Last updated 09/07/24: Online ordering is currently unavailable due to technical issues. We apologise for any delays responding to customers while we resolve this. For further updates please visit our website: https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/technical-incident
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 April 2014
Many historians of plebeian marriage have accepted David Kent's findings that married men in eighteenth-century London enlisted to desert their wives. This article argues that this was far from always the case. Enlistment could serve as a family survival strategy for pauper husbands, particularly during mobilization periods. Bounties, shorter terms of service, and pensions could entice responsible providers. The militia or guards regiments appealed to family men because of their stable income and low risk of foreign deployment. Accounts of agonized quayside partings indicate that some married recruits who left British soil had expected the army to allow their wives to accompany them. Kent considered every army wife who sought parish relief as abandoned, yet resort to the parish might form part of a complex family survival strategy that included wives’ begging and soldiers’ taking on extra work and sending home their pay. Some men used military service as a way to fulfill husbandly duties, not to avoid them.
1 In addition to the literary examples that follow, deserting husbands enlisting can be found in Farquhar, George, The Recruiting Officer. A comedy … (London, 1706)Google Scholar, act 1, scene 1, and act 2, scene 3; Ward, Edward, A Pastoral Dialogue between Coridon a Shepherd, and his Wife Phillis, concerning the innocent Pleasures of a Rural Life (London, 1723)Google Scholar, 196; Holcroft, Thomas, The Adventures of Hugh Trevor, 6 vols. (London, 1794–97), 1:83–84Google Scholar; Smith, Charlotte, Marchmont, 4 vols. (London, 1796), 3:59–60.Google Scholar
2 Haywood, Eliza Fowler, The History of Miss Betsey Thoughtless, 4 vols. (London, 1751), 2:134–36Google Scholar; 3:146–50.
3 Defoe, Daniel, Roxana (London, 1724)Google Scholar, 106.
4 Galt, John, Annals of the Parish; or, the Chronicle of Dalmailing During the Ministry of the Rev. Micah Balwhidder. Written by himself (Philadelphia, 1821; repr., Oxford, 1972), 80–81Google Scholar. Though published in 1821, the book intended to depict an earlier period; this event was to have taken place in 1776. Galt also intended his work to be taken more as a true historical account than a novel.
5 Lt.-Col. Sir Leetham, Arthur, “Old Recruiting Posters,” Journal for the Society for Army Historical Research 1 (1921): 120Google Scholar. The phrase “too much wife” echoes the recruiting sergeant's call in Farquhar's play.
6 Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington to Earl Bathurst, dated Lesaca, 24 September 1813, in Wellesley, Arthur, The Dispatches of Field Marshal the Duke of Wellington, During his Various Campaigns . . . from 1799–1818, ed. Lieut. Gurwood, Colonel, 12 vols. (London, 1838)Google Scholar, 11:141.
7 The ruling essentially claimed that, unlike other civilian men, no soldier could be charged under the vagrancy laws for refusing to maintain his wife and child. 1 Wilson King's Bench 33: vol. 95, English Reports, 646. I am grateful to Kim Kippen for providing me with this case.
8 Hurl-Eamon, Jennine, Marriage and the British Army in the Long Eighteenth Century: The Girl I Left Behind Me (Oxford, 2014)Google Scholar, 33.
9 For a detailed account of extant sources estimating the numbers of married soldiers, see ibid., 21–26.
10 The army tended to allow six women per company of one hundred men “on its strength,” but this is generally taken to be a minimum. Holmes, Richard, Redcoat: The British Soldier in the Age of Horse and Musket (London, 2001)Google Scholar, 293, states that “for much of the period most sergeants and around seven per cent of rank and file were permitted to marry, . . . and . . . another seven per cent were married unofficially.”
11 Conway, Stephen, War, State, and Society in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Britain and Ireland (Oxford, 2006)Google Scholar, 61, table 1, and Linch, Kevin, Britain and Wellington's Army: Recruitment, Society and Tradition, 1807–15 (New York, 2011)Google Scholar, 5. Note that these numbers probably include officers, making this estimate slightly less conservative.
12 [Mather, Ralph] An Impartial Representation of the Case of the Poor Cotton Spinners (London, 1780)Google Scholar, 3.
13 See, for example, Marten, John, A treatis of all the degrees and symptoms of the venereal disease, in both sexes, . . ., 6th ed. (London, 1708)Google Scholar, 127, who presented the case of “a very poor, but sober modest Woman, whose Husband was gone for a soldier, leaving her nothing to subsist with, and what was much worse, the Pox in a most grievous manner.”
14 Snell, Keith, Annals of the Labouring Poor: Social Change and Agrarian England, 1660–1900 (Cambridge, 1985)Google Scholar, 362.
15 Bailey, Joanne, Unquiet Lives: Marriage and Marriage Breakdown in England, 1660–1800 (Cambridge, 2003)Google Scholar, 172, and Stone, Lawrence, Broken Lives: Separation and Divorce in England, 1660–1857 (Oxford, 1993), 5–6Google Scholar. See also Clark, Anna, The Struggle for the Breeches: Gender and the Making of the British Working Class (Berkeley, 1997)Google Scholar, 43; Horrell, Sarah and Humphries, Jane, “The Origins and Expansion of the Male Breadwinner Family: The Case of Nineteenth-Century Britain,” International Review of Social History 42, Supplement 5 (1997): 62Google Scholar; Morgan, Gwenda and Rushton, Peter, “The Magistrate, the Community and the Maintenance of an Orderly Society in Eighteenth-Century England,” Historical Research 76, no. 191 (February 2003): 67Google Scholar.
16 Conway, Stephen S., The British Isles and the War of American Independence (Oxford, 2000)Google Scholar, 92. See also his War, State, and Society, 118.
17 See, for example, Williams, Noel T. St. John, Judy O'Grady and the Colonel's Lady: The Army Wife and Camp Follower Since 1660 (London, 1988)Google Scholar, 20, and Venning, Annabel, Following the Drum: The Lives of Army Wives and Daughters, Past and Present (London, 2005)Google Scholar, 10.
18 Kent, David A., “‘Gone for a Soldier’: Family Breakdown and the Demography of Desertion in a London Parish, 1750–1791,” Local Population Studies 45 (1990): 31.Google Scholar
19 John Black, “Illegitimacy and the Urban Poor in London, 1740–1830” (PhD thesis, Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London, 1999), 167–68.
20 Geoffrey L. Hudson, “War, Poverty & the English Family, 1585–1800” (unpublished essay, 2005). I am grateful to Professor Hudson for providing me with this essay and permitting me to cite it.
21 Gilbert, Arthur N., “An Analysis of Some Eighteenth-Century Army Recruiting Records,” Journal for the Society of Army Historical Research 54, no. 217 (1976): 41Google Scholar.
22 Boulton, Jeremy, “‘It Is Extreme Necessity That Makes Me Do This’: Some ‘Survival Strategies’ of Pauper Households in London's West End During the Early Eighteenth Century,” International Review of Social History 45 (2000): 66Google Scholar. See also Fontaine, Laurence and Schumbohm, Jürgen, “Household Strategies for Survival: An Introduction,” International Review of Social History 45 (2000): 1–17.Google Scholar
23 Western, J. R., The English Militia in the Eighteenth Century: The Story of a Political Issue, 1660–1802 (London, 1965)Google Scholar, 269, 287–89.
24 Historians such as Middleton, Richard, “The Recruitment of the British Army, 1755–1762,” Journal for the Society of Army Historical Research 67, no. 272 (1989): 235Google Scholar, have recognized the competition posed by the militia in the second half of the century, prompting increases in bounty money.
25 The second half of the paper talks in more detail about the possibilities of shorter periods of service.
26 Scouller, Major R. E., The Armies of Queen Anne (Oxford, 1966)Google Scholar, 113.
27 Conway, War, State, and Society, 94.
28 Middleton, “The Recruitment of the British Army,” 236.
29 Gilbert, “An Analysis,” 41.
30 Ibid., 42.
31 Farquhar, The Recruiting Officer, act 4, scene 1.
32 Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 6.0, 17 April 2011), September 1760, William Odell (t17600910-38) (hereafter OBP).
33 See OBP, October 1739, Thomas Hanning (t17391017-3), and December 1739, Loglin Rennells (t17391205-51).
34 Farquhar, The Recruiting Officer, act 4, scene 2.
35 “The Young Recruit; or, Thirteen-Pence a Day,” n.d., 2806 c.15(298), Bodleian Library.
36 On recruiting parties as theatre, see Russell, Gillian, The Theatres of War: Performance, Politics, and Society, 1793–1815 (Oxford, 1995)Google Scholar, 19.
37 Burn, James Dawson, The Autobiography of a Beggar Boy . . ., 2nd ed. (London, 1856)Google Scholar, 90.
38 Clode, Charles M., The Military Forces of the Crown, 2 vols. (London, 1869)Google Scholar, 2:5.
39 Hurl-Eamon, Jennine, “The Fiction of Female Dependence and the Makeshift Economy of Soldiers, Sailors and Their Wives in Eighteenth-Century London,” Labour History 49, no. 4 (2008): 481–501Google Scholar; Hurl-Eamon, Marriage and the British Army, 183–91.
40 Sir Jerome Fitzpatrick acknowledged the “Legislative Number being Six Women to every Sixty Men in time of Peace, or to every Hundred Men in time of War.” Draft Act of 1801, 1801, The National Archives (hereafter TNA) War Office (hereafter WO), 43/269, UKNA, f. 160.
41 Hurl-Eamon, Marriage and the British Army, 30, 48–52.
42 Court martial of Andrew McQueen for desertion, n.d., TNA WO 71/41, f. 59. I am grateful to Peter Way for directing me to this record.
43 In addition to the examples that follow, see Lieutenant George Simmons of the 95th Rifles, 27 April 1815, reprinted in Uffindell, Andrew, Wellington's Armies: Britain's Campaigns in the Peninsula and at Waterloo, 1808–1815 (London, 2003)Google Scholar, 165; Sherwood, Mary Martha, The Life of Mrs. Sherwood (chiefly autobiographical) . . . (London, 1854)Google Scholar, 270; Keep, William Thornton, In the Service of the King: The Letters of William Thornton Keep, at Home, Walcheren, and in the Peninsula, 1808–1814, ed. Fletcher, Ian (Staplehurst, 1997)Google Scholar, 32, letter from Keep to his mother, dated Bishop's Waltham, 8 July 1809; Photocopy of a Transcript of Voyage Across the Atlantic, 1807, a journal kept by Mrs. Courtenay Ilbert, wife of 2nd Captain Courtenay Ilbert, Royal Artillery, 28 July, 21, NAM 1996-06-136-1, National Army Museum, Chelsea.
44 Green, William, Where Duty Calls Me: The Experiences of William Green of Lutterworth in the Napoleonic Wars, ed. Teague, John and Teague, Dorothy (West Wickham, 1975)Google Scholar, 21.
45 [Anon] Memoirs of a Sergeant late in the Forty-third Light Infantry Regiment . . . (London, 1835; repr., Cambridge, 1998)Google Scholar, 19.
46 The soldier's wife's words were overheard by Lady Bessborough and relayed in a letter to Lord Granville Leveson Gower, Margate, September 1799. Gower, Lord Granville Leveson, Private Correspondence, 1781–1821, ed. Granville, Castalia Countess, 2 vols. (London, 1916)Google Scholar, 1:261–62.
47 Stevenson, John, A soldier in Time of War; or, the Military Life of Mr. John Stevenson (London, 1841)Google Scholar, 174.
48 [Gleig, George] The Subaltern (Edinburgh, 1828)Google Scholar, 25.
49 [Donaldson, Joseph] Recollections of an Eventful Life, Chiefly Passed in the Army (Glasgow, 1824), 100–01.Google Scholar
50 Sir Jerome Fitzpatrick to William Windham, 15 January 1801, TNA WO 43/269.
51 Gower, Private Correspondence, 262, Lady Bessborough to Lord Granville Leveson Gower, Margate, September 1799.
52 Gleig, The Subaltern, 21.
53 Donaldson, Recollections, 108.
54 Lynn, John A. II, Women, Armies and Warfare in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2008)Google Scholar, 8. See also Carlton, Charles, This Seat of Mars: War and the British Isles, 1485–1746 (New Haven, CT, 2011)Google Scholar, 106.
55 The nuances of this policy and its enforcement are discussed in Hurl-Eamon, Marriage and the British Army, 32–37, 59–60, 154–61.
56 Standing orders, regulations, exercise, evolutions, &c. of the Twenty-Second regiment of light dragoons. Raised in the year MDCCLXXIX, and commanded by the Right Honourable John, Lord Sheffield (London, 1780)Google Scholar, 16. See also Standing orders, for the eleventh regiment of Light Dragoons (Dorchester, 1799)Google Scholar, 70, and The standing orders for the Norwich; or, Hundred and Sixth Regiment (Waterford, 1795)Google Scholar, 36.
57 Sir McGrigor, James, The Scalpel and the Sword: The Autobiography of the Father of Army Medicine, ed. McGrigor, Mary (Dalkeith, 2000)Google Scholar, 165.
58 McHenry, James, The Wilderness; or, Braddock's Times; A Tale of the West, 2 vols. (New York, 1823)Google Scholar, 2:105.
59 Moore, John, Mordaunt: Sketches of Life, Characters, and Manners, in Various Countries . . ., 3 vols. (London, 1800)Google Scholar, 2:320.
60 Forrest, Alan, Hagemann, Karen, and Rendall, Jane, “Introduction: Nations in Arms—People at War,” in Soldiers, Citizens and Civilians: Experiences and Perceptions of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, 1790–1820, ed. Forest, Alan, Hagemann, Karen, and Rendall, Jane (New York, 2009)Google Scholar, 3.
61 Agar, William, Military devotion: or, the soldier's duty to God, his prince and his country. Containing fourteen sermons preached at the camps near Blandford . . . (London, 1758)Google Scholar, xxxi.
62 Hitchcock, Tim and Black, John, eds., Chelsea Settlement and Bastardy Examinations, 1733–1766 (Leicestershire, 1999), 102–03Google Scholar, examination 319, dated 11 September 1756.
63 War diaries of Charles Hotham, entries dated 24 and 31 May 1758, UDDHO/4/89, Hull History Centre.
64 Letter from Ann Carnac, 14 February 1760, quoted in Conway, War, State, and Society, 119.
65 Lamb, Roger, Memoir of His Own Life, by R. Lamb; serjeant in the Royal Welch Fuzileers (Dublin, 1811)Google Scholar, 75.
66 Trustram, Myna, Women of the Regiment: Marriage and the Victorian Army (Cambridge, 1984), 85–93Google Scholar.
67 Petition dated 29 March; PP, 1759, xxviii, 521. The same city's local merchants raised more than one hundred pounds after witnessing “a most shocking spectacle” of soldiers’ widows returning from America in 1775. Annual Register, 1775, 257–58, quoted in Kopperman, Paul E., “The British High Command and Soldiers’ Wives in America, 1755–1783,” Journal for the Society of Army Historical Research 60, no. 241 (1982): 32Google Scholar.
68 Trustram, Women of the Regiment, 142.
69 See, for example, 3 W & M c. 11 s. 4, which prohibited military men from gaining a settlement while still in service to ensure that garrison parishes would not be disproportionately burdened with military wives. “A Bill, intituled, An Act for punishing Mutiny and Desertion; and for the better Payment of the Army and their Quarters,” 1746–47, Harper Collection, 357.d.3, BS Ref. 2, 15, British Library, added a clause requiring justices to obtain the oath of “the Place of their last legal Settlement” from all married soldiers and noncommissioned officers, create an affidavit, and then “give an attested Copy . . . to the person . . . to be by him delivered to his Commanding Officer, in order to be produced when required.” This was likely prompted by garrison towns’ desire not to be burdened with the cost of providing for soldiers’ dependents because they had unclear settlements.
70 Letter From Jerome Fitzpatrick to William Pitt, dated Portsmouth, 25 October 1797, TNA WO 43/ f. 188.
71 Innes, Joanna, “The Domestic Face of the Military-Fiscal State: Government and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain,” in An Imperial State at War: Britain from 1689–1815, ed. Stone, Lawrence (New York, 1994)Google Scholar, 110.
72 Cookson, John E., “Regimental Worlds: Interpreting the Experience of British Soldiers during the Napoleonic Wars,” in Soldiers, Citizens and Civilians: Experiences and Perceptions of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, 1790–1820, ed. Forrest, Alan, Hagemann, Karen, and Rendall, Jane (New York, 2009)Google Scholar, 31; Gilbert, “An Analysis,” 40n.
73 Petition dated 11 February; PP, 1799, liv, 160.
74 Examinations of Anne Munton, January 1741, and Sarah Barnard, 29 October 1760, St. Martin's Parish Settlement Examinations, F5033, f.118, and F5051, f.214–15, respectively, City of Westminster Archives Centre.
75 See, for example, St. Martin's Parish Settlement Examinations, F5024, f. 46, 53, 111, 184, 215–16; F5032, f.297, 302, 309, 325; F5033, f.55, 99, 114, 131–32, 162, 218, 265; F5040, f.169; F5051, f.214–15; F5066, f.288–89, CWAC.
76 Hurl-Eamon, Marriage and the British Army, 13, 16.
77 See, for example, St. Martin's Parish Settlement Examinations, F5066, f. 277, 308; F5067, f. 41, 66, CWAC.
78 Western, J. R., The English Militia in the Eighteenth Century: The Story of A Political Issue, 1660–1802 (London, 1965)Google Scholar, 269, 287–89.
79 In addition to the St. Martin's records cited above, there is an extant set of records from St. Peter's Parish, Cambridgeshire, that list orders to pay weekly sums to militiamen's wives. See those relating to Sarah Harman, 14 July 1803; Mary Sole, 16 January 1803/4; Ann Stocker, 2 March 1803; Mary Robson, 27 July 1807; Rosa Thulborn, 30 July 1808; and Sarah Poole, 16 July 1810, Records of St. Peter's Parish, MS Doc 3971, Cambridge University Library. I am grateful to Matthew McCormack for directing me to this collection.
80 Examination of Mary Stone, 13 July 1780, St. Martin's Parish Settlement Examinations, F5066, f. 288–89, CWAC.
81 Candler, Ann, Poetical Attempts by Ann Candler, A Suffolk Cottager; With a short narrative of her life (Ipswich, 1803), 9–11Google Scholar.
82 Note that 1770–71, though peacetime, did see a rise in recruiting when Parliament approved an additional 12,000 on the establishment. Its impact on St. Martin's Parish, however, would have been minimal. Much of the recruiting took place in Ireland. Rogers, Colonel H. C. B., The British Army of the Eighteenth Century (London, 1977)Google Scholar, 29.
83 Marshall, Dorothy, The English Poor in the Eighteenth Century: A Study in Social and Administrative History (New York, 1926)Google Scholar, 252, says that when “men ran away, leaving their wives and children behind,” they could be “secure in the knowledge that the parish was bound to provide for them.”
84 Dalton, Michael, The Country Justice (London, 1618)Google Scholar, 77. It is important to note that, though this existed in principle, it was not visible in practice by the eighteenth century. Boulton, “Extreme Necessity,” 55, noted that couples “‘overburdened with young children,’. . . were not considered as deserving of regular pensions in this part of early eighteenth century London.” This only furthers the point that able-bodied couples had greater success obtaining parish relief if the husband entered military service.
85 There were fifty-six wives claiming that their husbands were soldiers in the regular forces. Of these, twenty-seven had no living children; an additional four had no children under the age of three. Only four had more than two living children; the rest had only one or two.
86 Boulton, “Extreme Necessity,” 51.
87 Ferriar, John MD, Medical Histories and Reflections, 4 vols. (Manchester, 1794)Google Scholar, 2:192–93.
88 Hurl-Eamon, Marriage and the British Army, 189–207, provides examples of each of these survival strategies.
89 OBP, September 1797, Helena Welsh (t17970920-71).
90 Examination of Hannah Matthews widow of John Matthews, 25 July 1753, WQ/SR/238/14-16, Cumbria Record Office, Kendal.
91 Tomkins, Alannah, The Experience of Urban Poverty, 1723–82: Parish, Charity and Credit (Manchester, 2006)Google Scholar, 85.
92 See Hitchcock, Tim, Down and Out in Eighteenth-Century London (London, 2004), 147–48Google Scholar, and Hitchcock, Tim, “Begging on the Streets of Eighteenth-Century London,” Journal of British Studies 44, no. 3 (2005): 495Google Scholar, on the advantages of this pass.
93 Burn, Autobiography, 24–25.
94 Hurl-Eamon, Marriage and the British Army, 58–59, gives examples of charity offered to military wives throughout the period.
95 OBP, February 1795, trial of John Green (t17950218-3).
96 An Account of the society for the Encouragement of British Troops in Germany and North America (London, 1760)Google Scholar, 63.
97 Examination for settlement of Thomas and William Underwood, 7 May 1709, F5002 f. 3, CWAC.
98 OBP, September 1797, Helena Welsh (t17970920-71). Hegerty's husband had been “drafted into the Old Buffs” after serving as a soldier for eight years, according to her testimony. His veteran status still made him entitled to bounty money upon entering a regiment destined for the West Indies under certain circumstances. Gilbert, “An Analysis,” 43–44, also accorded it a popular practice for men to join one regiment and then desert and reenlist in another regiment in order to double their bounty money.
99 For jobs in colonial garrisons, see Way, Peter, “Class and the Common Soldier in the Seven Years' War,” Labor History 44, no. 4 (2003): 469–71Google Scholar. The range of soldiers’ nonmilitary employment in London is described at length in Hurl-Eamon, Marriage and the British Army, 189–91.
100 Ashford, Mary Ann, Life of a Licensed Victualler's Daughter (London, 1844)Google Scholar, 62.
101 Stevenson, A soldier in Time of War, 148.
102 John E. Cookson, “Regimental Worlds: Interpreting the Experience of British Soldiers during the Napoleonic Wars,” in Soldiers, Citizens and Civilians, 31.
103 Cobbett, William, Cobbett's Advice to Young Men (London, 1906)Google Scholar, 97. Emphasis in original. For more examples of soldiers who accrued savings from service, see Hurl-Eamon, Marriage and the British Army, 185–86.
104 Aside from John Cookson, “Regimental Worlds,” 31, no other historian has recognized these informal allotment schemes. Lin emphasized the unprecedented nature of the navy's allotment system (Lin, “Citizenship,” 15), and Neuberg, Victor, Gone for a Soldier: A History of Life in the British Ranks from 1642 (London, 1989)Google Scholar, 87, could find “no administrative mechanism by which a soldier serving abroad could have a proportion of his wage paid to a wife or dependants at home.”
105 Frearson, W.O. II C. W., ed., “To Mr Davenport” being Letters of Major Richard Davenport (1719–1760) to his brother during service in the 4th Troop of Horse Guards and 10th Dragoons, 1742–1760 (London, 1968)Google Scholar, 66, dated Lathen, 3 January 1759.
106 Letters from Sir Hew Dalrymple to Lady Dalrymple, September to November 1793, NAM 1994-03-129 -19, -20, and -41, National Army Museum, Chelsea.
107 OBP, July 1801, James Walton (t18010701-67).
108 “Vestry Records of Garstang,” November 1815, DDX386/3, Lancashire Record Office, quoted in King, Steven, Poverty and Welfare in England, 1700–1850 (Manchester, 2000)Google Scholar, 102.
109 Clark, Anna, “The New Poor Law and the Breadwinner Wage: Contrasting Assumptions,” Journal of Social History 34, no. 2 (2000): 266Google Scholar, n39, offers evidence from “PRO MH4/5 f. 450 21 July 1842, Market Bosworth” and “MH4/4 f. 349, 20 Oct. 1842” that “commissioners suspected that deserted wives secretly received money from distant husbands.”
110 Rogers, The British, 61.
111 Scouller, The Armies of Queen Anne, 113. 30 Geo. II c 8 s. v–vi asked as little as a three-year commitment of volunteers in 1756–57. In that same period, impressed men were freed from service after five years. Middleton, “The Recruitment of the British Army,” 230.
112 Linch, Britain and Wellington's Army, 92.
113 Hurl-Eamon, Marriage and the British Army, 176–77, contains accounts of soldiers’ happy reunions with their wives.
114 Costello, Edward, The Adventures of a Soldier (London, 1841)Google Scholar, 278.
115 Gleig, The Subaltern, 19.
116 Candler, Poeticall Attempts, 9. Her husband did not ultimately change his colors; she followed him to London, but he proved “cool and indifferent” (10) upon her arrival, yet when she eventually decided to return to Suffolk, “he seemed almost frantic,” accompanying her to the boat that was to carry her and their children back “and wept most bitterly at parting” (11).
