Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe | Page 7

return to England for some years. In 1630 he was appointed
Secretary to Lord Aston's embassy to the Court of Spain, in
consequence of the information which he possessed of the country; but
in attaining that knowledge he spent great part of his patrimony, which
amounted only to 50 pounds per annum, and 1500 pounds in money.
When Lord Aston was recalled, Mr. Fanshawe remained as the Charge
d'Affaires until Sir Arthur Hopton was nominated Ambassador to
Madrid; and he arrived in England in 1637 or 1638. For two years after
his return, he seems to have been in constant expectation of some
appointment, but his views were frustrated by Secretary Windebank. At
the expiration of that time, his eldest brother resigned to him the
situation of Remembrancer of the Court of Exchequer, but upon terms
which prevented its being of any immediate pecuniary advantage. The
Civil War, however, then broke out and being one of the King's sworn
servants, he attended his Majesty to Oxford, where he met the fair
author of these Memoirs.
Anne, the eldest daughter of Sir John Harrison, of Balls, in the county
of Hertford, by Margaret, daughter of Robert Fanshawe, of Fanshawe
Gate Esq., great uncle of Sir Richard Fanshawe, was born in St. Olave's,
Hart Street, London, on the 25th of March 1625. Of her education and
early life she has given a pleasing description, and, until the Civil War,
her family lived in uninterrupted happiness. Her father having warmly
espoused the Royal cause, he attended the Court to Oxford, and desired
his daughters to come to him in that city, where they endured many
privations, "living in a baker's house in an obscure street, and sleeping

in a bad bed in a garret, with bad provisions, no money, and little
clothes." The picture of Oxford at that moment is truly deplorable, and
the sufferings of the royalists appear to have been very severe, but
which she describes as having been borne "with a martyr-like
cheerfulness." The offer of a Baronetcy to her father--the only return
which it was then in the power of the Crown to bestow, for the heavy
losses he had sustained--was gratefully declined on the ground of
poverty. In 1644 important changes took place in her family, or, as she
poetically expresses it, alluding to the state of public affairs, "as the
turbulence of the waves disperses the splinters of the rock," so were
they separated. Her brother William died in consequence of a fall from
his horse, which was shot under him in a skirmish against a party of the
Earl of Essex the year before; and on the 18th of May she became the
wife of Mr. Fanshawe, in Wolvercot Church, two miles from Oxford,
being then in her twentieth year, and her husband about thirty-six. He
was at that time Secretary at War, and was promised promotion the first
opportunity. The fortune of each was in expectation: they were, she
says, "truly merchant adventurers," their whole capital being only
twenty pounds; and, to preserve the simile, that capital was laid out in
the articles of his trade--in pens, ink, and paper. What was wanting in
money was amply supplied by prudence and affection; and there is no
difficulty in believing her assurance, that they lived better than those
whose prospects were much brighter.
Whilst at Oxford, in 1644, the University conferred upon Mr.
Fanshawe the degree of Doctor of Laws. In the beginning of March
1645 he attended the Prince to Bristol, but in consequence of his wife's
confinement, she did not accompany him; and the circumstances of
their separation are affecting. She joined him in that city in May, at
which time he was appointed Secretary to the Prince of Wales, but in
consequence of the plague they quitted Bristol, in July 1645, and
proceeded with his Royal Highness to Barnstaple, and thence to
Launceston and Truro, in Cornwall. From Truro the Court removed to
Pendennis Castle; and early in April 1646 the Prince and his suite
embarked for the Scilly Islands. Great as their privations were at
Oxford, they were much exceeded by their sufferings at Scilly; and no
one can peruse the description of their voyage to and lodgings in that
island with indifference. To illness were added cold and hunger: they

were plundered by their friends in flying from their enemies; and to add
to the misery of their situation, Mrs. Fanshawe was very near her
confinement.
After passing three weeks in that desolate place, the Prince and his suite
went to Jersey, where they were hospitably received; and where Mrs.
Fanshawe gave birth to her second child. On the Prince's quitting Jersey
in July, for Paris, Mr. Fanshawe's employment ceased; and he remained
in that island with Lord Capell, Lord Hopton, and the