Montgomery manuscripts

The Montgomery Manuscripts.
197
to me and my babys, and so misbelieving of my having these children honestly and at one birth,
may God convince your LadyP. by giving you as many as there be days in the year; and so it hap-
pened, as is gen ly there believed and reported.'
In this province of Holland, this winter, 165 1, we had the satisfaction to see many of the King's
officers, who escaped from Worcester fight, 10 it being solamin (a sorry one) miseries socios habuisse
doloris. But all the entertainment w h travel gave his Lo p was full of pain and throes (like a woman's
travell in child-bearing) for he cou'd have no comfort (or but very little) till he was delivered from
that captivity in that Babilon of religions and nations. His earthly treasure was in Ireland, and his
heart was there also ; and when the hopes of his Majesty's success in England ever dashed in that
kingdom, (as in the other two) out of his grief for those disasters, an hope arose (for his good God
always supported his mind) that his enemies being now out of fears of royalists, he should be
permitted to return home, where he might wait for better times and opportunities to serve his
Majesty.
It was very lucky I had the happiness to see his Lo p . because bound to my studies; and but
this once I accompanied him to any village or town. When we were at Hunsterdyke, 11 and gen Iy
alwheres (but publick certain rated ordinarys, where his Lo p . could hardly be unknown) he kept
himself so as to pass for a Gent™, and we strove to do so ; in this dorp. 12 Ensign Simeon Erskin'3
was then his Lo v ' B only serv\ L' Col. Geo. Stewart 14 (S r . Robert afores d ' s son), Cap'. Hugh Mont-
' Believed and reported. — The foregoing story attracted
the attention of Howell, who made himself familiar with
the ideas and traditions of the people in whatever place
he visited. His account is as follows: — " That wonder
of nature is a church monument, where an earl and a
lady are engraved with 365 children about them, which
were all delivered at one birth ; they were half male, half
female ; the two basins in which they were christened
hang still in the church, and the bishop's name who did
it ; and the story of this miracle, with the year and the
day of the month mentioned, which is not yet 200 years
ago ; and the story is this : — That the countess walking
about herdoorafterdinner, therecamea begger-woman with
two children upon her back, to beg alms; the countess ask-
ing whether those children were her own, she answered, she
had them both at one birth, and by one father, who was
her husband. The countess would not only not give her any
alms, but reviled her bitterly, saying it was impossible for
one man to get two children at once ; the begger-woman
being thus provoked with ill words, and without alms, fell
to imprecations, that it should please God to shew his
judgment upon her, and that she might bear at one birth
as many children as there be days in the year, which she
did before the same year's end, having never born child
before. " — Howell's Familiar Letters, Domestic and Foreign,
1726, p. 92. Sir John Carr, during a tour in Holland,
visited the village of Loosduynen in 1806, and found that
the villagers, even then, were believers in the miracle.
"A Dutch author," he says, " has gone so far as to de-
clare that he had seen the 365 children of the countess of
Henesberg, and with pleasant minuteness describes them
to be of the size of shrimps, and Erasmus believed the
story. Those who have the hardihood to differ from such
authorities explain away the miracle by stating that on the
third day of January the beggar wished the countess, who
expected to lie in every hour, might have as many children
as there had been days in the year, and that she, on that
day, was delivered of three children. " — Tour through Hol-
land, p. 1 78. Evelyn is silent respecting this story of
the countess of Henneberg, but he tells us, vol. i. , p. 17, of
another feminine feat almost equally wonderful : — " They
showed us a cottage," (near the Hague) says he, " where
dwelt a woman who had been married to her twenty-fifth
husband, and, being now a widow, was prohibited to
marry in future, yet it could not be proved that she had
ever made any of her husbands away, though the sus-
picion had brought her divers times into trouble."
10 JVorcester fight. — In this battle Cromwell utterly
routed the English and Scottish forces, killing 3,550, and
taking 5,000 prisoners. This crowning victory for the
commonwealth was won on Sunday, the 3rd of Sep-
tember, 1651 — just twelve months after the great defeat of
the Scots at Dunbar.
" Hunsterdyke. — See p. 196, supra.
12 In this dorp. — This word is now generally written
dorl, a well-known Scottish term signifying a fit of sullen
melancholy. Sibbald, in his glossary to the Chronicle of
Scottish Poetry, derives it from trotsigh, tortigh, ' arrogant
or supercilious.' It is now generally used in the plural
number, in the dorts being a common and not enviable
condition.
"3 Simeon Erskin. — This person was probably related
to viscount Montgomery, through his grandmother, who
was a daughter of sir William Erskine. See pp. 92, 141,
supra.
'■> Geo. Stewart. — Son of sir Robert Stewart. Thisgentle-
man resided afterwards at Culmore, near Derry, and is sup-
posed to have been the founder of the family of Stewart