The Countess of Suffolk, a friend of Richard Baxter, and an admirer of George Herbert, affords another example of deep devotion, not strongly marked by any "denominational" peculiarities--although she one day locked herself up in her closet to write down from memory a sermon she heard from a "grave prelate." On the other hand, Lady Harley must have been a Puritan to the backbone; for in the memoir of her, she appears rejoicing greatly at the meeting of the Long Parliament, approving of the execution of Lord Strafford, and saying, in a letter to her son Edward--who accompanied his father to town, when he took his seat in the House of Commons--"I believe that the hierarchy must go down, and I hope now." "I am glad that the Bishops begin to fall, and I hope it will be with them as it was with Haman--when he began to fall, he fell indeed." The order of the two Houses for removing the relics of idolatry delighted her ladyship exceedingly, and with deep joy she communicated to her son, that the table in Hereford Cathedral had been turned, and that the copes and basins, and all such vestiges of Popery, had been put away. When the war broke out, she evinced no little zeal in the business of raising money for the Parliament, and sent her family plate to the military chest. When battle raged around the walls of her own castle, this Puritan Amazon manifested a masculine courage, and in her letters gave thanks to her son "for the hamper with powder and match"--whilst she waited for "the muskets"--and stated that she had sent to Worcester for fifty weight of shot. She met with opposition in all sorts of ways. The Royalists would not pay their rents; they would not let the fowler bring her any fowls; they arrested her servants; they drove away her horses; and they threatened to burn down her barns. The Marquis of Hertford came to besiege her fortress. Stories were told of 600 men marching up to her gates. Under these threatening circumstances she declared: "If I had money to buy corn and meal and malt, I should hope to hold out, but then I have three shires against me." When the assault came at last, and she heard that her cook was shot with a poisoned bullet, and that the waters of the village brook were poisoned also, this English Deborah, this Puritan mother in Israel, trusting entirely in Divine help, retained the confidence she had before expressed, "I thank God I am not afraid. It is the Lord's cause that we have stood for, and I trust, though our iniquities testify against us, yet the Lord will work for His own name's sake, and that He will now shew the men of the world that it is hard fighting against heaven."[458] She died before the close of the siege, and the Puritan minister of Clun, in Shropshire--who preached her funeral sermon--observed: "When the naked sword, that messenger of death, walked the land, did God set His seal of safety upon her. Though surrounded with drums and noise of war, yet she took her leave in peace."