Court Lady and Country Wife by Lita-Rose Betcherman

Author:Lita-Rose Betcherman [Betcherman Lita-Rose]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4434-0210-1
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 1927-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

A less controversial subject was the beds, silver, and other household goods that Leicester had purchased in France for Penshurst and the London town house. French luxury goods were famous. One could get far better things there than in England, Dorothy told her husband. French fabrics, above all, were superior to English. Among the things Dorothy most appreciated was a yellow damask bed, which “if it please God to bless our endeavours, may come seasonal for Doll.”

Poor Doll! Beautiful as she was, at twenty-one she was still unmarried. Eligible men were being picked off rapidly. Rakish Lord Lovelace had just been betrothed. In the autumn of 1638, Dorothy made a final push to capture the Earl of Devonshire for her daughter. Through Lucy she enlisted the aid of the Queen and her favourite equerry, Sir Henry Jermyn. The Queen could easily make the match if she would only talk to Lady Devonshire, Dorothy grumbled, but despite Henrietta Maria’s promises, she had not yet done anything. Dorothy recruited anyone who had any influence with the Devon-shires. Their cousin the Earl of Newcastle had been very much on side for a while. But then he had written “a foolish letter” to Lucy, who, characteristically, had laughed at it and shown it to everyone. He learned of this, of course, and since then had turned “very cold.”14

In Paris, Leicester was doing his best to line up a husband for Doll. He was ideally placed to do so since all the young English lords making the grand tour paid their respects at the English embassy. A few years earlier he thought he had a good prospect in William Russell, the fourth Earl of Bedford’s son and heir; but as it turned out Russell was in love with the vivacious and pretty daughter of the infamous Lady Somerset and had married her on his return from the Continent. Leicester had put himself out to an extreme degree for the Earl of Devonshire when that most desirable of husband material had been in Paris. At the present juncture, another very eligible young man was on the scene: Lord Henry Spencer, who, at nineteen, was already in possession of his title as a baron and in two years would come into his fortune. But Leicester had discovered that the youth was pining for Elizabeth Cecil, the Earl of Salisbury’s second daughter and the sister of the dead Countess of Northumberland. The Cecil girl was also Doll’s principal rival for Devonshire. Dorothy agreed that it would be hard work to divert Spencer. He was known to be so infatuated with the Cecil girl that he had been unwilling to leave England.15 If she did not get Devonshire, she would most certainly get young Henry Spencer.

With all her problems, Dorothy did not mention the King’s troubles in her letters until December 1638, when she reported to Paris that the payment of all pensions had been suspended until the Scottish affairs were settled. The King was making plans to march

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