of England had, we came to a baker's house in an obscure street, and
from rooms well furnished, to lie in a very bad bed in a garret, to
one dish of meat, and that not the best ordered, no money, for we were
as poor as Job, nor clothes more than a man or two brought in their
cloak bags: we had the perpetual discourse of losing and gaining towns
and men; at the windows the sad spectacle of war, sometimes plague,
sometimes sicknesses of other kind, by reason of so many people being
packed together, as, I believe, there never was before of that
quality; always in want, yet I must needs say that most bore it with a
martyr-like cheerfulness. For my own part, I began to think we should
all, like Abraham, live in tents all the days of our lives. The King
sent my father a warrant for a baronet, but he returned it with
thanks, saying he had too much honour of his knighthood which his
Majesty had honoured him with some years before, for the fortune he
now possessed: but as in a rock the turbulence of the waves disperses
the splinters of the rock, so it was my lot, for having buried my dear
brother, William Harrison, in Exeter College Chapel, I then married
your dear father in 1644 in Wolvercot Church, two miles from Oxford,
upon the 18th day of May. None was at our wedding but my dear father,
who, at my mother's desire, gave me her wedding-ring, with which I was
married, and my sister Margaret, and my brother and sister Boteler,
Sir Edward Hyde, afterwards Lord Chancellor, and Sir Geoffry Palmer,
the King's Attorney. Before I was married, my husband was sworn
Secretary of War to the Prince, now our King, with a promise from
Charles I. to be preferred as soon as occasion offered it, but both
his fortune and my promised portion, which was made 10,000 pounds,
were both at that time in expectation, and we might truly be called
merchant adventurers, for the stock we set up our trading with did not
amount to twenty pounds betwixt us; but, however, it was to us as a
little piece of armour is against a bullet, which if it be right