I came away for England in the month of August, after I had been eight
years in that country; and now a new scene of misfortunes attended me,
which perhaps few women have gone through the life of.
We had an indifferent good voyage till we came just upon the coast of
England, and where we arrived in two-and-thirty days, but were then
ruffled with two or three storms, one of which drove us away to the
coast of Ireland, and we put in at Kinsdale. We remained there about
thirteen days, got some refreshment on shore, and put to sea again,
though we met with very bad weather again, in which the ship sprung her
mainmast, as they called it, for I knew not what they meant. But we
got at last into Milford Haven, in Wales, where, though it was remote
from our port, yet having my foot safe upon the firm ground of my
native country, the isle of Britain, I resolved to venture it no more
upon the waters, which had been so terrible to me; so getting my
clothes and money on shore, with my bills of loading and other papers,
I resolved to come for London, and leave the ship to get to her port as
she could; the port whither she was bound was to Bristol, where my
brother's chief correspondent lived.
I got to London in about three weeks, where I heard a little while
after that the ship was arrived in Bristol, but at the same time had
the misfortune to know that by the violent weather she had been in, and
the breaking of her mainmast, she had great damage on board, and that a
great part of her cargo was spoiled.
I had now a new scene of life upon my hands, and a dreadful appearance
it had. I was come away with a kind of final farewell. What I brought
with me was indeed considerable, had it come safe, and by the help of
it, I might have married again tolerably well; but as it was, I was
reduced to between two or three hundred pounds in the whole, and this
without any hope of recruit. I was entirely without friends, nay, even
so much as without acquaintance, for I found it was absolutely
necessary not to revive former acquaintances; and as for my subtle
friend that set me up formerly for a fortune, she was dead, and her
husband also; as I was informed, upon sending a person unknown to
inquire.
The looking after my cargo of goods soon after obliged me to take a
journey to Bristol, and during my attendance upon that affair I took
the diversion of going to the Bath, for as I was still far from being
old, so my humour, which was always gay, continued so to an extreme;
and being now, as it were, a woman of fortune though I was a woman
without a fortune, I expected something or other might happen in my way
that might mend my circumstances, as had been my case before.