You must not forget that you are some letters in my debt, besides the answer to this.  If there were not conveniences of sending, I should persecute you strangely.  And yet you cannot wonder at it; the constant desire I have to hear from you, and the satisfaction your letters give me, would oblige one that has less time to write often.  But yet I know what ’tis to be in the town.  I could never write a letter from thence in my life of above a dozen lines; and though I see as little company as anybody that comes there, yet I always met with something or other that kept me idle.  Therefore I can excuse it, though you do not exactly pay all that you owe, upon condition you shall tell me when I see you all that you should have writ if you had had time, and all that you can imagine to say to a person that is

Your faithful friend.

Letter 31.—­Dorothy is in mourning for her youngest brother, Robert, who died about this time.  As she does not mention his death to Temple, we may take it that he was, though her brother, practically a stranger to her, living away from Chicksands, and rarely visiting her.

General Monk’s brother, to whom Dorothy refers, was Mr. Nicholas Monk, vicar of Kelkhampton, in Cornwall.  General Monk’s misfortune is no less a calamity than his marriage.  The following extract from Guizot’s Life of Monk will fully explain the allusion:  “The return of the new admiral [Monk] was marked by a domestic event which was not without its influence on his public conduct and reputation.  Unrefined tastes, and that need of repose in his private life which usually accompanies activity in public affairs, had consigned him to the dominion of a woman of low character, destitute even of the charms which seduce, and whose manners did not belie the rumour which gave her for extraction a market stall, or even, according to some, a much less respectable profession.  She had lived for some time past with Monk, and united to the influence of habit an impetuosity of will and words difficult to be resisted by the tranquil apathy of her lover.  It is asserted that she had managed, as long since as 1649, to force him to a marriage; but this marriage was most certainly not declared until 1653.”  M. Guizot then quotes a letter, dated September 19, 1653, announcing the news of General Monk’s marriage, and this would about correspond with the presumed date of Dorothy’s letter.  Greenwich Palace was probably occupied by Monk at this time, and Dorothy meant to say that Ann Clarges would be as much at home in Greenwich Palace as, say, the Lord Protector’s wife at Whitehall.