And fame is a report that travels far, and many times lives long and the older
it, groweth, the more it flourishes, and is the more particularly a man's own than
the child of his loins.

ON her return to England from exile in 1660, Margaret gladly
accompanied her husband into the country when once she had
seen that he would not receive the favours and rewards which
his loyalty and sufferings had led him to expect. She went the
more willingly as she herself preferred retirement in the country
to life in the city, provided she could occasionally descend on it
to enjoy the effects of her reputation. 'In your last letter you
condemn me for living a country life,' she wrote in reply to a
correspondent, 'saying, I bury myself whilst I live, and you
wonder, that knowing I love glory, I should live so solitary a
life as I do; I confess, Madam, both the manner of my life and
my ambitious nature, if a solitary life be not to live in a metro-
politan city, spread broad with vanity, and almost smothered
with crowds of creditors for debts; and as I confess my solitude,
so I confess my glory, which is to despise such vanities, as will
be rather a reproach to my life than a fame to after ages.' ¹
There is no need to question the sincerity of her protestations.
She deeply loved the countryside, was well versed in country
matters, and enjoyed the company of her contemplations and
the pleasures of writing more than all else: 'Wherefore, for my
pleasure and delight, my ease and peace, I live a retired life, a
home life, free from the entanglements, confused clamours, and
rumbling noise of the world, for I by this retirement live in a
calm silence, wherein I have my contemplations free from dis-
turbance, and my mind lives in peace, and my thoughts in
pleasure.^'2

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