No woman could have had smaller excuse for straying from the path of virtue, much less for making foul crimes the minister to her lust than Anna Maria, Countess of Shrewsbury.  The descendant of a long line of honourable Brudenells, daughter of an Earl of Cardigan, there was nothing in the history of her family to account for the taint in her blood.  She had been dowered with beauty and charms which made conquest easy, inevitable; and she was honourably wedded to a noble husband, the eleventh Earl of Shrewsbury, who, although a man of no great character or attainments, was an indulgent and faithful husband.  Nor does she, until she had reached the haven of married life, appear to have shown any trace of the wickedness that must have been slumbering in her.

And yet, before she had worn her Countess’s coronet a year, she had made herself notorious, even in Charles II.’s abandoned Court, for passions which would ruthlessly crush any obstacle in the way of their indulgence.  Lover after lover, high-placed and base-born indifferently, succeeded one another in her fickle favour, as Catherine the Great’s favourites trod one on the heels of the other, each in turn to be flung contemptuously aside to make room for a more favoured rival.

Even Gramont, seasoned man of the world and far removed from a saint as he was, was frankly horrified at the carryings-on of this English Messalina, compared with whom the most lax ladies of the English Court were veritable prudes.  “I would lay a wager,” he says, “that if she had a man killed for her every day she would only carry her head the higher.  I suppose she must have plenary indulgence for her conduct.”  The only indulgence she had or needed was that of her own imperious will and her elastic conscience.

As we glance down the list of her victims, we see some of the most honourable names, and also some of the most despicable characters in the England of the Restoration.  The Duke of Ormond’s heir caught her capricious fancy for awhile; but, though his love for her drove him to the verge of suicide, she wearied of him and trampled him under foot to seek a fresh conquest.

To my Lord Arran succeeded Captain Thomas Howard, brother of the Earl of Carlisle, a shy, proud young man of irreproachable character, whose love for the fascinating Countess was as free from dishonour as a weakness for another man’s wife could be.  She caught him securely in the net of her charms, ensnared him with her beaute de diable, and then, satisfied with her ignoble triumph, proceeded to make a fool of him.

Nothing pleased this Countess more than to bring her lovers together, to watch with gloating eyes their rivalries, their jealousies, and their quarrels, which frequently led to her crowning enjoyment—­the shedding of blood.  And it was with this object that one day she induced Howard to join her at a petit souper at Spring Gardens, a favourite pleasure-haunt of the day, near Charing Cross.  The supper had scarcely commenced when the tete-a-tete was interrupted by the appearance of none other than the “invincible Jermyn,” one of the handsomest and most notorious roues of the day, a famous duellist, and one of my lady’s most ardent lovers.