He was practicing law in London still, but he had had time to repent of having been on the wrong side when he saw what it had come to, and had the Protector at the head of affairs.  He said, however, that negotiations for peace with France were like to begin, and that Mr. Secretary Milton was casting about for one learned in French law to assist in drawing the papers, so that he had little doubt that Mr. Darpent would be readily taken into one of the public officers in London.

Moreover, he said that the Walwyn property had been sequestered, but no one had yet purchased it, and he thought that for a fair sum, it might be redeemed for the family.

When Eustace and Millicent found that I would not hear of keeping the pearls, declaring that such things were not fit for a poor exiled lawyer’s wife, Millicent said they had always felt like hot lead on her neck.  To compound the matter, Eustace persuaded her to have the chaplet valued by a Dutch jeweller, and to ask Margaret and Solivet, the guardians of the young Marquis de Nidemerle, to purchase them for him.

To Margaret was left whatever of the property M. Poligny would spare, and if Gaspard should have sons, one would bear the title of Ribaumont, though the name would be extinct.  So it was fitting that the pearls should return to that family, and the fair value, as we hoped, sufficed, in Harry Merrycourt’s hands, to redeem, in my husband’s name, the inheritance my brother had always destined for me.

This was the last worldly care that occupied our believed brother.  He said his work was done, and he was very peaceful and at rest.  His strength failed very fast after Harry Merrycourt came.  Indeed, I think he had for months lived almost more by force of strong will than anything else, and now he said he had come to his rest.  He passed away one month after my wedding, on the 16th of October 1652, very peacefully, and the last look he gave any one here was for Millicent.  There was a last eager, brighter look, but that was for nothing here.

The physicians said he died of the old wound in the lungs received at Naseby, so that he gave his life as much for the cause as my father and Berenger had done, though he had had far, far more to suffer in his nine years of banishment.

We left him in a green churchyard by the waterside, and Millicent saying through her tears that he had taught her to find comfort in her married life, and that he had calmed her and left her peace and blessing now in the work before her.  And then we sailed with sore hearts for England, which was England still to me, though sadly changed from what I had once known it.  We had come to think that there was no hope of the right cause ever prevailing, and that all that could be done was to save our own conscience, and do our best to serve God and man.  ’The foundations are cast down, and what hath the righteous done?’