ANNE TEMPLE, LADY LYTTELTON.

Her narrow Escape from the Court Libertines-Her Beauty and Silly Disposition-Notice of her Husband, Sir Charles Lyttelton-His Dread of being Cuckolded-Death of Lady Lyttelton.

THIS beautiful but silly woman, the heroine of an agreeable, but scarcely decent, adventure in De Grammont's Memoirs, was Maid of Honour to the Duchess of York. She appeared at Court when extremely young, and fortunately quitted it before she was much older.

Anne Temple was the daughter of Thomas Temple, Esq. of Frankton, in Warwickshire, by Rebecca, daughter of Sir Nicholas Carew, Knight, of Beddington, in Surrey. She no sooner appeared at the Court of Charles, than she excited the attention of its libertine frequenters. The gay Rochester and the handsome Sydney were suitors for her smiles, and, as she loved to be admired, her reputation very narrowly escaped being ruined by their dalliance. "Miss Temple," says Count Hamilton, "was brown compared with Miss Jennings: she had a good shape, fine teeth, languishing eyes, a fresh complexion, an agreeable smile, and a lively air. Such was the outward form, and it would be difficult to describe the rest; for she was simple and vain, credulous and suspicious, coquettish and prudent, very conceited and very silly." She figures as the companion of Miss Hobart, a person who shared the strange moral peculiarities of Sappho, without a tittle of the genius of the Lesbian poetess.

Fortunately, Miss Temple had scarcely been two years at Court, when a very eligible offer of marriage gave her an opportunity of escaping from her dangerous post of Maid of Honour. At the age of eighteen, she accepted the hand of Sir Charles Lyttelton, Knight, a gallant cavalier of forty, and owner of the afterwards classical seat of Hagley. He had formerly distinguished himself under the royal standard in the civil troubles, and since then had been governor of Jamaica, where he built the town of Port Royal. At the period of his marriage, he was colonel of the Duke of York's regiment. He afterwards rose to be a Brigadier-General, Governor of Sheerness, and sat as Member of Parliament for Bewdley. He seems to have experienced a severe struggle between his love for the lady and his dread of her proving unfaithful to him after his marriage: however, he seems to have had no reason to complain of the conduct of his fair wife. They appear to have led a domestic life, Lady Littleton bearing him thirteen children, of whom there were five sons and eight daughters. Sir Charles lived to the age of eightysix, dying at Hagley on the 2nd of May, 1716. His lady survived him only two years, expiring, also at Hagley, on the 27th of August, 1718. The celebrated Lord Lyttelton was her grandson.

MISS BROOKE, LADY DENHAM.

Introduction to Court by her Uncle the Earl of Bristol-His scheme of advancing his Interests through her Shame-Her Marriage with Sir John Denham, the Poet-Anecdotes of Sir John-Lady Denham becomes the Mistress of the Duke of York-Madness of her Husband-Believed to have caused her Death by Poison-Her last Illness-Distress of the Duke of York-Death of Sir John Denham.

LADY DENHAM was the eldest daughter of Sir William Brooke, K.B., and niece of George Digby, second Earl of Bristol. Her brief but romantic story, the genius of her husband, and her own loveliness and untimely end, have invested her name with a peculiar interest. The world believed that, in introducing her to the libertine monarch, and in obtaining invitations for her to the royal parties, the unprincipled Earl trusted to advance his own interests by means of the charms, if not the shame, of his beautiful kinswoman.* In his public capacity, Lord Bristol is sufficiently well known from his absurd political inconsistencies; and, in private life, as a sycophantic panderer to the amusements and pleasures of Charles the Second.

Miss Brooke, at the time when she appeared at Court with her lovely sister Frances, was only eighteen.† Her

* It appears by a passage in Pepys's Memoirs, that her subsequent endeavours to advance the intrigues of her profligate uncle, produced a temporary coolness between the Duke of York and Lady Denham, who for some time had notoriously encouraged the addresses of her royal lover.-Memoirs, vol. i. p. 491. 4to.

Frances Brooke, also noticed in De Grammont's Memoirs. She afterwards became the wife of Sir Thomas Whitmore, K.B.

charms at once attracted the attention of Charles. Lady Castlemaine, however, who was then in the zenith of her beauty and power, interfered with her headstrong jealousy, and accordingly the King was robbed of his prize, and Miss Brooke of the honour of enslaving her sovereign.

The Duke of York succeeded as her professed lover, but as long as she remained unmarried she appears to have afforded him but little encouragement. It was probably yielding to the advice of her friends, who hoped to save her from ruin by a timely marriage, that she consented to become the wife of Sir John Denham, the celebrated poet, a man no less wealthy than disagreeable, sarcastic, and old. The story of the poet, more especially as he figures as the social companion of two monarchs, the first and second Charles, requires a passing notice.

He was the only son of Sir John Denham, Knight, of Little Horseley in Essex, Chief Baron of the Exchequer in Ireland, and afterwards promoted to be a Baron of the Exchequer in England. His gifted son was born in Dublin (according to Wood, in 1615), and in 1631 was entered a Gentleman Commoner of Trinity College, Oxford. At the University, according to Aubrey, he was regarded as the "dreamingest young fellow alive." He seems, at a very early period, to have imbibed a miserable passion for play, and, whenever he was not in a poetical reverie, to have been engaged at the gaming table. "He was looked upon," says Anthony Wood,

as a slow, dreaming, young man, and more addicted to gaming than study: they could never imagine he could. ever enrich the world with the issue of his brain as he afterwards did." After a residence of three years at the University, he entered himself as a member of Lincoln's Inn, where, as Aubrey assures us, he was again "much rooked by gamesters, and fell acquainted with that

unsanctified crew to his ruin.” Both Wood and Aubrey relate an amusing anecdote of him at this period. His father, having received intimation of the ruinous course of life his son was leading, addressed a forcible and affectionate letter of remonstrance to his prodigal offspring. The father, if the anecdote be true, was probably as weakminded as the son was hypocritical. In order completely to lull any inconvenient suspicions on the part of his parent, the poet actually composed and printed an essay against gaming, which he transmitted to his father. The scheme was apparently successful, for the old lawyer subsequently bequeathed him a considerable fortune, the savings probably of a long life of labour and self-denial.

Aubrey relates another anecdote of the poet, at the period when he was studying the law. “He was generally," he says, "temperate in drinking; but one time, when he was a student of Lincoln's Inn, having been merry at the tavern with his comrades, late at night a frolic came into his head, to get a plaisterer's brush and a pot of ink, and blot out all the signs between Temple Bar and Charing Cross, which made a strange confusion the next day, as it was in Term time; but it happened that they were discovered, and it cost him and them some moneys. This I had from R. Estcourt, Esquire, who carried the ink-pot." His father dying in 1638, the improvident poet, within a short period, squandered a considerable portion of his property; and, in consequence of his subsequently taking the part of his Sovereign in the civil troubles, the Parliament without scruple deprived him of the remainder.

In 1642, he published his tragedy of the "Sophy," which had been acted in the course of the previous year at the theatre in Black Friars, and where it was received with considerable applause. The following year he printed