or Messalina, and by a Judas-like treachery which even they, who at
least flaunted their crimes openly, would have blushed to practise.

No woman could have had smaller excuse for straying from the path of
virtue, much less for making foul crimes the minister to her lust than
Anna Maria, Countess of Shrewsbury. The descendant of a long line of
honourable Brudenells, daughter of an Earl of Cardigan, there was
nothing in the history of her family to account for the taint in her
blood. She had been dowered with beauty and charms which made conquest
easy, inevitable; and she was honourably wedded to a noble husband, the
eleventh Earl of Shrewsbury, who, although a man of no great character
or attainments, was an indulgent and faithful husband. Nor does she,
until she had reached the haven of married life, appear to have shown
any trace of the wickedness that must have been slumbering in her.

And yet, before she had worn her Countess's coronet a year, she had made
herself notorious, even in Charles II.'s abandoned Court, for passions
which would ruthlessly crush any obstacle in the way of their
indulgence. Lover after lover, high-placed and base-born indifferently,
succeeded one another in her fickle favour, as Catherine the Great's
favourites trod one on the heels of the other, each in turn to be flung
contemptuously aside to make room for a more favoured rival.

Even Gramont, seasoned man of the world and far removed from a saint as
he was, was frankly horrified at the carryings-on of this English
Messalina, compared with whom the most lax ladies of the English Court
were veritable prudes. "I would lay a wager," he says, "that if she had
a man killed for her every day she would only carry her head the higher.
I suppose she must have plenary indulgence for her conduct." The only
indulgence she had or needed was that of her own imperious will and her