| Chapter 1: | ‘The Fulsom Gingle of the Times’ |
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The public records of the time and the letters she sent from Antwerp in 1666 to people at court (including Thomas Killigrew) make this quite clear.4 There are seventeen letters from her and from William Scott. These are fascinating letters, written as one might imagine her speaking—not self-conscious, although meant to be reports on her activities for high officers of state, darting from one thought to another, displaying, as time went on, her growing disillusion with the fair-weather promises that had been made to her, but showing throughout her determination to do her duty as she saw it by and for the king. They show us an impetuous, courageous, honest woman, perhaps not very prudent, but certainly not inclined to consider her own safety or her own comfort. Here she describes to Lord Arlington’s man Halsall—in her own idiosyncratic spelling and grammar—the boastful Thomas Corney, employed by, amongst others, Sir William Temple as an agent and informer on behalf of Charles II.