Tn1 DISPENSER OF CEARaeTY. The Protector did not interfere, however ; and he seems to have admired her spirit, for on hearing, some time before, that she was obliged to go to law to recover her rights on the death of her uncle, he offered his mediation,--a piece of officious kindness which was received by the haughty royalist with disdain. In rejecting his interference, she remarked with the brevity for which she was eminent :- "What ! does he imagine that I, who refused to submit to King James, will bow to him ?" Yet much as she disliked the republican Cromwell, she afterwards viewed the Court of Charles the Second with abhorrence. Being pressed, on the Restoration, to visit the Royal circle, -" By no means," she sarcastically replied, "unless I may be allowed to wear blinkers." Her opinion was invariably expressed with the utmost plainness, bluntness, and spirit. One of her letters is so characteristic that it has become celebrated. It was in reply to a letter from Sir Joseph Williamson, Secretary to Charles the Second, dictating to her a member for Appleby ; and it runs briefly thus :- " I have been bullied by an usurper, neglected by a Court, but I will not be dictated to by a subject. Your man shan't stand." When her rights were in question, none was more determined than she. Once, a rich clothier, one of her Skipton tenants, stoutly refusing to pay, in addition to his yearly rent, a customary tribute of what was called a " boon hen," the Countess 39
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=