Page:Poems of Anne Countess of Winchilsea 1903.djvu/33

 INTRODUCTION xxix ������All the further references to the earl in this preface seem consistent with her later very warm friendship for the young earl, Charles, and. inconsistent with other references to her husband's father. Moreover, a poem to Lady Worsley, written after 1690, speaks as if Anne were still in some place of retirement with the future not yet determined upon. It was almost certainly Charles, the third earl, who invited them to make their home at Eastwell. �For Anne and her husband the change was complete. There were practically no ties that bound the family to the new court, for although the second earl, in spite of the long and devoted services of his house to the Stuart cause, had at last declared in favor of William and Mary, and at the revolution had been counted of so much importance that his public offices had been renewed, his early death had broken the only possible link between his family and the reigning powers. Charles was too young for statecraft, while Heneage Finch, Anne's husband, as a non-juror, could have no part in public affairs. This entire severance from court activities could not, however, have been a matter of un- mixed grief to Ardelia and her husband. To be together on this beautiful estate would, on the contrary, have been cause for unmixed joy had it not been for the fate of their royal master and mistress. Their loyalty to the Stuarts was no ephemeral passion, and nearly all the poems of this period are dominated by a melancholy born of the disasters of that unhappy house. Ardelia writes concerning the composition of Aristomenes: �I must acknowledge, yt the giving some interruptions to those melancholy thoughts, which possesst me, not only for my own, but much more for the misfortunes of those to whom I owe all imagin- able duty, and gratitude, was so great a benefit, that I have reason to be satisfied with the undertaking, be the performance never so inconsiderable. And, indeed, an absolute solitude (which often was my lott) under such dejection of mind, could not have been ��� �