In this situation they were invited into the house of a generous kinsman (Sir Francis Woolley), who maintained them and their increasing family for several years, "to their mutual content" and undiminished friendship.[48] Volumes could not say more in praise of both than this singular connection:--to bestow favours, so long continued and of such magnitude, with a grace which made them sit lightly on those who received them, and to preserve, under the weight of such obligation, dignity, independence, and happiness, bespeaks uncommon greatness of spirit and goodness of heart and temper on all sides. This close and domestic intimacy was dissolved only by the death of Sir Francis, who had previously procured a kind of reconcilement with the father of Mrs. Donne, and an allowance of about eighty pounds a year. They fell again into debt, and into misery; and "doubtless," says old Walton, with a quaint, yet eloquent simplicity, "their marriage had been attended with a heavy repentance, if God had not blessed them with so mutual and cordial affections, as, in the midst of their sufferings, made their bread of sorrow taste more pleasantly than the banquets of dull and low-spirited[49] people." We find in some of Donne's letters, the most heart-rending pictures of family distress, mingled with the tenderest touches of devoted affection for his amiable wife. "I write," he says, "from the fire-side in my parlour, and in the noise of three gamesome children, and by the side of her, whom, because I have transplanted into a wretched fortune, I must labour to disguise that from her by all such honest devices, as giving her my company and discourse," &c. &c. And in another letter he describes himself, with all his family sick, his wife stupified by her own and her children's sufferings, without money to purchase medicine,--"and if God should ease us with burials, I know not how to perform even that; but I flatter myself that I am dying too, for I cannot waste faster than by such griefs. --From my hospital. "JOHN DONNE." This is the language of despair; but love was stronger than despair, and supported this affectionate couple through all their trials. Add to mutual love the spirit of high honour and conscious desert; for in the midst of this sad, and almost sordid misery and penury, Donne, whose talents his contemporaries acknowledged with admiration, refused to take orders and accept a benefice, from a scruple of conscience, on account of the irregular life he had led in his youthful years. But in their extremity, Providence raised them up another munificent friend. Sir Robert Drury received the whole family into his house, treated Donne with the most cordial respect and affection, and some time afterwards invited him to accompany him abroad.