Letter XV

Summary

My good Lady,

I now come to your Ladyship's Remarks on my Conduct to Mrs. Jewkes; which you are pleased to think too kind and forgiving, considering the poor Woman's Baseness.

Your Ladyship says, “That I ought not to have borne her in my Sight, after the impudent Assistance she gave to his lewd Attempts; much less to have left her in her Place, and rewarded her for her Vileness.” Alas! my dear Lady, what could I do; a poor Prisoner, as I was made, for Weeks together, in Breach of all the Laws of Civil Society; not a Soul who durst be my Friend; and every Day expecting to be ruin’d and undone, by one of the haughtiest and most determin’d Spirits in England?—And when it pleased God to turn his Heart, and incline him to abandon his wicked Attempts, and to profess honourable Love to me, his poor Servant, can it be thought I was to insist upon Conditions with such a Gentleman, who had me in his Power; and who, if I had provoked him, might have resumed all his wicked Purposes against me?

Indeed, I was too much overjoy’d, after all my Dangers past, (which were so great, that I could not go to Rest, nor rise, but with such Apprehensions, that I wish’d for Death rather than Life) to think of refusing any Terms that I could yield to, and keep my Honour.

And tho’ such noble Ladies, as your Ladyship and Lady Betty, who are born to Independency, and are hereditarily, as I may say, on a Foot with the highest-descended Gentleman in the Land, might have exerted Spirit, and would have had a Right to pick and chuse your own Servants, and distribute Rewards and Punishments to the Deserving and Undeserving, at your own good Pleasure; yet what had I, a poor Girl, who ow’d my Title even to common Notice, to the Bounty of my late good Lady, and a kind of imputed Sightliness of Person, which had made me only the Subject of vile Attempts; who from a Situation of Terror and Apprehension was lifted up to a Hope, beyond my highest Ambition, and was bid to pardon the bad Woman, as an Instance, that I could forgive his own hard Usage of me;