MARGARET GODOLPHIN', THE TRUE MAID OF HONOUR. " Virtue lies not in sackcloth coarse and sad : Be purely pious, and in satin clad." IN the year preceding that in which Oliver Cromwell dissolved his refractory Long Parliament, and in which the heroic Lady Rachel Wriothesley was married for the first time-on the 2nd of August, 1652, was born, in the pleasant farming county of Suffolk, Margaret, the fourth and youngest daughter of the loyal Colonel Thomas Blagge. Colonel Blagge, a gentleman of an old and honour- able Suffolk family, had distinguished himself very muchduring the Civil War. He had been one of the first who had taken up arms in the cause of the King, in whose service he had been for some time as Groom of the Bedchamber ; and to him Charles had confided the defence of the garrison at Walling- ford, a post of importance and danger. Most worthily did he acquit himself of this charge ; and even when, at length, in 1646, on being closely 6
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=