CHAPTER VIII.

CHELSEA-PARENTALIA-SIR JOHN DANVERS.

1608-1655.

IN the year 1608-9 Magdalen Herbert was married to Sir John Danvers, of Chelsea. The parish of Chelsea was then a beautiful, well-wooded district, in the country; a few cottages clustered round the village church; handsome seats crowned the slopes adown to the river, nearest of which to Danvers House was that of Sir Thomas More.

Danvers House was sumptuously adorned, and the gardens were laid out in the new Italian style.

"'Twas Sir John Danvers, of Chelsey, who first taught us the way of Italian gardens. He had well travelled France and Italy, and made good observations. He had in a fair body an harmonical mind. In his youth his complexion was so beautiful and fine that the people would come after him in the streets to admire him. He had a very fine fancy, which lay chiefly for gardens and architecture."-AUBREY.

When he married Magdalen Herbert, he had only just entered his twentieth year; she was about forty years of age, the mother of ten children, of whom Thomas, the youngest, was about eleven, George was fifteen. "He married her for love of her wit"; he

was fascinated by her beauty yet abiding, her grace and graciousness, her accomplishments, her refined. and commanding intellect. She, though a woman of mature judgment, and old enough to be his mother, might have been captivated in a degree by his handsome form, more so perhaps by the elegancies of his house and the exquisite beauty of the gardens; and as he was presumptive heir to a vast estate, she would be able to receive her younger children into a competent home, and aid them in their upward struggle to an honourable position in life. Nor were her pleasurable anticipations unfulfilled. As long as George Herbert's mother continued the wife of Sir John Danvers, there is testimony enough that the stepfather was a true father to his adopted children; the three girls made Chelsea their home till they were married; Edward, sometimes from Montgomery Castle, sometimes from the Low Countries, afterwards from Paris, where he was ambassador for six years; Charles from Oxford; George from Cambridge; Richard, William, Henry, and Thomas, first on their return from school, afterwards from their continental campaigns, all received a cordial welcome to that lordly mansion.

Here Lady Danvers, in becoming state, could receive her illustrious visitors. Statesmen, nobles, clergy of every grade, poets, scholars, converged to Danvers House, as a centre of dignified life; refined, elegant, literary society; gracious courtesy, and exuberant hospitality.

H

King James himself might have been the guest of the mother of the Cambridge Orator, who so incensed him with his complimentary speeches.

Lord Bacon was often there.

"His Ls" much delighted in that curious garden at Chelsey. He did meditate in those delicate bowers, and as he was walking there one time, he fell down in a sowne. My Lady Danvers rubbed his face, temples, &c., and gave him cordiall water. As soon as he came to himselfe, he said, ‘Madam, I am no good footman."-AUBREY.

Bishop Andrewes, Laud, the Ministers, bishops, and nobles, but especially Dr. Donne, Dean of St. Paul's (the friend of the Herbert family for so many years), shook off awhile their absorbing anxieties for Church and State, and refreshed their spirits in that Elysium of beauty and grace.

At a later day, John Aubrey frequently sojourned at Danvers House. He probably never saw George Herbert, being only in his eighth year at Herbert's death; but he was a Wiltshireman by birth, as was Sir John Danvers; and was connected with the family, his grandmother having been Rachel Danvers; and he says of his curious London anecdotes-" Most of these informations I have from Sir John Danvers."

Donne speaks favourably, though cautiously, of Sir John up to 1627. "His birth, his prospects, his noble presence, might have made him acceptable in any family, or with any woman on whom he set his affections"—and he allows their married life was happy; and, at least, till some years after his wife's death, her children had no cause to complain of the demcanour

of the stepfather towards them. George had confidence in him to the last, for he left him overseer of his will, in 1633.

But though he was knighted by James I., as early as 1624, to his wife's and his brother's (the Earl of Danby) great disgust, he began to disclose unsympathetic sentiments towards the Crown. Charles I. appointed him Gentleman Usher, but he was already associated with seditious spirits, who widened the gulf between him and his Master day by day.

His wife's later years were darkened and saddened by his open alienation from Church and State; her house was no longer the pleasant rendezvous of eminent courtiers and honourable Churchmen; dark cabals were held under her roof, and ominous whispers met her ear, and wounded her heart.

In May 1627 Herbert was at Chelsea, probably in attendance on his sick mother. On the 6th he writes in Latin to Robert Creighton, who had succeeded Thorndike as Deputy-Orator

'Your letters are kind and elegant. You feed on the fine wheat of the University, I on acorns and pulse, like an ancient Briton. Please occupy my place until it is seen thou art acceptable to the University, and then it will not be my fault if thou do not succeed me. Ask our friend Thorndike to put into thy charge the Orator's book and lamp.1 Consider when thou writest a speech, what is due to Alma Mater; do not dress her up like a young maiden; she is a matron, sacred, reverend, antique. A perfect speech is grave, dignified, clear, concise. It is long since I wrote my best Latin, but sometimes I like to chatter. seem to be an old man in letters.

"Farewell, my Pro-Orator, and love thy

1 The Orator's book remains; the lamp is not.

G. H."

I

Lady Danvers still continued, as from the first, and as far as her health allowed, her course of religious obediences and unbounded benevolence. She attended the daily services of the parish church, which was just outside the park; she received the few select friends who were not repelled by the coldness of her lord; she watched over the spiritual, as well as temporal, concerns of her household; and from her loneliness and disappointment she sought in prayer and meditation that consolation which our Holy Religion alone can supply.

Her health had been waning many a day, and through all the spring of 1627 she grew weaker and weaker, till, in May, all the children within reach were summoned to repair with all haste to Chelsea to receive a dying mother's blessing.

No record tells who, or how many of the children, or what friends, gathered round the dying woman's bed. George, apparently sometimes sojourning at the houses of his brother Edward or Henry in London, would visit his mother day by day, and would weary his God with unceasing prayer either for her early recovery, or for her beatific dissolution. But the secrets of that chamber of tears, of prayers, of sickness, and death are revealed only, and in a few brief sentences, in the funeral sermon preached by Dr. Donne, Dean of St. Paul's.

George was absolutely unconsolable at his mother's death. He sat alone for hours by her bed, held her cold hands, and kissed her pallid brow. He wandered