This was done by giving notice to his people at Nimeguen, where his children (which were two sons and a daughter) were brought up, that he was come over from England, and that he was arrived at the Hague with his wife, and should reside there some time, and that he would have his two sons brought down to see him; which accordingly was done, and where I entertained them with all the kindness and tenderness that they could expect from their mother-in-law; and who pretended to be so ever since they were two or three years old.
This supposing us to have been so long married was not difficult at all, in a country where we had been seen together about that time, viz. eleven years and a half before, and where we had never been seen afterwards till we now returned together: this being seen together was also openly owned and acknowledged, of course, by our friend the merchant at Rotterdam, and also by the people in the house where we both lodged in the same city, and where our first intimacies began, and who, as it happened, were all alive; and therefore, to make it the more public, we made a tour to Rotterdam again, lodged in the same house, and was visited there by our friend the merchant, and afterwards invited frequently to his house, where he treated us very handsomely.
This conduct of my spouse, and which he managed very cleverly, was indeed a testimony of a wonderful degree of honesty and affection to our little son; for it was done purely for the sake of the child.
I call it an honest affection, because it was from a principle of honesty that he so earnestly concerned himself to prevent the scandal which would otherwise have fallen upon the child, who was itself innocent; and as it was from this principle of justice that he so earnestly solicited me, and conjured me by the natural affections of a mother, to marry him when it was yet young within me and unborn, that the child might not suffer for the sin of its father and mother; so, though at the same time he really loved me very well, yet I had reason to believe that it was from this principle of justice to the child that he came to England again to seek me with design to marry me, and, as he called it, save the innocent lamb from infamy worse than death.
It was with a just reproach to myself that I must repeat it again, that I had not the same concern for it, though it was the child of my own body; nor had I ever the hearty, affectionate love to the child that he had. What the reason of it was I cannot tell; and, indeed, I had shown a general neglect of the child through all the gay years of my London revels, except that I sent Amy to look upon it now then, and to pay for its nursing; as for me, I scarce saw it four times in the first four years of its life, and often wished it would go quietly out of the world; whereas a son which I had by the jeweller, I took a different care of, and showed a different concern for, though I did not let him know me; for I provided very well for him, had him put out very well to school, and, when he came to years fit for it, let him go over with a person of honesty and good business to the Indies; and after he had lived there some time, and began to act for himself, sent him over the value of £2000, at several times, with which he traded and grew rich; and, as 'tis to be hoped, may at last come over again with forty of fifty thousand pounds in his pocket, as many do who have not such encouragement at their beginning.
I also sent him over a wife, a beautiful young lady, well-bred, an exceeding good-natured, pleasant creature; but the nice young fellow did not
