Selected quad for the lemma: lord_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
lord_n	baron_n	earl_n	viscount_n	17,931	5	11.9058	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A55345	The life of the right honourable and religious Lady Christian[a], late Countess Dowager of Devonshire	Pomfret, Thomas, d. 1705.	1685 (1685)	Wing P2799; ESTC R3342	19,382	111

THE LIFE OF THE Right Honourable AND Religious Lady CHRISTIAN Late Countess Dowager OF DEVONSHIRE LONDON Printed by William Rawlins for the Author 1685. SIC DONEC The Right honble Scroop Egerton Earl of Bridgwater Viscount Brackley Baron of Elsmere 1703 TO THE Right Honourable AND Truly NOBLE WILLIAM Earl of Devonshire c. MY LORD SINCE I must acknowledg that of all men in the World I am the most unfit to speak such great Things as the following Relation doth justly challenge I was in some suspence whether I should lay it at your Feet for Patronage or Pardon But being Conscious that I have performed it very ill and that it may fall into some other hands that may think so too I must humbly beg them both I shall most willingly confess that for the same Reasons I blame the writing I ought to have foreborn the Impression because Folly is the more excusable when it dwells within its own Retirements and goes not abroad to give others the Trouble or Occasion of a freer and more publick Censure But I have sent it forth with my own Condemnation and shall only Beseech Your Lordship to expound the Mistake as a Testimony of that value I had for the Countess of Devonshires Memory and Vertues And having named to Your Lordship that Dear and Honourable Lady I may rest assured that for the sake of that Relation the following Account hath to Her it must have also a kind Reception from You if it be but for those Regards the thing it self hath to Your Mother And then I am the less concerned what Fortune I meet withall from others since I did not intend it as a Stratagem for Applause but as plain Relation of the great Merits of a Personage that ought to be Dear to Your Lordship and of such Worthiness that Renders her mighty valuable to all others And though I have failed in giving just Accounts of her Vertues which were in themselves the greatest yet I have at least signified what should have been said by My Lord Your Honours Most humble Servant Tho. Pomfret THE LIFE OF Christian LATE Countess of Devonshire THOUGH the Number of Ladies eminent in Goodness is very great and we may raise Ideas of the most resplendent Vertues from those that are the living Ornaments and might also be the noblest Patterns to the present Age yet considering that no one of These though the most Accomplished can be brought forth as a President to others without the suspicion of Flattery on the one side or raising Envy and Indignation on the other I have chosen a Noble Personage out of the number of the Dead of incomparable Piety and Prudence intended by Providence to make Vertue lovely and imitable to speak truth of whom can Regret none and whom too as her Merits were above so it hath pleased God to remove from the Opportunities of being flatterd A Vice to which if I could be tempted it would here be the most useless her Native Genuine and Real Beauties being so many and so illustrious It is Christian late Countess of Devonshire who in all her Actions did so excel and in some of them was so extraordinary that not to commemorate them would be a great injustice to her self but a greater to the World Not that I think so many Great things done before the eyes of so many yet alive can easily pass into Forgetfulness in the present or for their Rarity will not be transmitted to future times but rather because some and perhaps those of the greatest Lustre may be incompleatly Related if they be not faithfully collected into one bundle for the Admiration of this and the Imitation of Posterity I foresee and shall now therefore confess that I am no ways competent well to Acquit my self in so great an Undertaking and should indeavour to captivate the Reader by telling him the Reasons inducing me to this Publication and bring them in to bear the blame of the whole miscarriage but I shall only say that the Fame of her Vertues which had spread through this Kingdom and gone into others many years since did so delight me and that having the Honour of knowing much more of the great Passages of her Life from a Noble Person nearly related to her I could not forbear declaring what I have heard but whither the thus publickly telling them will not bring upon me some Censures I am not at all concerned nor at leisure to account for I will not be so Confident of my own opinion of things to Impose upon any and to conclude that what to me was so pleasurable to Hear must also be an equal entertainment to all that Read yet I humbly conceive that the following Narrative may yield some Profit and Delight to all but such as come to it with Prejudice and Humor because it is a Ladies Life For some there are and those too many that love to express their own great Accomplishments by making Invectives against the whole Sex and so far Indulge themselves in Satyr and Licence that God Almighty himself cannot escape their Railery but his Wisdom must be called in question for making so useless and mischievous a Part of the Creation as they would have Woman And in this Opinion they think themselves mightily defended because Solomon once asked the Question who can find a good one To which Inquiry though all Nations and Ages have given sufficient satisfaction yet I beg leave to put it beyond all dispute to represent to the World the Perfections of a Lady that was an Ornament to her Sex and may be allowed to be a just Model of all Vertues Only I would take leave to remarque before I come to her particular Qualities that the World was ever enlightned with the Charms and Excellencies of this Sex Solomon himself found an Egyptian Pharaohs Daughter that was all glorious within nothing but Raies and Glories the Court of Heaven it self in his own opinion dwelling in her Bosom Of his own Nation it was a Woman that more than once delivered Israel when the Men and Baruch himself too were turned Cowards Deborah Judeth and Hester are high in the same Records of Fame and it was a Woman that fed Elisha when the whole Nation had forsaken him Wicked Herod found a Mariamne a sweet sober constant Patience Theodosius a brave pious heroic Eudoxia One disfigures her Face to quench the sparks a Tyrants love had kindled another of Alexandria lives amongst the Dead to defend her Chastity A third Leucy by name plucked out her eyes that she might extinguish the inraged flames of unlawful Love inkindled at them For Conjugal Fidelity Clara a young Virgin sixteen years old obliges her self to a strict Attendance on her Husband infected with a Disease incurable noisom and insupportable to all the World besides Cabadis a Persian Queen disguises her self and changes garments with her imprisoned Husband and dies for him Eponina lives nine years in a Sepulcher with hers and after