

Cooper and Hoskins were famous miniature painters of the day.  Samuel Cooper was a nephew of John Hoskins, who instructed him in the art of miniature painting, in which he soon out-rivalled his master.  Cooper, who is styled by contemporary eulogists the “prince of limners,” gave a strength and freedom to the art which it had not formerly possessed; but where he attempted to express more of the figure than the head, his drawing is defective.  His