melancholy disposition supplied the necessary complement to her own merry and vivacious temperament. In 1636 the Queen had refused to have her in the Bedchamber, on the plea that her charms eclipsed all others; and now, in 1643, Mary Villiers was, at the age of twenty, in the prime of her beauty. Rumour said that she had won the heart of "the mad Prince," while the equally lively Mrs. Kirke had subjugated that of Maurice. A libellous Puritan tract represents Mrs. Kirke as extolling Maurice's "deserts and abilities," though she was forced to acknowledge that he "did not seem to be a courtier." But the Duchess assured her companions "that none was to be compared to Prince Rupert."[23] Nor was it only Puritans who commented on Rupert's admiration for the Duchess. The Irish Cavalier, Daniel O'Neil, "said things" in Ireland to Lord Taafe, after which he lost both the Prince's favour and his troop of Horse.[24] Rupert hotly resented the imputations cast upon him, and, had they been other than slanders, it is impossible to conceive that he and the Duke could have maintained their close and faithful friendship. The Duke, with his "haughty spirit", was not a man to dissemble, and his letters to Rupert are all full of solicitude for his welfare, and of sympathy and consolation for his troubles. Even in his hour of failure and ruin the Duke stood loyally by his side, though, in so doing, he was putting himself in opposition to his adored sovereign. Still it is certain that Rupert both felt and evinced a very strong admiration for the Duchess. "There will be a widow, and {113} whose she shall be but Prince Rupert's, I know not," wrote a Cavalier, when the Duke's death was rumoured in 1655.[25] But the Duchess took for her third husband, not Rupert, but "Northern Tom Howard," whom she said she married for love, and to please herself; her two former marriages having been made to please the Court.[26] Most likely she had never really cared for the Prince, and had merely amused herself with a flirtation. She was, no doubt, proud of so distinguished a conquest, but she never disguised her friendship for her supposed lover, and she sent him messages by all sorts of people, in the most open way. "I had an express command to present the Duchess of Richmond's service to you,"[27] wrote Rupert's enemy, Percy, in July 1643.