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It is not to be suggested for a moment that she had no suitors and that she was not the subject of all kinds of matrimonial gossip. One Fowler (subsequently committed to the Tower in connection with the discovery of suspicious papers) opines in his “notes” that “either Lord Darcy or Sir John Thynne are to marry my Lady St. Loe, and not Harry Cobham.” Doubtless the Cobham match would have pleased her well, and she would have been quite in her element in the place which afforded a seat and a surname to that noble and splendid family upon whom the evil days of Jacobean confiscation and the betrayal of Sir Walter Raleigh had not yet fallen. A sister of Lord Cobham was married to Mr. Secretary Cecil, “and the match would have been advantageous, but possibly my Lady, with her deep insight into character, divined that the gentleman was not of the steady stuff which makes for worldly security.” Moreover the best matches are by no means to be found near the Court, and close at hand, in the same county, lived one greater than the Cobhams, a man whom many a maid and every widow would be proud to espouse. He was a widower, an earl, the owner of seven seats, bearer of a high government post, and he came of a long line of distinguished soldiers. Lady St. Loe went to work wisely. She had the assistance of her dear gossip and contemporary, Lady Cobham. No one could have acted the go-between more discreetly. Before long the fashionable world had something to talk about in the announcement of the fourth marriage of Bess Hardwick.