Disappointed in this matter, Buckingham now manifested his intentions of improving his own fortunes by a successful marriage; various objects of attraction had been offered to his gaze, but they wanted, probably, that which his extravagance rendered essential—fortune. On one occasion, we find him, with the King, visiting a house in order to admire the beauty of one of his god-daughters, but no result followed. The world, too, now talked loudly of the marriage of Lady Diana Cecil with the Earl of Oxford, whilst a richer bride was given, by common report, to Buckingham. This was the Lady Katherine Manners, the only daughter of Francis, sixth Earl of Rutland, a nobleman of great wealth; the lady was also endowed with other attractions besides fortune, proving a woman of many attainments and great spirit. This marriage was, in every respect, desirable. It produced, amongst one of its advantages, an alliance in blood with the illustrious Sydneys. Roger, fifth Earl of Rutland, the brother of Earl Francis, having married Sir Philip Sydney’s daughter and heiress.[267] It cemented a union with a house already favoured by King James, who visited Belvoir Castle repeatedly, and who had constituted its two last lords successively Chief Justices in Eyre of all his forests and chases north of the Trent, beside conferring other distinctions; lastly, it offered to Buckingham a prospect of domestic happiness with a lady of considerable wit and spirit, and one whose affectionate attachment to her husband was amply testified by her letters and conduct during their union. Footnote 267: Brydges’s Peers of James I. One drawback, however, existed. The Lady Katherine was a Roman Catholic; and, although passionately attached to Buckingham, she, for some time, refused to go to church. Through the exertions, however, of the celebrated Williams, then Dean of Salisbury, and afterwards Lord Chancellor, she was ultimately converted. It was for her benefit that he composed his work, entitled, “A Manual of the Elements of the Orthodox Religion, by an old Prebend;” only twenty copies of which were printed, and these were all presented to the Marquis of Buckingham.[268] Such was the success of Williams’s arguments, or the influence of the young lady’s affection for her suitor, that, shortly before her marriage, a public profession of the reformed faith was made by Lady Katherine, on her partaking of the Holy Communion at the altar of a Protestant church.[269] Footnote 268: Nichols, vol. iii., p. 589. Footnote 269: Ibid, vol. iv., p. 606. Various were the rumours at Court concerning the progress of the engagement, which went on “untowardly;” amongst others, that the Countess of Buckingham, having taken the young lady away from her home, the Countess of Rutland, Lady Katherine’s step-mother, had refused to receive her back: the King was said to be in the plot.[270] Footnote 270: State Papers, vol. cxiii., No. 38.