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 care upon his education both before and after her second marriage in 1652 to Sir Robert Smythe. In order to make him a staunch protestant, she secured the services as tutor of Dr. Thomas Pierce [q. v.], the Calvinist divine, under whom the young earl studied the rudiments at home and languages abroad in company with his kinsman Henry Savile [q. v.], and his mother's brother, Henry Sidney (afterwards Earl of Romney) [q. v.], his junior by a few months. His close relations with the Sidneys and all their powerful connections, as well as his more distant relationship with the Saviles, the Coventrys, and Lord Shaftesbury, gave him at the outset of his career a strong position, which he sedulously improved by his own marriage, and later by the alliances which he made for his children. After a sojourn in Paris and in some of the Italian cities, Sunderland spent wellnigh two years in the south of France and at Madrid. Returning to England in the summer of 1661, he went up to Christ Church, Oxford. Before, however, he was matriculated he vindicated the soundness of his protestant training by joining the celebrated William Penn in an energetic demonstration in ‘Tom Quad’ against the wearing of the surplice, as recently prescribed by the authorities at the king's request. The ringleaders, including Penn, were rusticated, and Sunderland followed them into a voluntary exile. He renewed his association with Penn a few years later in Paris. After sowing some wild oats, he commenced in 1663 to pay his addresses to Anne, younger daughter of George Digby, second earl of Bristol [q. v.], by Anne, daughter of Francis Russell, fourth earl of Bedford; the young lady was not only a great beauty, but was also only surviving sister and heiress of John Digby, third earl of Bristol, to all of whose estates she succeeded in 1698. In spite of the great access of influence (more than of actual wealth) which the match held out, the negotiations seem to have dragged; the date was finally fixed for July 1663, ‘the wedding clothes made and everything ready;’ yet at this late hour, if Pepys may be believed, the bridegroom flinched from the prospect of matrimony to the extent of absconding with an intimation that he ‘had enough of it’ (Diary, 1 July 1663). Matters were nevertheless arranged, and the ceremony took place at St. Vedast's in the city of London on 10 June 1665. If the young earl's fears were due to a suspicion that he had met his match in duplicity, they were probably not unfounded. His bride was a ‘born intrigante,’ and her ‘commerce de galanterie’ with her husband's uncle, Henry Sidney, was somewhat later to afford a congenial theme to Barillon and his fellow-reporters of court intrigue.

Two years after his marriage, in June 1667, Sunderland received a commission in Prince Rupert's regiment of horse, and for a short period came into frequent contact with George Savile (afterwards Marquis of Halifax) [q. v.], who was serving in the same troop. His political activity at this time seems to have been limited for the most part to the paying of assiduous court to the royal mistresses. He invited Barbara Villiers [q. v.], well-known successively as Lady Castlemaine and Duchess of Cleveland, to his seat of Althorp; and when in 1671 her star was paling before that of Louise Renée de Keroualle [q. v.], he asked the new favourite to his town house in Queen Street, and lost enormous sums to her at basset. In these diplomatic approaches he was ably seconded by his wife. At Euston in 1671, in conjunction with Lady Arlington, under the pretext of killing the tedium of the October evenings, Lady Sunderland arranged a burlesque wedding, in which Mlle. de Keroualle was the bride and the king the bridegroom (, Louise de Keroualle, pp. 72 sq.).

These diversions were interrupted by Sunderland's first political employment. He was despatched in September 1671 upon an embassage to Madrid, his object being to endeavour to neutralise Spain in the event of the impending war with the United Provinces. He was foiled in his object, and wrote slightingly of the Spaniards as totally occupied with points of precedency. ‘They talk of other business,’ he wrote, ‘but have none but how to get the hand of one another’ (several of his letters to Arlington are printed in Hispania Illustrata, London, 1703, 8vo). He seems to have left Madrid in March 1672 for Paris, where he acted for some time as ambassador extraordinary to the French king. Continuing his diplomatic career, he was sent in the following year (May 1673) to Cologne as one of the plenipotentiaries with a view to a general peace, which was, however, frustrated by the devices of the French. Returning home early in 1674, he was on 27 May admitted into the privy council at Windsor, and in October following appointed a gentleman of the bedchamber to Charles II. By his efforts Mlle. de Keroualle obtained, on 16 July 1675, a patent of nobility for her bastard by the king, Charles Lennox, first duke of Richmond [q. v.] In July 1678 upon Ralph Montagu, duke of Montagu [q. v.], leaving his post and hastening back to London in order to defend