ness to your Lordship for the same. And where I have also heard that your honour, together with some other lords of his Majesty's Privy Council, examining the manner of his proceedings in con tracting my daughter to Cunstabell, she being but twelve years of age, and finding her age abused, and how carelessly and slenderly she was provided for, without jointure or other pro vision for her, taking pity of her estate your Lordships were pleased to take some further care for her, which forasmuch as I have endeav oured by sending unto the said Bacon to know what is done for her, and instead of satisfaction, have received an insolent letter of contempt, penned after his proud manner of writing, — my husband nor my brother knowing nothing, as being secluded and thrust out from all privity of dealing therein, — I am forced to beseech your Lordship to let me know what order is taken for her. And thus being sorry I have such cause to complain of his bad dealing, whom your Lordship heretofore recommended to me, and whose folly hath lately more abounded in procuring the said Cunstabell to be knighted, being of himself a man of very mean estate, — whereby he hath taken all ordinary means of thriving from him, — craving pardon for my boldness, I humbly take my leave. From Drury Lane, this 28th of November, 1607. Your Lordship's poor well wilier to my best power, DOROTHE PaKINGTON. As the Earl of Salisbury's aunt had mar ried her uncle, it may be supposed that he took an interest in her case; and the follow ing paper now preserved in the Rolls House is one of the results of her appeal to him, or of the Council's " further care for her " daugh ter. The paper is without date, but entered in the Calendar under " January (?) 1608." It is entitled : " Conditions to which I am content to yield unto, and did from the be ginning intend and offer, for the jointure and advancement of Dorothy Barnham, my spouse." It is signed " Jo. Constable," and indorsed: "Sir Fr. Bacon and his wife." The gist of it is that Constable offers to assure his spouse a jointure of £400 a year, as soon as he comes to his estate, — his grand
father and his father were both still alive. But he very strongly provides " that those her friends which have so intolerably slan dered and wronged me, shall have no inter meddling at all either in the assurance or in the allowance of these articles." So we may feel assured that the mother-in-law was to be excluded. "The little violent lady " was evidently a strong-minded woman, " not afraid to beard the lion in his den," or to brave Lord Bacon on the bench. Whenever we find her in the records, we find heron the war-path, fight ing her battles with her husbands or with her sons-in-law. On July 5, 161 7, Cham berlain wrote to Carleton : — "There be great wars betwixt Sir John [ Paking ton j and his lady, who sues him in the high com mission, where, by his own wilfulness, she hath some advantage of him, and keeps him in prison. But the lord keeper ^Bacon] deals very honourably in the matter, which, though he could not com pound, being referred to him, yet he carries him self so indifferently [/'. e. impartially] that he wished her to yield, and tells her, plainly and publicly, that she must look for no countenance from him, as long as she follows this course." It is not necessary to follow Lady Dorothy's various suits in detail. Her second husband, Sir John Pakington, died at his house at Westwood in January, 1625, having had by her one son and two daughters, — John, Anne, and Mary. The son John (1600-1624), who was created a baronet, died before his father, leaving one daughter and one son, (1) Elizabeth, and (2) John the second, baronet. (1) Elizabeth married, first, Col. Henry Washing ton, the first cousin to John the emigrant, an cestor of Gen. George Washington; (2) Sir John, the second baronet (1622-1680), mar ried Dorothy Coventry, " one of the most learned oi her sex, daughter of Thomas, Lord Coventry, who in 1629 ordered the Massachusetts charter to be issued." Lady Dorothy (Pakington) married, thirdly, Robert Needham, Viscount Kilmorey; and he died in 1627. In 1628 she was having a
