of a page, while he was fighting the duel with her husband. She
married, secondly, George Rodney Bridges, son of Sir Thomas Bridges
of Keynsham, Somerset, Groom of the Bedchamber to Charles IL, and
died April 20th, 1702. A portrait of the Countess of Shrewsbury, as
Minerva, by Lely.]

who is a whore, and is at this time, and hath for a great while been, a
whore to the Duke of Buckingham. And so her husband challenged him, and
they met yesterday in a close near Barne-Elmes, and there fought: and my
Lord Shrewsbury is run through the body, from the right breast through the
shoulder: and Sir John Talbot all along up one of his armes; and Jenkins
killed upon the place, and the rest all, in a little measure, wounded.
This will make the world think that the King hath good councillors about
him, when the Duke of Buckingham, the greatest man about him, is a fellow
of no more sobriety than to fight about a whore. And this may prove a very
bad accident to the Duke of Buckingham, but that my Lady Castlemayne do
rule all at this time as much as ever she did, and she will, it is
believed, keep all matters well with the Duke of Buckingham: though this
is a time that the King will be very backward, I suppose, to appear in
such a business. And it is pretty to hear how the King had some notice of
this challenge a week or two ago, and did give it to my Lord Generall to
confine the Duke, or take security that he should not do any such thing as
fight: and the Generall trusted to the King that he, sending for him,
would do it, and the King trusted to the Generall; and so, between both,
as everything else of the greatest moment do, do fall between two stools.
The whole House full of nothing but the talk of this business; and it is
said that my Lord Shrewsbury's case is to be feared, that he may die too;
and that may make it much the worse for the Duke of Buckingham: and I
shall not be much sorry for it, that we may have some sober man come in
his room to assist in the Government. Here I waited till the Council