The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 | Page 7

and the Earl of Warwick, prompted, we should
suppose, by Sir John Danvers, offering terms to Sir Peter which he
indignantly rejected. Meanwhile Lady Osborne--Dorothy with her, in
all probability--was doing her best to victual the castle from the
mainland, she living at St. Malo during the siege. At length, her money
all spent, her health broken down, she returned to England, and was
lost to sight. Sir Peter himself heard nothing of her, and her sons in
England, who were doing all they could for their father among the
King's friends, did not know of her whereabouts.
In 1646 he resigned his command. He was weary and heavy laden with
unjust burdens heaped on him by those for whom and with whom he
was fighting; he was worn out by the siege; by the characteristic
treachery of the King, who, being unable to assist him, could not

refrain from sending lying promises instead; and by the malice of his
neighbour, George Carteret, Governor of Jersey, who himself made
free with the Guernsey supplies, while writing home to the King that
Sir Peter has betrayed his trust. Betrayed his trust, indeed, when he and
his garrison are reduced to "one biscuit a day and a little porrage for
supper," together with limpets and herbs in the best mess they can
make; nay, more, when they have pulled up their floors for firewood,
and are dying of hunger and want in the stone shell of Castle Cornet for
the love of their King. However, circumstances and Sir George Carteret
were too much for him, and, at the request of Prince Charles, he
resigned his command to Sir Baldwin Wake in May 1646, remaining
three years after this date at St. Malo, where he did what he was able to
supply the wants of the castle. Sir Baldwin surrendered the castle to
Blake in 1650. It was the last fortress to surrender.
In 1649 Sir Peter, finding the promises of reward made by the Prince to
be as sincere as those of his father, returned to England, and probably
through the intervention of his father-in-law, who was a strict
Parliament man, his house and a portion of his estates at Chicksands
were restored to him. To these he retired, disappointed in spirit, feeble
in health, soon to be bereft of the company of his wife, who died
towards the end of 1650, and, but for the constant ministering of his
daughter Dorothy, living lonely and forgotten, to see the cause for
which he had fought discredited and dead. He died in March 1654, after
a long, weary illness. The parish register of Campton describes him as
"a friend to the poor, a lover of learning, a maintainer of divine
exercises." There is still an inscription to his memory on a marble
monument on the north side of the chancel in Campton church.
Sir Peter had seven sons and five daughters. There were only three sons
living in 1653; the others died young, one laying down his life for the
King at Hartland in Devonshire, in some skirmish, we must now
suppose, of which no trace remains. Of those living, Sir John, the eldest
son and the first baronet, married his cousin Eleanor Danvers, and lived
in Gloucestershire during his father's life. Henry, afterwards knighted,
was probably the jealous brother who lived at Chicksands with Dorothy
and her father, with whom she had many skirmishes, and who wished

in his kind fraternal way to see his sister well--that is to say,
wealthily--married. Robert is a younger brother, a year older than
Dorothy, who died in September 1653, and who did not apparently live
at Chicksands. Dorothy herself was born in 1627; where, it is
impossible to say. Sir Peter was presumably at Castle Cornet at that
date, but it is doubtful if Lady Osborne ever stayed there, the
accommodation within its walls being straitened and primitive even for
that day. Dorothy was probably born in England, maybe at Chicksands.
Her other sisters had married and settled in various parts of England
before 1653. Her eldest sister (not Anne, as Wotton conjectures)
married one Sir Thomas Peyton, a Kentish Royalist of some note. What
little could be gleaned of his actions from amongst Kentish antiquities
and history, and such letters of his as lie entombed in the MSS. of the
British Museum, is set down hereafter. He appears to have acted, after
her father's death, as Dorothy's guardian, and his name occurs more
than once in the pages of her letters.
So much for the Osbornes of Chicksands; an obstinate, sturdy,
quick-witted race of Cavaliers; linked by marriage to the great families
of the land; aristocrats in blood and in spirit, of whom Dorothy was a
worthy descendant. Let us try now and picture for ourselves