The Weaker Vessel: Women's Lot in Seventeenth-Century England by Fraser Antonia

Author:Fraser, Antonia [Fraser, Antonia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, feminism, Biography
ISBN: 9781780220666
Amazon: 1780220669
Goodreads: 22035986
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Published: 1984-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

Here lies Tom Thynne of Longleat Hall

Who never would have miscarried,

Had he married the woman he lay withal;

Or laid with the woman he married.46

The responsibility of the Count himself – who had fled – was another much debated point.

In fact the Count only got as far as Gravesend where he was found in a boat ‘disguised in a poor habit’. He was taken to Newgate and subsequently put on trial. However, his men loyally stuck to the story that there had been a challenge to a duel. It had actually been refused but one of their number, ‘the Polander’, had failed to appreciate this fact and thus fired the fatal shot.47 So the Count was acquitted. (His men were hanged.)

None of this of course had improved the Count’s chances of marrying Lady Ogle although, imperviously, he did renew his suit. In any case on 30 May 1682, the exciting chase was ended. Steps had been taken earlier in the year to render the Thynne marriage contract void at the Court of the King’s Bench. In May Lady Ogle was married to the nineteen-year-old Charles Seymour, sixth Duke of Somerset. No one could deny that that was a splendid match: the latest bridegroom was dark and handsome, generous and cultivated. His only defect – an overweening arrogance on the subject of his ancestry, which led to his being termed ‘the Proud Duke of Somerset’ – was perhaps not such a defect after all for one who was herself ‘the last of the Percies’. It showed tact on the part of the new Duchess that she did not finally hold the Proud Duke’ to that promise which was part of the marriage contract, to change his surname from Seymour to Percy.

So the former Elizabeth Percy, Lady Ogle, lived in splendour for forty years as Duchess of Somerset, bearing her husband thirteen children, and ornamenting the court of William and Mary. Later her political influence was feared by the Tories under Queen Anne, when she became First Lady of the Bedchamber following the fall of Sarah Duchess of Marlborough. This incurred for her the enmity of Swift and thus was her red hair (and her dramatic past) angrily mocked:

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