146 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE 



and-thirty years. Little did she then dream of what 

 the vicissitudes of fortune had in store for her. The 

 wife of a younger son, and with only the most distant 

 prospect of succeeding to the title, it so came about, 

 in those days of premature death, that eighteen years 

 later, at the age of thirty-three, she found herself 

 Countess of Warwick, and mistress of the Tudor 

 mansion and vast estates of Leighs Priory. Though 

 married to the man of her choice, her domestic life 

 was for many years one of patient endurance, some- 

 times of bitter sorrow. For twenty years before his 

 death her husband was grievously afflicted with the 

 gout, which rendered more ungovernable his pas- 

 sionate temper. Her " dear and only " son died of the 

 small-pox within a few months of his coming of age; 

 and when fourteen years later the Countess herself 

 followed him to the tomb in Felstead Chapel, the 

 beautiful priory passed to owners of another name. 

 When Mary Rich was about twenty-one that change 

 occurred which she was wont to regard as her con- 

 version, or awakening to spiritual life. Her diary 

 indicates very clearly the conflict through which she 

 was passing. She is constantly reproaching herself 

 for her former love of " curious dressing and fine and 

 rich clothes, and spending her precious time in nothing 

 else but reading romances, and seeing plays, and in 

 going to court and Hyde Parke and Spring Garden." 

 She makes promises to God of a new life, but her 

 good resolutions are often broken. She fears that 

 God will, some way or other, punish her. " At last," 

 she says, " it pleased God to send a sudden sickness 

 upon my only son, who I then doated on with great 

 fondness. My conscience told me it was for my back- 

 sliding. Upon this conviction I presently retired to 



