Meantime, all the Earl’s daughters and sons-in-law, except Dorothy and
Arthur Loftus, who remained in Ireland, seem to have found their way,
separately or together, to the Manor of Stalbridge; while grandchildren,
nieces and nephews and even “cozens” were welcomed under its roof. The
Dungarvans made their headquarters there, and the Barrymores, and the
little Lady Mary, who was now fourteen, and to be considered a grown-up
young lady, with an allowance of £100 a year “to fynde herself.” And
they were presently joined by the Kildares, and Katharine and Arthur
Jones. Even the plaintive Lettice and her lord stayed for some time
under the Earl’s roof.[58] And in March 1639, after an absence of three
years, Kynalmeaky and Broghill, with M. Marcombes, returned from their
“peregrination”. They found Frank and Robyn already at Stalbridge, though
not in the great house itself. For their father had taken the boys away
from Eton on his return journey from London in November 1638, and since
then they had been boarded out with the Rev. Mr. Dowch at the Parsonage,
scarcely “above twice a musket-shot” distant from their father’s house.
Their three years at Eton had cost, “for diett, tutaradge and aparell,”
exactly £914 3_s._ 9_d._
When the Earl of Cork visited Eton and took his two boys away, Sir Henry
Wotton must have been already ill. Since his return after the summer
breaking-time of 1638 the old Provost had suffered from a feverish
distemper, which was to prove the beginning of the end.[59]
It is possible that during the Provost’s illness extra duties had fallen
on Mr. Harrison, the Rector; in any case the two boys had been removed
from the care of their “old courteous schoolmaster,” and handed over to
“a new, rigid fellow;” and things were not going quite so happily for
them at Eton as heretofore. Moreover, poor Carew, the romance of the
underbaker’s daughter nipped in the bud, had, from overmuch fondness for
cards and dice, come utterly to grief.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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