CHAPTER XI CHARLOTTE OF DERBY. A JOURNEY TO LONDON IN OLDEN DAYS. QUEEN OF HER HOME. LEARNED LADIES. “HIS REVERENCE.” LADY DERBY SPELLS LANCASHIRE. A DEMAND, AND A REFUSAL. DEFENCE, NOT DEFIANCE. “A NEST OF DELINQUENTS.” THE SERMON TEXT. ORDERS TO MARCH. DEMANDS AND TERMS. SURPRISES. WORTHY OF A PAINTER’S BRUSH. THE ASTUTE ECCLESIASTIC AND ROUNDHEAD FRIEND. MORE CONDITIONS. “LOOK TO YOUR OWN WAYS.” A DAY OF REST. NO SURRENDER For more than half a score of years following the earliest years of her married life, records concerning Lady Strange are scanty. It is only a short time before she becomes Countess of Derby that she begins to live in history. Till then, she passed the ordinary existence of a highborn lady of her time—those ladies notably who affected home life more than Court life. Her provincial rearing at Thonars, coupled with her simple Huguenot education, no doubt conduced to this preference. Another reason which made a country lady of Charlotte de la Trémoille was probably the remoteness of Lathom from the capital. No doubt she occasionally appeared at Court; but a journey then from the North to London, for women at all events, called for serious consideration before its undertaking. The choice of locomotion lay between a pillion-ride on horseback, in fair weather or foul, as it might be, and a clumsy springless wooden coach occupying a good week upon the road, provided all went well, and that the huge wheels did not wedge themselves into the ruts or the mire of the King’s highway, or the Flanders mares did not stumble or cast a shoe five miles from a smithy. For such were some of the mishaps which befell travellers in the good old times, not to speak of the attacks of highwaymen. Just however, as the blessings of penny post have their shadows, conversely the lack of facilities for travelling had its brighter side. Gentlefolks were apt to be more quiet-minded in those days. The imperative necessity for constant “change” had not come to be recognised. If ladies were troubled with the migraine or the spleen, or ailments of the sort, they had to seek their remedies from the local apothecary, supposing he lived anywhere within hail; or, better, select some mint tea or tansy drink or other herbal concoction out of their own stillrooms; or, better than all, shake off the distemper in a goodly game of “Hoodman Blind,” or “Hunt-the-slipper.” The home of the good wife in any rank was her kingdom, and her daughters were reared in her own creed of domesticity, although it is a heresy to imagine that the women of those times were mere household drudges. Allowing for the scarcity of books, the average of educated matrons and maids stood high. A knowledge of the classics and of the dead languages can be by no means claimed as a monopoly by Girton and Newnham and kindred modern shrines of female erudition. Again and again in the abstracts and chronicles of the time we come upon