he, ‘with his sonne and ten or eleven servants, weaponed in violent manner,’ repaired thither, broke open the door, and took her away. Lady Hatton intrigued at Court against the distracted Coke, who was already in disfavour at St. James’s, and procured an interference by the Star Chamber, which condemned his ‘most notorious riot;’ but Coke eventually gained the upper hand in this matter at least, and the girl was married to the man of his choice. This did not end the enmity. For years they contended together until death parted them. But she survived him by ten years. Legal subtlety and ability had no terrors for Lady Hatton, and martial prowess daunted the wife of Monk as little, for, in very truth, Lady Albemarle, the famous Nan Clarges, wife of that General Monk who was created first Duke of Albemarle, was so awe-inspiring a termagant that her husband declared he would rather fight a battle than dispute with her, and that the roar of a whole park of artillery was not so terrible to him as her tongue loosened in floods of abuse. There is no doubt that he regretted his union with the washerwoman’s daughter whom he had married, who was neither beautiful nor witty. Nan Clarges had all the ancestry and upbringing that made for shrewishness. Her mother was one of the five women barbers who gained notoriety by their vulgarity even in that age, and her father was a blacksmith and farrier, one John Clarges, who lived at the corner of Drury Lane and the Strand, over his forge. Her mother became afterwards a laundress, and she herself dabbled in the soapsuds before and after her marriage to Thomas Ratford, whose father was also a farrier. This marriage took place in 1632, and she and her husband occupied a shop in the New Exchange in the Strand, where they sold gloves, powder, and cosmetics. Her parents died in 1648, and she and her husband separated in the following year. Three years later she married Colonel Monk, whose laundress she had been. Although the tongue of scandal was not idle when one re-married who was not a widow, the farrier never reappeared to claim his wife, and when the Restoration was accomplished (partly, it is said, owing to her Royalist sympathies), and General Monk became Duke of Albemarle, none were found to question her title of Duchess. But she became the laughing-stock of the Court and gave general disgust to Pepys, who calls her in good faith ‘a plain, homely dowdy,’ and ironically ‘that paragon of virtue and beauty.’ On one occasion he ‘found the Duke of Albemarle at dinner with sorry company; some of his officers of the Army; dirty dishes and a nasty wife at table, and bad meat.’