The great siege lasted for nearly a year, and although his garrison was
small, and there was practically no hope of relief, Sir Hugh Cholmley
seems to have kept a stout heart up to the end. With him throughout
this long period of privation and suffering was his beautiful and
courageous wife, whose comparatively early death, at the age of
fifty-four, must to some extent be attributed to the strain and fatigue
borne during these months of warfare. Sir Hugh seems to have almost
worshipped his wife, for in his memoirs he is never weary of describing
her perfections.
'She was of the middle stature of women,' he writes, 'and well shaped,
yet in that not so singular as in the beauty of her face, which was but
of a little model, and yet proportionable to her body; her eyes black
and full of loveliness and sweetness, her eyebrows small and even, as
if drawn with a pencil, a very little, pretty, well-shaped mouth, which
sometimes (especially when in a muse or study) she would draw up into
an incredible little compass; her hair a sad chestnut; her complexion
brown, but clear, with a fresh colour in her cheeks, a loveliness in
her looks inexpressible; and by her whole composure was so beautiful a
sweet creature at her marriage as not many did parallel, few exceed
her, in the nation; yet the inward endowments and perfections of her
mind did exceed those outward of her body, being a most pious virtuous
person, of great integrity and discerning judgment in most things.
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