is described as having "a very agreeable face, a fine head of
hair, an indifferent shape, and a pleasant wit. He was,
moreover, an elegant beau and a dissolute man--testimony of which
latter fact may be gathered from a letter written to him in 1658,
by his sister-in-law, Lady Essex, to prevent the "ruin of his
soule." Writes her ladyship: "You treate all the mad drinking
lords, you sweare, you game, and commit all the extravagances
that are insident to untamed youths, to such a degree that you
make yourselfe the talke of all places, and the wonder of those
who thought otherwise of you, and of all sober people."

When Barbara was sixteen, my lord, then in his twenty-third year,
inherited the title and estates of his grandfather: he therefore
became master of his own fortune and could bestow his hand where
he pleased. That he was in love with Barbara is, indeed, most
true; but that his passion was dishonourable is likewise certain:
for though he wrote her letters full of tenderness, and kept
assignations with her at Butler's shop, on Ludgate Hill, he was
the while negotiating a marriage with one Mrs. Fairfax, to whom
he was not, however, united. His intrigue with Barbara continued
for upwards of three years, when it was temporarily suspended by
her marriage to one Roger Palmer, a student of the Inner Temple,
the son of a Middlesex knight, and, moreover, a man of the most
obliging temper, as will hereafter be seen. Barbara's loyalty to
her husband was but of short duration. Before she had been nine
months a wife, we find her writing to her old lover she is "ready
and willing to goe all over the world" with him--a sacrifice he
declined to accept! though eager to take advantage of the
affection which prompted it. A little while later he was obliged
to quit England; for it happened in the first month of the year