And then the Earl made an ominous entry in his diary: “I gave Dr. Moor
£5 and Dr. Gifford 20_s._ for visiting my wife in her sickness”; and “my
wife’s phisick” is an item in the Earl’s accounts. But they spent the
early spring at Langley Park near Windsor, and in April were back again
in Channell Row, where on April 15th Lady Cork’s fifteenth child—a little
girl—was born. In June they removed to Lord Warwick’s house in Lincoln’s
Inn; and in October 1629—the baby Margaret being left behind them with
her nurse and maid—they were back in Ireland again.
The return journey had been made with even more pomp and ceremony
than the setting forth eighteen months before. For one of the King’s
ships, the _Ninth Whelp_—one of the fleet of “Lion Whelps,” built at
Deptford—was at the last moment put at their disposal to “wafte them
over.” Lord Cork distributed presents among the ship’s company, and gave
the captain at parting a magnificent pair of fringed and embroidered
gloves, to which Lady Cork added a black silk night-cap, wrought with
gold. The men, horses and luggage, followed safely in two barques—no
Dunkirker being sighted on the way.
Before the Earl left Ireland, he and the Lord Chancellor[24] had not
been on the best of terms. But now, fresh from the civilisation of the
Metropolis, and with all the reflected glory of a crossing in the _Ninth
Whelp_, the Earl, by the King’s desire, made up his quarrel with the
Chancellor. Both were sworn Lords Justices for the joint government of
Ireland in the absence of a Deputy; and both resolved to “join really in
the King’s Service”—a resolution which they were, for a little while,
to keep. Meantime, Mr. Perkins, “my London Tailor,” had sent over to
Dublin an enormous trunk of magnificent wearing-apparel, and a very long
bill; and the retiring Lord Deputy[25] delivered up the King’s Sword and
government of Ireland to the Lord Chancellor and the Earl.
This was in October 1629. On the 16th of February following, 1630, Lady
Cork died at Dublin.[26] It had “pleased my mercifull God for my manifold
syns ... to translate out of this mortall world to his gloriows kingdome
of heaven the sowle of my deerest deer wife....”
The baby Peggie—ten months old—was still in England; and the ex-baby
Robyn, reared by his country nurse, was just three years old. Had the
lady of the “free and noble spirit,” in those short months spent in
Dublin, between October and February, been able to see Robyn again—to
hold him in her arms a little moment—before she died?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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