[83] There were at this time two Duchesses of Lennox: Catherine Clifton, widow of Esmé Stuart, the first duke, and Frances Howard, widow of Ludovic, the second duke, whom James I had created Duke of Richmond, in the peerage of England. As the latter was a vain, ambitious, and intriguing woman, and possessed of considerable influence at Court, it is probable that it was to her that Bassompierre’s visit was paid. The duchess had been married three times. She began her matrimonial experiments with a merchant, a Mr. Prannell; continued them with an earl, Edwin, Earl of Hertford, and concluded with a duke of royal blood. If, however, we are to believe the gossip of the time, she would fain have made yet another, and secured a yet more exalted consort. “For, finding the King (James) a widower, she vowed, after so great a prince as Richmond, never to be blown with kisses or eat at the table of a subject; and this vow must be spread abroad that the King might notice the bravery of her spirit. But this bait would not catch the old king, and she, to make good her resolution, speciously observed her vow to the last.” [84] Mary Villiers, to whom by letters-patent of August, 1627, the duchy of Buckingham was granted in default of heirs male. Like the lady just mentioned, she was married three times: first, to Lord Herbert, son of Philip, Earl of Pembroke; secondly to James Stuart, Duke of Lennox and Richmond, and, finally, to Thomas Howard, a brother of the Earl of Carlisle. She had no children by any of her husbands. [85] Presumably, a French translation. [86] An indignant newsmonger thus enumerates the penances to which the Queen had, or was supposed to have, been subjected: “Had they not also made her, on St. James’s Day, dabble in the dirt, in a foul morning, from Somerset House to St. James’s, her Luciferian confessor riding by her in his coach? Yea, they have made her spin, to go barefoot, to eat her meat out of treen dishes [dishes made of “tree,” _i.e._, wooden trenchers], to wait at table and serve her servants, with many other ridiculous and absurd penances; and if these rogues dare thus insult over the daughter, sister and wife of so great Kings, what slavery would they not make us, the people, undergo?”--_Ellis’s Letters, Pory to Mead_, July 1, 1626. [87] The fogs of England have been in all ages a sore trial to foreigners. Gondomar, Spanish Ambassador in the time of James I, when someone who was going to Spain waited on him to ask whether he had any commands, replied: “Only my compliments to the sun, which I have not seen since I came to England.” Caraccioli, Neapolitan Ambassador to the Court of George II, in a conversation with that monarch, took the liberty of preferring the _moon_ of Naples to the _sun_ of England.