Beatrix was "somebody connected with our Charles II."--it is quite true. Without that link with our own Court her portrait would scarcely have found a place in Windsor Castle, and the sorry poet Flecknoe--Dryden's "MacFlecknoe"--would certainly not have rhymed upon her beauty and "vertue" in most halting and unmelodious lines, now long forgotten even by students of literature. But her connection with our "gay monarch" was of the briefest, a mere sly nibbling at forbidden fruit while the real good-man was away, closely watched by Spanish guards in the dark tower of Toledo--that same martial and romantic duke, to whom our Charles I. addressed urgent prayers to become his saviour, and on whom he conferred the proud title of "Protector of Ireland." It seems odd now--to us, with our modern notions of Lorraine, as a small and very helpless province of France--to think, that on the wayward ruler of that petty duchy, himself at the time an exile, should our Charles have built up hopes of his own preservation in the storms of the Great Rebellion. There can, however, be no doubt about the fact. In June, 1651,[7] Viscount Taaffe, Sir Nicholas Plunket, and Geffrey Browne, by order of the Marquis of Clanricarde, King Charles's deputy, formally waited upon Duke Charles IV. of Lorraine at Brussels, "to solicit his aid in favour of the unhappy kingdom of Ireland." The mission was considered of such pressing importance that Lord Taaffe, in order not to delay it, put off the call which in duty he owed to the Duke of York, then residing at Antwerp. Charles IV. rather rashly undertook the office pressed upon him, formally accepted the style and title of "Protector of Ireland," fitted out--though not owning an inch of seaboard--a man-of-war, which he christened "Espérance de Lorraine"--and there the matter ended. With this adventurous Charles IV. was the life of the beautiful Beatrix bound up from girlhood to death. It was a romantic affair--in some of its episodes a little sadly comical--and, since we have constituted ourselves guardians of her effigy, her story may be worth telling.