“To be in the fashion in London, the people appeared to me to live more out of their houses than in them; in the afternoon visiting, driving in their family coaches, attending sale-rooms where trumpery articles were sold by auction to the highest bidder, sometimes really scarcely worth taking home; for the principal part of the amusement consisted in the ladies outbidding each other, and generally amongst friends, so that large sums of money used to change hands in this frivolous way, which, no doubt, made their husbands very cross. However, the town ladies would, and I suppose ever will, contrive to have their own way. Then came the formal dinner-parties--oh, how I used to yawn behind my fan!--and often we went to see the play in Drury Lane, and, if it chanced to be a mournful tragedy, I could not help being so silly as to cry, it all seemed so natural and life-like. The best actor was Mr. Garrick, and he certainly was a great man in his profession. Mr. Cibber also was wonderfully clever: these were the first stage performers at that time....” She goes on to describe how soon she tired of the constant whirl of London fashionable life, out all day driving from house to house, and every night at some place. “I was sick,” she declares, “of the compliments paid me; indeed, in many cases the attentions of the gentlemen went beyond compliments.” Presently this brilliant figure disappears from English society, and the heroine returns to her native land to marry her kinsman, Allan McDonald, and to become the mother of the celebrated Sir John McDonald. CHAPTER VIII. THE MARTYR PERIODS: RELIGIOUS ZEAL AND RELIGIOUS APATHY. Religious life in the sixteenth century--Religion the great motive-power--The Lollard persecutions--Protestant martyrs of the sixteenth century--Anne Askew--Women martyrs in the seventeenth century--Persecution of the Quakeresses--Quaker doctrines--Seventeenth-century Anglicanism--Indifference of the Church to social work--Condition of the clergy--Mary Astell and her Protestant nunnery--The Countess of Warwick. The religious history of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is notorious for comprising two great periods of martyrdom--periods which are significant as showing the strong latent force in women, waiting for opportunity to call it forth. Whatever position may be assigned to women either by the Church or the State, whatever may have been the current notions about the place they should occupy, however much they may have been repressed or neglected, they have always been ready, when occasion arose, to respond to the call for action. In times of political struggle, of fierce fighting, they have been eager to spend and be spent, enthusiastic, persistent, unflinching. In the cause of religion, which, above all others, appeals to women, their zeal has been most conspicuous.