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 <^
 
 OUR OLD NOBILITY. 
 
 BY 
 
 NOBLESSE OBLIGE 
 
 (HOWARD EVANS). 
 
 (Secontr Series,) 
 
 PUBLISHED FOR THE POLITICAL TRACT SOCIETY, 
 
 By E. J. KIBBLEWHITE, 
 
 31, TAVISTOCK STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C. 
 
 1879.
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UMVERSi'i \ OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 SAMA BARBARA 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 LIII. 
 
 THE 
 
 ASHLEY-COOPERS . 
 
 I 
 
 LIV. 
 
 )> 
 
 rOWLETTS .... 
 
 6 
 
 LV. 
 
 >> 
 
 Y'ORKES . . . . . 
 
 II 
 
 LYI. 
 
 )) 
 
 BRIDGEMANS ... 
 
 15 
 
 LVII, 
 
 )) 
 
 GREYS OF HO\YICK . 
 
 20 
 
 LVIII. 
 
 j> 
 
 LOFTUSES . ... 
 
 24 
 
 LIX. 
 
 )) 
 
 AVARDS .... 
 
 28 
 
 LX. 
 
 )) 
 
 VILLIERS .... 
 
 32 
 
 LXI. 
 
 )> 
 
 GREVILLES .... 
 
 • 37 
 
 LXII. 
 
 )) 
 
 STUARTS OF BLAXTYRE AXD GALLOWAY 
 
 ■ 42 
 
 LXIII. 
 
 )> 
 
 PERCEVALS .... 
 
 • 47 
 
 LXIV. 
 
 )> 
 
 GORES .... 
 
 51 
 
 LXV. 
 
 >> 
 
 NELSONS 
 
 55 
 
 LXVI. 
 
 >> 
 
 BUNCOMBES 
 
 • 59 
 
 LXVII. 
 
 )> 
 
 HEATHCOTES 
 
 . 63 
 
 LXVIII. 
 
 )> 
 
 STANLEYS OF KNOAVSLEY . 
 
 • 67 
 
 LXIX. 
 
 >> 
 
 TALBOTS .... 
 
 ■ 76 
 
 LXX. 
 
 )) 
 
 FITZMAURICES 
 
 . 8- 
 
 LXXI. 
 
 >> 
 
 DALRYMPLES . . 
 
 ?5
 
 VI 
 
 Co7itents. 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 LXXII. THE 
 
 LXXIII. ,, 
 
 LXXIV. ,, 
 
 LXXV. ,, 
 
 LXXVI. ,, 
 
 LXXVII. ,, 
 
 LXXVIII. „ 
 
 LXXIX. ,, 
 
 LXXS. ,, 
 
 LXXXI. ,, 
 
 LXXXII. ,, 
 
 LXXXIII. ,, 
 
 LXXXI V. ,, 
 
 LXXXV. „ 
 
 LXXXVI. ,, 
 
 LXXXVII. ,, 
 
 LXXXVIII. ,, 
 
 LXXXIX. „ 
 
 XC. „ 
 
 XCI. „ 
 
 XCII. ,, 
 
 XCIII. ,, 
 
 XCIV. „ 
 
 xcv. ., 
 
 XCVI. „ 
 
 SOMERSETS 
 
 "\^TrNDHAMS 
 
 DUNDASES 
 
 BOYLES . 
 
 HERBERTS 
 
 TRENCHES 
 
 HOWARDS 
 
 PRATTS 
 
 RYDERS 
 
 EDENS 
 
 THYNNES 
 
 VANES 
 
 WEMYSS-CHARTERIS-DOUGLASES 
 
 WALPOLES 
 
 ERSKINES 
 
 VERNONS . 
 
 GREYS 
 
 BRUGES . 
 
 AGAR-ELLISES 
 
 HAMILTONS 
 
 NEVILLES 
 
 BUTLERS . 
 
 CAMPBELLS 
 
 ST. MAURS 
 
 SIDNEYS . 
 
 PAGE 
 
 . 90 
 
 • 95 
 
 99 
 
 . 105 
 
 1 10 
 
 • 115 
 
 120 
 
 • 125 
 
 . 130 
 
 • 135 
 
 . 140 
 
 • H5 
 
 • ISO 
 
 • 154 
 
 . 158 
 
 . 163 
 
 . 168 
 
 • 173 
 
 • 177 
 
 . 181 
 
 . 186 
 
 . 190 
 
 • 194 
 
 . 198 
 
 . 202
 
 Contents. 
 
 „ FITZGERALDS 
 „ MOLYNEUX 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 XCVII. 
 
 xcviir. 
 
 XCIX. „ WELLESLEYS 
 
 C. „ POWER OF THE LANDED 
 CI. MODERN PEERAGES . 
 CII. THE GROWTH OF THE LANDED INTEREST 
 cm. CONCLUSION . 
 
 Vll 
 
 PAGE 
 
 211 
 216 
 221 
 225 
 230 
 
 235
 
 OUR OLD NOBILITY, 
 
 LIII. 
 
 HE Earl of Shaftesbury, whose seat is at St. Giles's 
 House, near Wimborne, Dorset, owns in 
 
 Dorset . . . I5i579 acres. 
 
 Hants . . . 3,057 ,, 
 
 Total 18,636 ,, 
 With a rentroU of;!^i4,6i7. 
 
 The Peerage dates from the Restoration, and, though the 
 Ashleys were persons of considerable estate long ere that 
 time, Anthony Ashley-Cooper, first Earl of Shaftesbury, was 
 the real founder of the greatness of the house. The estates 
 seem to have been acquired, for the most part, by purchase 
 or marriage. 
 
 In the time of the Plantagenets, Wimborne St. Giles 
 belonged to the Plessy family. It was brought by a Plessy 
 heiress to the Hamelyns, and by a Hamelyn heiress to the 
 Ashleys. Sir Anthony Ashley, who was knighted in the 
 taking of Cadiz, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, rendered a 
 useful service to his country by introducing cabbages from 
 Holland. He appears to have purchased Hinton Martel, in 
 Dorset, in the reign of James I. It was the heiress of Sir 
 Anthony who brought the Ashley estates into the Cooper 
 family. The Coopers appear to have for a long time settled 
 at Paulet, in the county of Somerset, and Richard Cooper, of 
 Paulet, married Sir Anthony Ashley's heiress, and their son. 
 Sir Anthony Ashley-Cooper, succeeded in 1631 to an ample
 
 2 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 estate, which has been considerably enlarged at different 
 times. For instance, in 1671 the Earl of Shaftesbury pur- 
 chased Crichel of Lord Arundel of Wardour, and about the 
 same time he purchased the manor of Berwick and six farms 
 on Cranbourne Chase of the Earl of Salisbury ; the latter, 
 however, were afterwards resold. At other times lands at 
 Edmundsham, Fordington, Horton, and other places have 
 also come into the family by purchase. 
 
 The character of Anthony Ashley-Cooper, first Earl of 
 Shaftesbury, has been described in two of Dryden's masterly 
 poems, " Absalom and Achitophel," and " The Medal.'' In 
 the former, describing Shaftesbur}' under the character of 
 Achitophel, he thus depicts him : — 
 
 " For close designs and crooked counsels fit ; 
 Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit ; 
 Restless, unfixed in principles and place ; 
 In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace ; 
 A fiery soul, which, working out its way, 
 Fretted the pigmy body to decay, 
 And o'er informed the tenement of clay. 
 A daring pilot in extremity ; 
 
 Pleased with the danger when the waves went liigh, 
 He sought the storms ; but, for a calm unfit. 
 Would steer too nigh the sands, to boast his wit." 
 
 The censure is qualified by a few lines of praise, eulogising 
 Shaftesbury as an incorruptible Judge in an age when 
 Judges were notoriously venal. But these lines were only 
 inserted in the second edition, and there is too much reason 
 to believe that they were inserted for a handsome considera- 
 tion at the instance of Shaftesbury himself. Though Dryden 
 was a Court poet, and Shaftesbury Leader of the Opposition, 
 the former was not far wrong in his estimate of the Achito- 
 phel of the Restoration, according to Lord Campbell. 
 Macaulay says that he was one of the " men in whom the 
 immorality which was epidemic among the politicians of that 
 age appeared in its most malignant type," and that " he had 
 served and betrayed a succession of Governments, but he had 
 timed all his treacheries so Avell that through all revolutions 
 his fortunes had been constantly rising." He has the dubious 
 honour of having been a Lord Chancellor with scarcely any 
 knowledge of law. 
 
 Royalist, Roundhead, and then Royalist again ; Puritan in 
 pretence, Freethinker in reality ; one of the notorious Cabal
 
 The Ashley- Coopa's. 3 
 
 Ministry, and yet the supporter of most of the good measured 
 passed in the reign of Charles II. ; a party to the mercenary 
 alliance of England to France, and yet apparently himself 
 unbribed ; at one time a favourite at Court, at another the 
 idol of the City; one whom even Charles II. spoke of as the 
 most wicked of men, and yet who enjoyed the friendship of 
 John Locke ; a statesman who fought on the popular side at 
 home, and yet endeavoured to create by legislation an aristo- 
 cratic republic in Carolina — such was the first Earl of 
 Shaftesbury. It would be fortunate for his memory if every- 
 thing could be forgotten save the good measures he supported 
 and the bad measures he opposed. He successfully supported 
 the Habeas Corpus Act, by which the power of arbitrary 
 imprisonment without trial was abolished, and he as success- 
 fully opposed the abominable Test, as an oath of passive 
 obedience to tyranny, which the Tories of that day would 
 have imposed upon ever}- person holding office in the King- 
 dom. Unsuccessfully he resisted the oppressive legislation 
 by which the Tories sought to destroy Nonconformity, and 
 supported the Exclusion Bill, by which the calamity of the 
 succession of James II. could have been avoided. Twice he 
 was imprisoned in the Tower, and he died in effect an exile 
 in his old age. On the whole he was a bold, bad man, whom 
 accident and ambition led to render splendid services to the 
 cause of freedom. 
 
 Of the son of the first lord there is nothing remarkable to^ 
 be noticed ; the grandson, who was partly educated by the 
 grandfather and partly by Locke, became famous as an author 
 and was spoken of by Voltaire as the boldest of English 
 philosophers. His "Characteristics," in which he deals with 
 ridicule as a test of truth, are little read now, but John 
 Newton tells us that the perusal of that work led him to adopt 
 Deistical opinions in early life. He appears to have looked 
 at everything — even love matters — from a philosophical 
 standpoint, for having been recommended by his friends to 
 take a wife in order to perpetuate the line, he proposed to a 
 young lady, and then wrote to an acquaintance: — "Will it 
 be enough that I take a breeder out of a good family, with 
 little or no fortune, and not in the highest degree of quality 
 neither.?" 
 
 The fifth Earl married a Wiltshire heiress, and left an only 
 daughter, from whom is descended Lord de Mauley. The
 
 4 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 sixth Earl, brother of the fifth, for many years held the lucra- 
 tive position of Chairman of Committees in the House of 
 Lords. His second son, the Honourable William Ashley, 
 was appointed to a rich sinecure as Master of St. Catharine's 
 Hospital, the value of which amounted to several thousands a 
 year, one of those scandalous arrangements by which the rich 
 have been enabled to appropriate the property of the poor. 
 He died only a few months ago. The present Earl married 
 a daughter of the fifth Earl Cowper, This lady's mother 
 afterwards married Lord Palmerston ; and thus, by what the 
 Evangelicals doubtless regarded as a special dispensation of 
 Providence, Lord Shaftesbury became son-in-law to a Prime 
 Minister, and for a time Bishop-maker in general. 
 
 Probably there is no Peer, who is not a Minister of the 
 Crown, so well known to the mass of the people and so 
 widely respected as the present Earl of Shaftesbury. " One 
 man in his time plays many parts," but few public men have 
 played so many parts as he. Every man with strong convic- 
 tions who has passed the meridian of life must have found 
 Lord Shaftesbury, at some time or other, on the same plat- 
 form with himself. Be he Protestant or Catholic, Orthodox 
 or Freethinker, Conservative or Liberal, Aristocrat or Demo- 
 crat, country gentleman or working-class agitator — he is 
 almost sure to have met Lord Shaftesbury at some time, both 
 as friend and foe. It is not because Lord Shaftesbury is a 
 man of shining abilities — in this country a peer who chooses 
 to take part in any public matter is sure to be placed in the 
 forefront — but he has been a man of immense activity, and 
 his conservative and orthodox convictions have been tem- 
 pered with such strong humanitarian sympathies that he has 
 often found himself associated with men whose religious 
 and political convictions diff"ered most widely from his own. 
 His family motto is "Love ! Serve! " and certainly there is 
 not a peer who has striven so hard to serv^e the friendless and 
 helpless. The factory child, the Negro slave, the chimney- 
 sweep, the city Arab, have all been the objects of his 
 sympathy. Most provoking, yet most loveable of men! 
 Have we not all seen him shortening the hours of labour, 
 befriending the Negro, patronizing the teetotallers, creating 
 Low Church Bishops, enrolling himself among the noble 
 army of costermongers, savagely denouncing " Ecce Homo," 
 pouring out doleful Jeremiads at religious meetings ; con-
 
 The Ashley- Coopers. 5 
 
 verting gutter-children into shoeblacks and sailors; renouncing 
 the S.P.C.K., because IMr. Brownlow jMaitland, in defending 
 Christianity, has conceded too much ; inveighing in turn 
 against Turkish and Russian atrocities ; presenting a Bible to 
 a labourers' agitator, and uttering unproved calumnies against 
 the miners ; standing on the same platform with High 
 Churchmen against political dissenters, and again on the 
 same platform with those wicked dissenters against High 
 Churchmen — but everywhere the same warm-hearted, opinia- 
 tive, impulsive, narrow, provoking, loveable spirit. I suppose 
 if I came in his way he would denounce me with the same 
 reckless extravagance of language with which I have heard 
 him denounce Ritualists, Rationalists, and Radicals ; but 
 none the less should I regard with respect, and almost with 
 affection, a man Avho, throughout a long life, has striven, 
 according to his light, to serve, not so much his ov/n order, as 
 the outcast and the wretched. 
 
 Lord Shaftesbury's second surviving son, the ^Member for 
 Poole, has already done good service as a Liberal in the House 
 of Comm.ons, and given fair promise of yet better things. 
 His fourth son — who has yet his spurs to win — is spoken of 
 as a Liberal candidate for a Northern borough. The heir to 
 the peerage is never likely to be anything else but a lord ; 
 and, judging by a speech which not long ago he attempted 
 to make in the City, I should think he is hardly likely to add 
 much lustre to the house of Shaftesbury.
 
 LI\'. 
 
 ^t f otolfttcs. 
 
 I HEN I was a lad, at the time I first became 
 interested in the history of my own countr)-, 
 especially of the period prior to the Reformation, 
 , I used to A\onder what had become of many of 
 those old families whose names are never heard now, but 
 which used to be always prominent in the days of the Plan- 
 tagenets, the Yorkists, and the Lancastrians. Their names 
 may have disappeared, like the African rivers that are said to 
 lose themselves in the sands, but their lands of course still 
 remain, and somebody must be in possession of them. Take 
 for instance the family of Scrope, one of the strongest houses 
 in the North, which was so prominent in the reigns of 
 Edward III. and Richard II. — what has become of it ? Well, 
 the greater part of its possessions are now in the hands of the 
 descendants of a placeman in the reign of George III., whose 
 patent of nobility dates no later back than 1797. 
 
 Paulet, INIarquis of Winchester; Powlett, Lord Bolton; 
 Powlett, Duke of Cleveland ; and Poulett, Earl Poulett, are 
 all different branches of the same common stock ; but Earl 
 Poulett's line has a lengthy history of its own, and the Duke 
 of Cleveland is only a Powlett through the marriage of one of 
 his ancestors with a Powlett heiress. Let us confine our- 
 selves, therefore, at present, to the Winchester line. The 
 Powletts are a family whose historv is interesting, for the 
 Marquis of Winchester is the premier Marquis in England, 
 and his ancestors once held the higher title of Duke of 
 Bolton. The first Powlett who was ennobled played no 
 inconsiderable part in four successive reigns, and the story of 
 the siege and sack of Basing House, one of the most widely- 
 known episodes of the Civil War, has become familiar to 
 Londoners from the fresco in the corridor of the House of 
 Lords. 
 
 The Paulets, were originally a Somersetshire family, who 
 were seated at a place of that name in the same county. Their
 
 The Poivlettcs. 7 
 
 early history I must leave till I come to Earl Poulott ; the 
 Winchester line was descended from a younger son, who was 
 the founder of his own fortunes. This younger son married 
 a sister of Lord St. John of Basing, who ultimately became 
 heiress of that nobleman, and brought Basing House into the 
 family. Their great-grandson was Sir William Paulet, a 
 favourite of Henry VHI. I don't often quote Cobbett, pre- 
 ferring more accurate authorities ; but in this case I am quite 
 safe in doing so, though, of course, I do not endorse any- 
 thing beyond that which refers to Paulet himself. 
 
 In his " Rural Rides," Cobbett says, speaking of Netley 
 Abbey, ''Its revenues when suppressed amounted to ^3,200 
 a year of our present money. The possessions of the monks 
 were, by the wife-killing founder of the Church of England, 
 given away (though they belonged to the public) to one of 
 his court sycophants, Sir William Powlett, a man the most 
 famous in the whole world for sycophancy, time-serving, and 
 all those qualities which usually distinguished the favourites 
 of such kings as the Wife-killer. This Powlett changed from 
 the Popish to Henry VIII. 's religion, and was a great actor 
 in finishing the Papists. When Edward VI. came to the 
 throne, this Powlett turned Protestant, and was a great actor 
 in punishing those who adhered to Henry the Eighth's 
 religion. When Queen j\Iary came to the throne, this 
 Powlett turned back to Papist, and was one of the great 
 actors in sending Protestants to be burnt at Smithfield. 
 When old Bess came to the throne this Powlett turned 
 Protestant again, and was, until the day of his death, one of 
 the great actors in persecuting, in fining, in mulcting, and in 
 putting to death those who still had the virtue and the 
 courage to adhere to the religion in which he and they had 
 been born and bred." Powlett was created Marquis of Win- 
 chester in the reign of Edward VI., and in that reign and in 
 those of Mary and Elizabeth, he held the office of Lord 
 Treasurer. On being asked how he could retain his office 
 during three such reigns, he made the ignoble reply, " By 
 being a willow, and not an oak." It is not to willows like 
 Powlett, but to oaks like Tyndale and Bradford, and Latimer 
 and Penry that England owes a debt of gratitude. To those 
 her monarchs gave the martyr's stake and faggots ; to these 
 they gave the broad acres they had confiscated. 
 
 The son, grandson, and great-grandson of the first Marquis
 
 8 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 successively inherited the title and estates. The fifth Marquis 
 had the mortification of seeing his house stormed and burnt 
 by the Roundheads at a loss of ^200,000 to himself. A great 
 deal of maudlin pity has been expended upon him, but for my 
 part I have none to give. The Cavalier soldiery, whom he 
 harboured, pitilessly robbed the traders of London, and he 
 only suffered a righteous retribution. Says Carlyle, " Basing 
 House had long infested the Parliament in those quarters ; 
 and been especially a great eyesorrow to the Trade of London 
 with the Western Parts. With Dennington Castle at Newbury 
 and this Basing House at Basingstoke, there was no travelling 
 the Western roads except with escort or on sufferance." It 
 had stood siege after siege for four years, and at last Cromwell 
 was sent to dispose of it, and dispose of it he did most eiTec- 
 tually. Let me quote Hugh Peters' account thereof : — 
 " Lieutenant-General Cromwell had spent much time with 
 God in prayer the night before the storm, and seldom fights 
 without some text of Scripture to support him. This time he 
 rested upon that blessed word of God written in the 1 1 5th 
 Psalm, 8th verse — ' They that make them are like unto them ; 
 so is every one that trusteth in them.' 'Which, with some 
 verses going before,' says the sturdy old Roundhead, ' was 
 now accomplished.' " A mile or two from Basing House the 
 Paulets had in the days of Queen Elizabeth a hunting-lodge 
 called Hackwood, and after the destruction of Basing House 
 the Marquis altered and enlarged it in order to make it 
 suitable for a residence. The first Duke of Bolton erected 
 the present mansion at Hackwood Park, now a seat of the 
 present Lord Bolton. 
 
 The next Marquis was created Duke of Bolton the year 
 after the Restoration — I presume rather on account of his 
 son's merits than of his own. His eccentricity almost reached 
 the point of derangement, and, according to Burnet, " he 
 was a man of most profuse expenditure, and of a most 
 ravenous appetite to support that." By his first wife he had 
 no issue, but by his second he had a large family. This lady 
 was an heiress who brought considerable property into the 
 family, at Bolton, in Wensleydale, and elsewhere. At Bolton, 
 in the North Riding of Yorkshire, stands an ancient castle, 
 formerly the seat of the Scropes, a family which for hundreds 
 of years held land here, in unbroken descent from the time of 
 the Conqueror. Sir Henry Le Scrope was in 13 17 Chief
 
 The Powlettcs. 9' 
 
 Justice of the King's Bench, and subsequently Chief Baron of 
 the Exchequer. Burke, in his " Visitation of Seats and 
 Arms," says that "the vast estates he died possessed of, 
 show how profitable a use he had made through a long life 
 of Court favour and professional emolument." His younger 
 son, who was subsequently his heir, was Lord High Treasurer 
 in the reign of Edward HI., and Chancellor of England in 
 that of Richard H. He it was who built Bolton Castle, where 
 the ninth Lord Scrope held captive Mary Queen of Scots for 
 a short time. The eleventh lord was created Earl of Sunder- 
 land by Charles I., but, dying without legitimate issue, his 
 estates were divided between illegitimate daughters, one of 
 whom married the Marquis of Winchester who became the 
 first Duke of Bolton. It was owing to his possession of 
 Bolton that he chose that place for his ducal title. The castle 
 still remains, but the Powletts have built a mansion, Bolton. 
 House, in a more favourable situation not far off. 
 
 The second Duke, when Earl of Wiltshire, took an active 
 part in the Revolution of 1688. He was one of those who 
 assembled at the Hague and came over with William, and 
 when James had fled he was the man who proposed a 
 Speaker of the House of Commons favourable to William's 
 assumption of royal power. He afterwards became Lord- 
 Lieutenant of Ireland. His youngest brother was appointed 
 to a lucrative sinecure as Teller of the Exchequer. He sat 
 for a family borough, and was Chairman of Committees in 
 the House of Commons. Walpole tells some comical 
 anecdotes of him, one of which will suffice to estimate his 
 abilities. A pamphlet called "The Snake in the Grass" 
 being reported, probably in joke, to have been written by his 
 Lordship, a gentleman abused in it sent him a challenge. 
 Lord William professed his innocence, but the gentleman 
 would not be satisfied without a denial under his own hand. 
 Lord William took up and began — "This is to seratify that 
 the buk called the Snak " — " Oh, my lord, said the person, 
 " I am satisfied ; your lordship has clearly convinced me that 
 you did not write the book." 
 
 The third Duke married an actress, by whom he had pre- 
 viously had three illegitimate sons, and, dying without any 
 legitimate issue, the title passed to his brother, who left two 
 sons, each of whom successively inherited the dukedom. The 
 fifth Duke had an illegitimate daughter, ofwhom more hereafter.
 
 lO Our Old Nobility. 
 
 and the sixth Duke had one legitimate daughter, who married 
 the Duke of Cleveland. At his death the dukedom ex- 
 pired, but the Marquisate of Winchester passed to a distant 
 relative descended from a younger brother of the Marquis 
 who defended Basing House against Cromwell. His son, the 
 thirteenth and late Marquis, being poor, provided for his sons 
 in the services ; the second became Prebend of Salisbur}- and 
 Rector of Wellesbourne, the third became an Admiral, and 
 the fourth and fifth Generals in the Army. 
 
 We pass now to the Bolton branch. Lord Bolton owns in 
 
 Hampshire .... 13,808 acres. 
 
 Yorkshire . . . . 15,418,, 
 
 Total 29,226 ,, 
 With a rentroll of ;/"27,553. 
 
 The fifth Duke of Bolton, as I have already stated, had an 
 illegitimate daughter, and upon her he entailed the greater 
 part of his estates, in default of his brother, the sixth Duke, 
 having any legitimate male issue. She married a Mr. Orde, 
 who was Secretary of the Treasury in 1782, and who, having 
 been useful to William Pitt, was by him rewarded with a 
 peerage, being created Baron Bolton in 1797. The late Peer 
 appointed his nephew to the family living of Wensley, in 
 Yorkshire, value /'i,337 and a house, another example of 
 that beautiful provision for younger sons which the Church of 
 England affords.
 
 LV. 
 
 HE Earl of Harchvicke has lately been making a 
 speech at a Conservative banquet in Cambridge- 
 shire. I don't suppose anyone cares what he says ; 
 
 ^ but the appearance of his name reminds me that 
 
 the Yorkes are another brilliant example of disinterested 
 Conser\-atism. The Earl himself was Controller of the 
 Household from 1866 to 1868 (salary /'904), and since 1874 
 he has drawn £i,']oo per annum as Master of the Buck- 
 hounds, the duties of which office, I believe, consist in now 
 and then hunting a poor tame stag with fierce dogs, who 
 sometimes worry it to death. When Bill Sykes sets his bull- 
 pup to worry a wretched cat he is called a brute and sent to 
 hard labour for a month or two ; but there is a great deal of 
 difference between a cat and a buck, at least I presume the 
 Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals think 
 so. But I am digressing. The Earl, as I said, receives a 
 modest /'i, 700 a year. The Hon. and Rev. Grantham Yorke 
 was for thirty years Prebendary of Lichfield and Rector of 
 St. Philip's, Birmingham, and is now Dean of Worcester 
 (/'i,2oo and a house). The Hon. Eliot C. Yorke, late M.P. 
 for Cambridgeshire, who married a daughter of Sir Anthony 
 Rothschild, was Equerry to the Duke of Edinburgh. The 
 Hon. J. M. Yorke is a Captain in the Navy. The Hon. A. G. 
 Yorke is Equerry to Prince Leopold. General Sir C. Yorke, 
 G.C.B., has filled a large number of military offices, and is 
 Lieutenant of the Tower of London. Major-General F. A. 
 Yorke has retired on full-pay as Colonel. Lieut. -General 
 John Yorke is Colonel of the 19th Hussars, and has filled a 
 number of military offices. Joseph A. Yorke filled an office 
 in the Bankrupcy Court, at a salary of /^ 1,000 per annum, 
 and when it was abolished eight years ago he received a 
 compensation allowance of /^666 13s. 4d. per annum. The 
 Yorkes, I am inclined to think, have good reason to be 
 satisfied with things as they are. They have always been a
 
 12 Oiir Old NobilityK 
 
 race of voracious tax-eaters from the first, as we shall 
 see. 
 
 Philip Yorke, first Earl of Hardwicke, was the son of a 
 Dissenting attorney at Dover, who sent him up to London, 
 where he became a lawyer's clerk, in Brooke-street, Holborn. 
 Philip seems to have studied hard, and having eaten his terms 
 and been called to the Bar, he was fortunate enough to be 
 appointed law tutor to the sons of Chief-Justice Parker, after- 
 wards Earl of Macclesfield. Parker became his patron, and 
 when he had only been in practice four years, and was but 
 twenty-nine years old, secured him the post of Solicitor- 
 General, much to the disgust of the Bar. Four years after, 
 Parker contrived to advance him to the Attorney-Generalship, 
 an office which he held for thirteen years. Although he owed 
 so much to Lord Macclesfield, when that nobleman was dis- 
 graced and condemned for malpractices in the Court of 
 Chancery, Yorke was not generous enough to say or do any- 
 thing in his defence. In 1733 he was made Lord Chief 
 Justice, at a salary of ^2,000 a year more than any of his 
 predecessors. In 1737 he was offered the post of Lord 
 Chancellor, and took care to bargain for a rich sinecure 
 Tellership in the Exchequer for his son beforehand. At his 
 elevation he was created Baron, and subsequently Earl of 
 Hardwicke. He held the Chancellorship for nearly twenty 
 years. As a man he was heartless, selfish, and avaricious • 
 but Lord Campbell says that he is universally considered the 
 most consummate judge who ever sat in the Court of Chancery. 
 His wife bears the reputation of having been more stingy and 
 rapacious than himself. 
 
 He began with nothing, he did not marry a great heiress, 
 he was only twenty years at the Bar, but he died worth a 
 million of money. Well might Dunning declare in the House 
 of Commons that he " uniformly throughout his life pur- 
 sued his own private interests, and raised the greatest fortune 
 and provided the most amply for his family of any lawyer that 
 ever lived." It is said that even George II. was somewhat 
 disgusted by his greediness. On one occasion, when Hard- 
 wicke was begging for a place for a distant relative, the King 
 said, " My Lord, you have been a frequent solicitor, but I 
 have observed that it has always been for some of your family 
 or within the circle of your relations." Lord Campbell, who 
 had a high regard for the Earl of Hardwicke, as a Chancellor,
 
 J lie Yorkcs. 13 
 
 is compelled to admit that " he had no retired allowance, but, 
 beside his own immense fortune, not only his sons, but all 
 his kith and kin and dependents were saturated with places, 
 pensions, and reversions." Lord Stanhope defends Hard- 
 wicke from the charge of personal avarice on the ground that 
 " the head of the Law must endeavour to found a family and 
 earn an estate, and not leave his son a poor peer, a burthen on 
 his country." The first Earl of Hardwicke certainly did 
 obtain an estate, and he did not leave his son a poor peer ; 
 but a considerable number of the Yorkes have been a burthen 
 upon the country notwithstanding, from the time of the first 
 Earl down to that of the present. As to the sons of the first 
 Earl, the eldest had, as I have said before, an Exchequer 
 Tellership ; the second, conjointly with one of his brothers, 
 the lucrative post of Clerk of the Crown ; a third was a 
 general in the Army, and, for more than a quarter of a cen- 
 tury. Ambassador to Holland ; a fourth " had several lucrative 
 sinecures conferred upon him by his father " ; and a fifth 
 became Bishop of Ely. 
 
 The Earl owns 19,049 acres, of which all but 71 are situated 
 in Cambridgeshire, rental ^26,417. Wimpole House, a 
 mansion which has a deer-park of 250 acres, was built in 1632 
 by the Chicheleys ; it subsequently passed by purchase to 
 Holies, Duke of Newcastle, and thence by marriage to the 
 Earl of Oxford, who added two wings to it. Wimpole and 
 other manors were purchased in 1739 by the first Earl of 
 Hardwicke. He and succeeding Earls have at various times 
 added to the estate by purchase of lands at Kingston, Guilden 
 Morden, Steeple Morden, Haddenham, Foulmire, West 
 Wickham, and other places. 
 
 Charles Yorke, the second son of the first Earl, was born 
 with a silver spoon in his mouth. He was called to the Bar 
 before he was twenty-one, and, practising in the Court of 
 Chancery where his father presided, he soon attracted a good 
 share of business from the solicitors. His cousin owned the 
 pocket borough of Reigate, and thus he was provided with a 
 cheap and safe seat in Parliament. He married a Hertford- 
 shire heiress, a IVIiss Freeman, of Aspeden. At twenty-five 
 he was appointed Solicitor-General to the Prince of Wales, 
 at twenty-six counsel to the East India Company, at thirty- 
 seven he was Solicitor-General, and on the accession of Lord 
 Bute to power he became Attorney-General. When Bute
 
 14 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 retired he resigned office, but resumed it on the accession 
 of the Rockingham Ministr}-. When Lord Camden broke 
 away from the Grafton ^Ministry he was much pressed to take 
 the Seals, but he had promised his friends, the Rockingham 
 Whigs, and his brother especially, that he would not do so. 
 At last he allowed himself to be over-persuaded by George 
 III., and was bitterly reproached by his former associates, 
 who upbraided him with a breach of honour. His patent of 
 nobility was made out, but before the Great Seal had been 
 affixed he was dead. According to popular report he died by 
 his own hand, but his relatives denied the statement. Lord 
 Campbell leaves the matter somewhat in doubt, but Lord 
 Stanhope considers the evidence too strong to be disputed, 
 and I cannot but think that the conclusion to which he comes 
 is correct. 
 
 Charles Yorke had three sons. The eldest, who for some 
 years was Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, succeeded his uncle 
 as third Earl. The second held various Government offices, 
 and a sinecure Tellership of the Exchequer, which alone was 
 worth £2,-100 a year. The third was an Admiral in the Navy. 
 The eldest son of this last, who was also an Admiral in the 
 Navy, ultimately succeeded to the Peerage, One of his 
 brothers held the family living of Wimpole (/"470 and a house), 
 the Rectory of Aspeden, also at that time a family living 
 {£zSl 3-nd a house), and a Canonry of Ely, worth now ^800, 
 but probably worth considerably more when he held it. 
 Another brother is the present Dean of Worcester before 
 mentioned, an appointment which he owes to the present 
 Tory Ministry. 
 
 I have now shown that the first Earl of Hardwicke not only 
 succeeded in amassing a million of money, and in obtaining 
 for his sons enormous sums in the way of out-door relief from 
 the tax-payers of the country, but that the descendants of the 
 first Earl have faithfully followed in their father's footsteps, 
 and have with uniform regularity lived to the utmost of their 
 power upon the national exchequer. Traly a magnificent 
 example of disinterested Conservatism ! The family motto is 
 '■'■ Nee cupias nee meirias" (Neither desire nor fear). By this 
 I suppose that the Yorkes mean that they have no desire to 
 live by their own exertions, and no fear of putting their hands 
 in the pocket of John Bull.
 
 LVI. 
 
 IJURNING over Horace Walpole's letters to verify 
 my recollection of a statement made by him con- 
 cerning the first Earl of Hardwicke, I came upon 
 
 the following passage : — " By the way, you know 
 
 the reverend head of the Law (Hardwicke) is frequently shut 
 up here [at Twickenham] with my Lady Mountrath, who is as 
 rich and tipsy as Cacafogo in the comedy. What a jumble of 
 avarice, lewdness, dignity — and claret ! " Lady ■Mountrath, 
 7iee Newport, reminds me of an extinct Peerage which has 
 been revived in the descendants of the female heir of the 
 estates, the Earldom of Bradford. The Earl of Bradford is 
 to me an object of some little interest. He is descended 
 from Sir Orlando Bridgeman, who, I have somewhere read, 
 had much to do with building up that elaborate s)stem of 
 legal chicanery by which landed estates are tied up so that 
 they never come into the market. Moreover, he is one of 
 those mighty ]\Iidland lords who, because they draw some 
 thousands annually from the industry of the jNIidland towns 
 and manufacturing villages, consider themselves under an 
 obligation to win the obstinate Midlanders back to Tor^-ism. 
 We have already seen what a noble and unselfish thing is the 
 Conservatism of the ^larquis of Hertford and the Earl of 
 Dartmouth ; the Earl of Bradford is an equally splendid 
 example of disinterested Conservatism. 
 
 I am unable to judge of his lordship's abilities, because I 
 do not recollect ever reading a single speech from him in the 
 House of Lords' debates ; but he has held office in different 
 Tory Administrations as Vice-Chamberlain of the Household 
 and Lord Chamberlain, and he now draws ^^2,500 annually 
 for doing nothing as Master of the Horse, a post which
 
 1 6 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 fortunately does not require much mental ability. The Earl, 
 however, is a man of large acres, for he owns in 
 
 Shropshire 
 
 Stafford 
 
 Warwick 
 
 Montgomery 
 Leicester 
 
 10,515 acres 
 6,689 .. 
 1,860 ,, 
 
 34 M 
 6 ,, 
 
 Total 19,104 
 With a rentroll of;^3i,934. 
 
 Although the Earldom of the present creation only dates from 
 1 81 5 — the Bradford in question is an obscure little place in 
 Shropshire — on the female side the Earl is descended from 
 several ancient noble houses. His eldest son. Viscount 
 Newport, sits for the 10,515 acres in Shropshire; a younger 
 son, a captain in the Guards, recently contested Tamworth 
 in the Conser\-ative interest, and was soundly beaten. 
 
 The founder of the house was Dr. Bridgeman, who was 
 Bishop of Chester and Rector of Wigan from 1615 to 1645, 
 when he was ejected by the Long Parliament. His long 
 occupation of bishopric and rectory enabled him to purchase 
 an estate at Great Lever, near Bolton ; and the rectory of 
 Wigan itself, by what means I cannot ascertain, ultimately 
 came into the possession of the Bridgemans. The living is 
 put down as worth ^1,600 a year and a residence, but it is no 
 doubt worth much more, and the connection of the Bridge- 
 mans therewith is noteworthy. Let us take the history of the 
 rectory for the last 140 years. During this period there have 
 been seven rectors, four of them Bridgemans, and a Bridge- 
 man is in possession of it now. Another Bridgeman is 
 rectory of Weston-under-Lizard, Shropshire (^^503 and a 
 house), of which living the Earl of Bradford is also patron. 
 These are the two richest livings out of the twelve in the 
 possession of the Bridgemans, and so they keep them as much 
 as possible to themselves. In the year 1823 I find that a 
 Bridgeman held both these livings, besides a third, which 
 was in the gift of another member of the family ; and at the 
 same period another Bridgeman held two other livings, pre- 
 sented to him by noble patrons who were connected with him 
 by marriage. There are not a few flunkey souls who would 
 prefer being preached to by the son of a Lord, but my 
 sympathies go with the hard-working servants of the Church 
 who have plenty of merit but no family influence, and whose
 
 The Bridgcmans. 17 
 
 only reward for their faithful labours is to see the prizes of 
 the Church snapped up by the younger sons of the aristocracy. 
 The son of the Bishop, Orlando Bridgeman, was a lawyer, 
 who in the reign of Charles I. was returned to Parliament for 
 Wigan, probably by his father's influence. His sympathies 
 Avere entirely with the Tyrant, but he had not courage enough 
 to meet such men as Pym in debate, and contented himself 
 with silently voting against the abolition of the Court of Star 
 Chamber and other useful reforms. He was one of the King's 
 Commissioners in the abortive negotiations at Uxbridge ; he 
 encouraged the citizens of Chester to fight against the Par- 
 liament, but he was too timorous to take up arms himself; 
 and when the Royalist cause collapsed he came back to 
 London and remained in sulky retirement till the Restoration. 
 Then he was appointed Lord Chief Baron, and presided at 
 the trial of Harrison and the other members of the High 
 Court of Justice who had sat in judgment on the King. He 
 had his reward, being created a baronet and Lord Chief 
 Justice, and at the fall of Clarendon he became Lord Keeper. 
 Roger North says " he was timorous to impotence, and 
 affixed the Great Seal to grants to Lady Castlemaine and 
 others, which Clarendon had stopped." Lord Campbell 
 pronounces him to be " a most execrably bad Equity judge." 
 Like many other Tories of that age, he lacked consistency, 
 for, after having strenuously maintained the dispensing power 
 of the King to over-ride the Law, he denied it when Charles 
 IL wished to use it to give religious freedom to Catholics and 
 Nonconformists. The difficulty was for the time arranged by 
 exempting Catholics from the advantages of the exercise of 
 the dispensing power. But soon after Bridgeman was dis- 
 missed. The King and his Ministers were bent on an 
 iniquitous war against Holland in the interests of Romanism. 
 They could get no money in a legitimate way, so they shut up 
 the Exchequer for twelve months, and thus had ^1,300,000 
 at their disposal. The bankers, unable to obtain from the 
 Exchequer the money they had lent it, were unable to repay 
 to their customers the sums they had advanced, and were in 
 consequence threatened with bankruptcy. The Government 
 recommended the bankers to apply to the Lord Keeper for an 
 injunction to stay legal proceedings, and the King sent the 
 Lord Keeper a message directing him to give the injunction 
 needed. But the illegality was so flagrant, that, slavishly
 
 1 8 Onr Old Nobility. 
 
 submissive as Bridgeman was, he dared not comply, and yet 
 he had not the manUness to refuse. He therefore said he 
 would take the papers home with him, and give judgment 
 another day. The judgment was never delivered by him, for 
 the King and his Ministers, who wanted a bolder and more 
 unscrupulous man, took the Great Seal from him, and Shaftes- 
 bury became Lord Chancellor. Sir Orlando married the 
 heiress of a Shropshire squire, John Kynaston of Morton. 
 
 His son, who also married an heiress, purchased the pro- 
 perty now held by the Bridgemans, at Castle Bromwich, in 
 Warwickshire. The son of this last also married a Shropshire 
 heiress, daughter of Roger INIatthews of Blodwell, who had 
 inherited a portion of the estates of an ancient Welsh Prince, 
 from whom she was descended. But his son, the fourth 
 baronet, made a still more fortunate marriage, through which 
 Weston Hall, the principal seat of the family, came into 
 possession of the Bridgemans. 
 
 He married Lady Anne Newport, sister of the Lady Mount- 
 rath before mentioned, and at the death of the last Earl of 
 Bradford of the first creation, who was uncle to these ladies, 
 the Newport estates were divided between them. The New- 
 ports had been landowners in Shropshire from the days of 
 Edward L, which makes it probable that they had come into 
 possession of the confiscated lands of some Welsh Prince, and 
 they increased their possessions in Salop by marriage at 
 various times. Sir Richard Newport, espousing the Royalist 
 cause, was created a baron in 1642. This Lord Newport had 
 married a sister and co-heir of Sir Richard Leveson, of 
 Trentham. James Leveson of Trcntham was one of those 
 who were enriched, by the plunder of the monasteries, Wom- 
 bridge, Lilleshall, and a priory at Stafford falling to his share. 
 Another Newport had married the heiress ot the Wilbraham 
 family, whose ancestors had obtained considerable lands at 
 Walsall, which also were part of the spoil of the monastic 
 houses. What a fortunate thing it was for some of our great 
 houses that there was a rich Church to {ilunder. 
 
 At the Restoration the elder of the sons of Lord Newport 
 was appointed Comptroller, and afterwards Treasurer, of the 
 Household, and was also created a Viscount ; the younger 
 obtained the post of Commissioner of the Customs. The 
 elder, by the way, being a supporter of William HL, was 
 ultimately created Earl of Bradford, and one of his sons
 
 The Bridgemans. 19 
 
 obtained the lucrative sinecure of a Tellership in the 
 Exchequer. A little later on I find another Bridgeman who 
 was for many years Comptroller of the Board of Green Cloth 
 and Surveyor of the Royal Gardens. 
 
 The son of the baronet who married the Newport heiress 
 was created Baron Bradford in 1794, and his son was created 
 Earl of Bradford in 181 5. Of the four sons of the latter, the 
 second was provided for in the Navy, the third in the Army, 
 the fourth in the Church. The second Earl had three sons, 
 of whom the second and third were provided for in the 
 Church. I fear that some of my readers will find this a dry 
 and dreary record of Masterships, ComptroUerships, Trea- 
 surerships, Tellerships, and Rectorships ; however, that is not 
 my fault, but that of the Bridgemans. To me it is but a 
 misfortune to have to deal with a family almost the sole land- 
 marks of whose history are the rich places they occupied.
 
 LVII. 
 
 SHOULD be sorry to convey the impression, from 
 the recent examples of disinterested Conservatism 
 which I have given, that the place-hunting families 
 are to be found only in one political party. There- 
 fore, from the Tories let us turn to the Whigs, where we shall 
 find examples of rapacity equal to, if not surpassing, any 
 which I have yet given. Probably it would be difficult to find 
 a more glaring case than that of the Greys. It is a long, 
 dreary record of shameless greed and official nepotism ; and I 
 fear that the story will be but imperfectly told, for it is difficult 
 at the present time to discover what was done for cousins and 
 brothers-in-law, and other connections who did not bear the 
 Grey patronymic. But the story must be told, in order that 
 we may understand the bitter hatred which Cobbett and other 
 popular leaders a generation or two ago entertained to what 
 they called Whiggery. Earl Grey is the ownerof 17,599 acres 
 in Northumberland, the gross annual rental of which is put 
 down at /^23,724. 
 
 For more than five hundred years the Greys have flourished 
 in Northumberland. In the reign of Edward III. a Sir 
 Thomas de Grey is said to have held Howick and other manors 
 in that county. How the Greys came there it is impossible to 
 say, but they were a Norman House, and Tankerville, though a 
 modern title, is really the revival of an old Norman peerage 
 held by one branch of the family. Sir John Grey was a 
 distinguished soldier in the reign of Henry V. The descen- 
 dant of his younger brother in the reign of Henry VIII. 
 possessed a moiety of the Manor of Howick. A grandson of 
 this latter, the first Lord Grey of Warke, fought for the 
 Parliament in the Civil War, and was Speaker of the House 
 of Lords. His great-grandson was the first Earl of Tanker- 
 ville. But our present business is with the Howick line. 
 
 The father of the first Lord Grey of Warke married the 
 daughter and heiress of a kinsman. Sir Thomas Grey, of
 
 The Greys of Hovoick. 21 
 
 Horton, in Northumberland. One of his younger sons was 
 Sir Edward Grey, w^ho appears to have inherited Howick. 
 His son increased the estates by a marriage with another 
 Northumberland heiress. One of their descendants, Henry 
 Grey, was created a Baronet in the year 1746. The eldest 
 son of the first Baronet died unmarried, and the second fell 
 in a duel. The third son became a General in the Army, and 
 in 1 80 1 was advanced to the Peerage as Baron Grey, and in 
 1806 as Earl Grey. His eldest son was the Earl Grey of the 
 Reform Ministry. His second son was a General in the 
 Army and Colonel of the 13th Dragoons, with /'i, 057 per 
 annum. His third son was a Naval Captain, Marshal in 
 Barbadoes, and Resident Commissioner of Portsmouth 
 Harbour. The fourth was a Colonel in the Army. The fifth 
 had the Rectory of Bishopsgate (/^ 1,650 and a house) and 
 Prebendary of Westminster, and when his brother became 
 Prime Minister he also held the Deanery of Hereford (present 
 value /^ 1, 000). Subsequently he became Bishop of the same 
 diocese. In the short-lived Whig Ministry of 1806, lasting 
 less than a year, the second Earl Grey, then Lord Howick, 
 held successively the offices of First Lord of the Admiralty 
 and Foreign Secretary. At that time it w^as that the second 
 brother and four other Greys received lucrative appointments. 
 The brother in question was sent out to the Cape of Good 
 Hope as Commander-in-Chief and Lieutenant-Governor, with 
 a salary of /"4,ooo per annum attached to each office. 
 
 In 1807 Lord Howick succeeded as second Earl Grey on 
 the death of his father. At 22 3^ears of age he had been 
 elected member for Northumberland, and he at once ranged 
 himself with Fox and the Whig party. The Whigs then had 
 an extended programme, which embraced the Reform of 
 Parliament, the abolition of the slave trade, the repeal of the 
 Test and Corporation Acts, Catholic Emancipation, and other 
 great reforms. Save for a few months in 1806-7, Lord Grey 
 had to be content with a prolonged exile from office. At 
 length, when he was long past 60 years of age, the time was 
 ripe for the first Reform Bill, and Earl Grey, the acknow- 
 ledged leader of the Whigs, became Premier. It would be 
 impossible here to discuss at length the various questions that 
 have been raised in regard to the policy of the first Reform 
 Bill. It may be fairly claimed on behalf of the Earl that, by 
 his firmness and perseverance in insisting upon the passage of
 
 22 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 the Bill, he saved his country from the horrors of Civil War, 
 It would be both ungrateful and unjust to under\'alue the ser- 
 vices which the first Earl Grey rendered to his country at one 
 of the most perilous crises in the present century. The first 
 Reform Bill was undoubtedly defective in many respects ; I 
 should be inclined even to say purposely defective. The man 
 who "stood by his order" could not fully trust the people, 
 and no doubt saw much more clearly than they did that the 
 Bill itself would leave a large, if not a preponderant, power in 
 ■the hands of the great houses. But, after all, the first Reform 
 Bill was a great step forward, and its chief merit was that it 
 ; made all other reforms possible. The Whig INIinistry of which 
 Earl Grey was Premier somewhat disappointed the high ex- 
 pectations which had been formed by ardent and hopeful 
 spirits, though it really accomplished much useful work. But 
 its nepotism was scandalous. The emoluments given to his 
 family connections by Earl Grey very soon after his appoint- 
 ment as First Lord of the Treasury, including his own, were 
 . estimated to be of the value of ^60,000 per annum. 
 
 We will glance simply at the sons of the Earl Grey of 
 Reform Bill days. The eldest, the present Earl, was Under- 
 :5ecretary of the Colonies in his father's Ministry, then Under- 
 Secretary in the Home Department, then War Secretary, and 
 subsequently Secretary for the Colonies, his official career 
 lasting on and off from 1830 to 1852. The second was the 
 late General Grey, who, after a series of rapid promotions in 
 the Army, became Colonel of the 71st Regiment, Private Se- 
 cretary' to the late Prince Consort, and afterwards Private 
 Secretary (/^i,ooo) and Equerr}- (/^75o) to the Queen. The 
 third and fourth sons when quite young men were Post 
 Captains in the Navy, and in due time became Admirals. The 
 fifth son, soon after coming of age, was presented with the 
 vicarage of Wooler {£ \'i'i and a house), and a few years after 
 obtained the Rectory of Houghton-le-Spring (/" 1,600 and a 
 house). The sixth son, at 29 years of age, obtained the 
 rectory of Morpeth {£\fo\\ and a house). These two reverend 
 Greys must have had from the Church in the course of their 
 lives more than ^100,000 between them. The seventh son 
 became a Captain in the Army ; the eighth was Secretary of 
 Legation at Paris. I doubt not some pretty little additions 
 could be added to the list if I had space and time to look into 
 the career of the grandsons.
 
 TJic Greys of Hoivick. 2^ 
 
 It would be an unpardonable omission if I were to forget 
 that veteran placeman, Sir George Grey, Bart., who sat for the 
 family borough of Morpeth till the Reform Bill of 1867 
 passed, when he had to stand on one side for that genuine 
 and able son of toil, Thomas Burt, the miner. Nothing gave 
 me more delight at the elections of 1868 than to see the jailor 
 of Ernest Jones replaced by a man who not long before had 
 worked in the pit. There have been men, who called them- 
 selves gentlemen, mean enough to sneer at the modest 
 allowance made to the present member for Morpeth by the 
 Northumberland Miners' Union ; suppose we consider what 
 political life meant to the former member. Sir George was 
 the son of a younger son of the first Earl Grey. This younger 
 son, a veteran placeman, was not only a Captain in the Navy, 
 but Marshal in the Island of Barbadoes, and Resident Com- 
 missioner of Portsmouth Dockyard. Sir George's younger 
 brother was Paymaster of the Civil Services in Ireland. Sir 
 George himself, for sixteen years, held various first-class 
 offices in successive Whig Governments, and when he was not 
 in office, of late years, he drew an annual pension of ^2,000. 
 In all, he must have received not far short of ^100,000 for his 
 political services, and, with all due respect to the Greys, I 
 cannot but think that he was dear at the money.
 
 LVIII. 
 
 "rends MOI TEL QUE JE SUIS— "Take me as 
 I am" — says the motto upon the crest of the 
 Marquis of Ely. Let us accept the invitation. 
 The Marquis owns in 
 
 Fermanagh .... 34i4i6 acres. 
 
 Wexford ..... 12,660 ,, 
 
 Dublin ..... 484 ,. 
 
 Total 47,560 „ 
 
 The annual rental of these properties is put down at/^22,556. 
 The Loftus family are English adventurers who have by 
 various means acquired their extensive Irish Estates within 
 the last three hundred years. The name was formerly written 
 Lofthouse, and is of Saxon origin, the Lofthouses claiming to 
 have held lands in Yorkshire long before the coming of the 
 Norman Conqueror. 
 
 The real founder of the family was the Rev. Adam Loft- 
 house, who, having accompanied the Earl of Sussex, Viceroy 
 of Ireland, as private chaplain, to Dublin, played his cards so 
 well that in 1562 he was consecrated Archbishop of Armagh, 
 from which see he was in a few years translated to that of 
 Dublin. In 1578 he was elevated to the dignity of Lord 
 Chancellor of Ireland, and he held that office till his death. 
 In the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. a man who held the 
 Great Seal of Ireland for more than thirty years could hardly 
 help laying the foundation of a great family. Wholesale 
 confiscations and lavish grants were the order of the day, and 
 a man must have had almost superhuman virtue not to take a 
 portion of the plunder when it might be had for the asking. 
 The elder son of the Archbishop being well provided for, the 
 younger obtained grants of the estates ofKillyan and Clonard, 
 and the office of Constable of Wicklow Castle. The elder 
 son, Sir Dudley Loftus, of Rathfarnham, in due time succeeded 
 his father ; and his grandson. Lord Lisburne, had a daughter
 
 The Loftuscs. 25 
 
 and heir, who carried the estates of the elder branch of the 
 family to Lord Wharton on her marriage. The second son 
 of Sir Dudley Loftus enjoyed lucrative offices as joint clerk of 
 the Pells and of the Irish Treasury. He also advanced his 
 fortunes by a marriage with an Irish heiress. In this latter 
 particular his example was imitated by his son, whose eldest 
 son was elevated to the Irish Peerage as Viscount Loftus. 
 The second Viscount married the heiress of Sir Gustavus 
 Hume, Bart., of County Fermanagh, and gained a step in the 
 Peerage, being created Earl of Ely. At the death of the 
 second Earl, his uncle succeeded ; but, he dying without heirs, 
 the titles expired — the estates passed to Charles Tottenham, of 
 Tottenham Green, whose mother was a Loftus. This gentle- 
 man, who married another Irish heiress, changed his name to 
 Loftus, and soon after coming into the Loftus estates he was 
 created Baron Loftus. This was in 1785. Four years after 
 he was a Viscount, five years after that he became an Earl, 
 and six years later, in 1 800 — the date is ominous — he was 
 created Marquis of Ely. By the way, this Ely is not Ely in 
 Cambridgeshire, nor this Tottenham Green in Middlesex ; the 
 former place is in Fermanagh, and the latter in Wexford. 
 The estates of the Tottenhams have passed away from the 
 Marquis of Ely, having been devised to a younger son of the 
 first Marquis, who once more assumed the name of 
 Tottenham. 
 
 The first Marquis of Ely was one of those Irish noblemen 
 who were bribed into supporting the Act of Union. It is 
 hardly my province here to discuss the merits or demerits of 
 the Act. Some of the Acts of the Irish Parliament towards 
 the close of its existence, particularly the Act by which 
 " Flogging Fitzgerald " obtained an indemnity for his in- 
 human crimes, were so outrageously unjust and oppressive, 
 that one is almost tempted to declare that anything was 
 better than such an assembly as that. Presupposing that the 
 Union was absolutely necessary, it must be allowed, on behalf of 
 Pitt, that a profligate distribution of money and titles was the 
 only possible road to success. " The flag of prostitution and 
 corruption " was hoisted accordingly. But what can be said 
 on behalf of the men whose consent to the Act of Union 
 could only be obtained by wholesale bribery, save that they 
 were men who all their lives had fattened on corruption } As 
 Mr. Massey says — " When an Irish gentleman gave /^2o,ooo
 
 26 Oiir Old A^obility. 
 
 for a borough he invested his money in a speculation from 
 which he had reason to expect a safe return. The commoner 
 wanted a peerage ; he had two votes at the service of the 
 Minister, and Irish Peerages were held in higher estimation 
 b)' the Irish commoners than by the British Premier." 
 Castlereagh, the Irish Secretar}', was the chief agent in this 
 disgraceful business. To quote Mr. INIassey again : — " The 
 foremost men in Ireland — men whose abilities would have 
 raised them to eminence in any country, whose eloquence 
 would have moved any assembly, ancient or modern, whose 
 patriotism was sincere — had first been tempted, but had 
 refused every offer to betray the independence of their country. 
 Another class of leading persons was then tried, and from 
 them, for the most part, evasive answers were received. The 
 Minister understood the meaning of these dubious utterances. 
 Bribery of every kind must be employed without hesitation 
 and without stint." It was so used. The first ^5,000 that 
 Castlereagh drew from the Secret Service Money melted away 
 at once, and he then drew up a scheme by which, under the 
 name of compensation, ^"1,500,000 was to be distributed 
 among the owners of boroughs, part owners of counties, and 
 members of the Irish Parliament. 
 
 We have it on the authority of a letter of the Duke of 
 Portland that the King had authorised assurances to be given 
 to Lord Ely that he should be made a Peer of Great Britain 
 as a reward for the part he had in the transaction, and he 
 was accordingly created an Irish Marquis and a Baron of the 
 United Kingdom. In this respect he presented a pitiable 
 contrast to Lord Gosford, who, though by conviction favour- 
 able to the Union, refused to accept an Earldom, on the 
 ground that he did not think he was entitled to a reward for 
 his vote in Parliament. But Lord Ely was not alone ; no less 
 than twenty Irish peers were advanced to higher titles as a 
 reward for the votes they gave. The money needed for 
 .systematic corruption was raised by taxation of the wretched 
 people of Ireland, and the jMarquis of Ely was not ashamed 
 to take /"45, 000 thereof as "compensation" for the loss of 
 his Parliamentary interest. It must be admitted that political 
 moralitv at the time was at a very low ebb, but that does not 
 alter the fact that the descendants of the first IMarquis of Ely 
 sit in the House of Lords in virtue of a transaction which, if 
 imitated by a Parliamentary voter of the present day, subjects
 
 The Loft uses. ' 27 
 
 him to condign punisliment as a criminal. " Take me as I 
 am," said the first Marquis ; and Pitt accordingly took him as 
 a creature who, though possessed of enormous wealth — the 
 Tottenham as well as the Loftus estates — was ready to sell 
 himself and his country for /"45, 000 and an additional title. 
 
 Let us turn from him to his sons. The elder, afterwards 
 second Marquis, was made Irish Postmaster-General, Teller 
 of the Irish Exchequer, and a Commissioner of the Treasury. 
 The younger was appointed Bishop of Clogher, a diocese 
 which possessed 27,000 acres of land ; while a cousin. General 
 Loftus, had a sinecure Colonelcy worth £i,S19 a-year, and 
 the Lieutenancy of the Tower, ^745 a-year. Of the sons of 
 the Bishop of Clogher I note that three were provided for in 
 the Church, two in the Army, two in the Navy, and one in 
 the Civil Service. Of the sons of the third Marquis one went 
 into the Army, another into the Church, and a third was, 
 till very recently, our Ambassador at St. Petersburg.
 
 LIX. 
 
 %ljt Wmh. 
 
 HE history of the Wards presents no features of 
 striking interest, inasmuch as they are but a line 
 of illustrious obscurities, whose names are con- 
 
 spicuous by their absence in our national annals, 
 
 and whose only merit has been to achieve a succession of 
 lucky marriages, with the result of accumulating a large 
 amount of landed property in the Midland Counties. Never- 
 theless, as the Earl of Dudley is immensely rich, and draws a 
 very large part of his wealth from the labour of the district 
 around Birmingham, he must not pass unnoticed. According 
 
 i landowners' 
 
 Staffordshire 
 
 Worcestershire 
 
 Merioneth 
 
 Roxburgh 
 
 Salop 
 
 return he possesses in 
 
 4,730 aci as 
 
 14,698 „ 
 
 4,472 ,, 
 
 1,086 „ 
 
 568 „ 
 
 ^68,460 rental 
 
 48,545 „ 
 
 3,115 „ 
 
 2,825 „ 
 
 233 „ 
 
 Total 25,554 ;^i23,i;8 „ 
 
 As the Earl is also a great colliery proprietor in South Staf- 
 fordshire these figures by no means represent his real income. 
 Everyone knows that the Earl of Dudley is the owner of 
 Dudley Castle, and those who have caught a hasty glimpse of 
 that ancient fortress from the railway would naturally suppose 
 that the Wards are an ancient house ; they are, however, 
 descended from a London tradesman who flourished in the 
 reign of Charles 1. 
 
 William Ward was the sixth son of a Norfolk squire, whose 
 family had been for generations seated at Bixley in that 
 county. He came up to London when a lad, was bound 
 apprentice to a City goldsmith, and subsequently set up in 
 business for himself in Lombard Street. Not long after he 
 had opened his shop, a sailor, who had just landed from his 
 ship, came in and oflfered to sell him what proved to be a lot 
 of rough diamonds. Ward bought them at an immense 
 advantage to himself, and the same night treated the whole of
 
 The Wards 
 SCOLLECTIONS ol the days when the 
 Dudley family owned immense tracts 
 and in Worcestershire were recalled ao 
 annual dinner in Kidderminster of the 
 . Carolians Association— old boys of 
 Iderminster Gram.mar School. 
 
 29 
 
 neighbouring tavern. The 
 
 him, which he bought up at 
 
 This lucky stroke of fortune 
 
 up the ladder, and in time 
 
 •he present Earl, who was one of the n Henrietta Maria, wife of 
 fits of honour, expressed regret thao most opulent bankers and 
 
 family no longer had the same terri- the improvident nobles of 
 lal associations with the historic bor- lonetary accommodation w^as 
 ;h cf Kidderminster as was formerly 3udley. He had squandered 
 • case. ad yet a splendid estate — 
 
 :hey had elected him Lord High ^^ ^^j^j^^ j^^ wished Ward to 
 :ward of the borough, ^0^^'^^;=^ jv^j^ J .ord Dudley might do better 
 
 him to hope Ihil the ties between his ^t ui t, 1 u- 
 
 nily and Kidderminster were too deep •■. H^^ble by name, and his 
 be severed, and would be passed on to • If his Lordship wou d 
 
 descendants as they had been to him. n Humble Ward he should 
 )ne speaker recalled that when the curity. The bargain was 
 dleys had their seat at Witley Court, d the Buttons of Dudley 
 w ihe residence of Sir Herbert Smith, q back some centuries, and 
 former Kidderminster carpet magnate, ^g^jg ^^-^^\ ^j-jg surrounding 
 ag Edward was frequently a guest there. 
 
 was said that in those halcyon days the ^^^^ ^^^^ ^^-j^ v ^ ^^^^^ 
 nily could drive ^'•°'^. Witley t^ Dudley. Conquest we find it in 
 
 )re than 20 miles, without passing out, ^^^^^^^ afterwards Paganel 
 
 .- through a marriage with 
 ster and heir of his grand- 
 
 NOTHER aspect or the family's rela- ^^ de Somerie, ^^;l^o rebmlt 
 ^ tions with Kidderminster was touched "^s were barons of Dud ej 
 I by the Chairman, who said that when co-heir of D Albmi, Jiarl ot 
 e carpet trade of Kidderminster was in the Somenes was exhausted 
 state of decay owing to the introduction ; Somerie baron of Dudley 
 
 the power loom and gras.^ was growing ght with her the town and 
 . the streets. Baron Ward built in the of Sedgley, chase of Pen- 
 wn the Lord Ward sheds, as they became - ^ ■' • ^ -r ^i__. 
 
 )pularly known. 
 
 They were spacious works with steam ^^.^^ ^^ ^^^^ stewardship of 
 Dwer and plant, in which manufacturers Henrv VI but 
 
 : the town were allowed to work certain easurer to rtenr} \i-,Dm 
 ivs a week. The result was the general ^\^ support by relieving him 
 itroduction of machinery in Kiddermin- -d the former monarch A 
 ;er and an immen,se impetus to the staple was nicknamed " Lord 
 :ade. longing upon his friends in 
 
 Kidderminster owed a deep debt of n debt, and lost nearly all 
 ratitude to Baron Ward, who was created ^ of Northumberland, who 
 :arl of Dudley and Viscount Ednam in 
 860. 
 
 their own property. 
 
 elp for Carpet Trade 
 
 &c. 
 
 In the reign of that 
 n de Sutton obtained grants
 
 LIX. 
 
 %]}t Mml 
 
 REFERENCE T( 
 
 led tMl 
 
 HE history of the Wards 
 
 striking interest, inasmuc rilTLiER 
 
 of illustrious obscurities, 
 
 spicuous by their absence 
 and whose only merit has been to 
 lucky marriages, with the result ( 
 amount of landed property in the Mi 
 theless, as the Earl of Dudley is imn 
 very large part of his wealth from tl 
 around Birmingham, he must not pa; 
 to the landowners' return he possess^ 
 
 MORE 
 NEWS 
 
 Staffordshire 
 
 4,730 acies 
 
 Worcestershire . 
 
 14,698 „ 
 
 Merioneth 
 
 4,472 „ 
 
 Roxburgh 
 
 1,086 „ 
 
 Salop 
 
 568 „ 
 
 Total 25,554 
 
 As the Earl is also a great colliery 
 fordshire these figures by no means 
 Everyone knows that the Earl of 
 Dudley Castle, and those who have 
 that ancient fortress from the railwa 
 that the Wards are an ancient he 
 descended from a London tradesm; 
 reign of Charles I. 
 
 William Ward was the sixth son c 
 family had been for generations 
 county. He came up to London 
 apprentice to a City goldsmith, a: 
 business for himself in Lombard ^ 
 had opened his shop, a sailor, who 
 ship, came in and offered to sell hi 
 of rough diamonds. Ward boug 
 advantage to himself, and the same 
 
 Paris, We 
 QN the very day whe; 
 ^^ an Interview in th 
 proclaims his goodwll 
 France, another allege 
 document, bearing the 
 " strictly confidential," a 
 to have been addressee 
 man propaganda agents 
 published by the " Petit : 
 
 It deftls with the withdra 
 mAny from the League of 
 the Disarmament Conferee 
 a<m to camouflage Gen 
 J*a*>ns for this step, and 
 Germany possesses new arn 
 m«ntionecl as forbidden in tl 
 Treaty and easy to conceal. 
 
 The Petit Parisien intends 
 the remainder of the prevloui 
 which, it Is stated, amounts 
 of Gennan. in the form of a pa 
 the original German text. 
 
 A tEARAGE 
 
 ITie Petit Parisien hints t 
 cbtalned the documents as the 
 Iteakage tn a distant legation 
 the German Government must 
 •ware of the circumstances in ^
 
 TJic Wards. 29 
 
 the ship's crew to a carouse at a neighbouring tavern. The 
 next day another lot was brought him, which he bought up at 
 an equally low price as the first. This lucky stroke of fortune 
 proved to be but the first step up the ladder, and in time 
 Ward became jeweller to Queen Henrietta Maria, wife of 
 Charles I., and was one of the most opulent bankers and 
 goldsmiths in the City. Among the improvident nobles of 
 that time who came to him for monetary accommodation was 
 the last of the Buttons, Lords of Dudley. He had squandered 
 his means on harlots, but he had yet a splendid estate — 
 ample security for the /^2o,ooo loan which he wished Ward to 
 advance him. W^ard replied that Lord Dudley might do better 
 than that. He himself had a son, Humble by name, and his 
 Lordship had a grand-daughter. If his Lordship would 
 marry the young lady to his son Humble Ward he should 
 be well satisfied with that security. The bargain was 
 struck, and thus the Wards and the Buttons of Dudley 
 became united. We must now go back some centuries, and 
 trace the history of Dudley Castle and the surrounding 
 lands. 
 
 Dudley Castle is supposed to have been built by a Saxon 
 named Dodo. Soon after the Norman Conquest we find it in 
 the possession of Fitz-Ansculph. Shortly afterwards Paganel 
 obtained possession of it, possibly through a marriage with 
 FitzAnsculph's daughter. The sister and heir of his grand- 
 son, Gervase Paganel, married John de Somerie, who rebuilt 
 the castle. Henceforth the Someries were barons of Dudley. 
 One of them married a sister and co-heir of D'Albini, Earl of 
 Arundel. Li time the male line of the Someries was exhausted 
 and a sister and co-heir of the last Somerie baron of Dudley 
 married John de Sutton, and brought with her the town and 
 castle of Dudley, with the manor of Sedgley, chase of Pen- 
 snett, manor of New Swynford, &c. In the reign of that 
 amiable weakling, Henry VI., John de Sutton obtained grants 
 of divers additional lordships, as well as the stewardship of 
 several others for life. He was Treasurer to Henry VI., but 
 ultimately Edward IV. purchased his support by relieving him 
 of all liability for any debts he owed the former monarch. A 
 subsequent Lord Dudley, who was nicknamed " Lord 
 Quondam," from his practice of sponging upon his friends in 
 his adversity, became entangled in debt, and lost nearly all 
 his property to John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, who
 
 30 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 took advantage of his folly and weakness to drive some very 
 hard bargains with him. 
 
 The said John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, in the 
 reign of Edward VI., claimed to be descended from the 
 Sutton Dudleys ; but his father, Dudley, the extortioner of 
 Henry VII., seems to have been a lad of obscure birth, who 
 was educated by the charity of a Sussex monastery. At 
 Northumberland's execution his property reverted to the 
 Crown, but the Dudley estates which he had acquired were 
 re-granted by Queen Mary to the heir of the Sutton Dudleys, so 
 that the ancient property of this family now possessed by the 
 Earl of Dudley is derived from a Crown grant a little more 
 than 300 years old. In 1600, an old writer informs us that 
 Lord Dudley hath Dudley, Sedgley, Swinford, Clent, Mere, 
 Enfield, Bushbury, Amilcote, Morfe, Over and Nether Penn, 
 Hagley, Molesley, Overton Wimbourne, Oxeley, Tresell, 
 Seisdon, Himely, Hondesworth, Sandshall, Cocorton, and 
 several other places. Not a few of these appear in Domesday 
 Book as held by FitzAnsculph. Rowley was the King's till 
 the reign of Edward II., when Somerie obtained a grant of 
 it. Old Swinford was purchased in the same reign of Bernard 
 de Bruys. 
 
 The Sutton Dudleys deserve some credit for increasing the 
 trade of the district. In 1619 Dud Dudley left the University 
 to manage his father's ironworks in the Chase of Pensnett. 
 Wood becoming scarce, he began to use pit-coal, and obtained 
 a patent from James I. for the process. He continued to 
 struggle against many difficulties. Rival manufacturers in- 
 jured him by their narrow jealous)^, ignorant workmen cut his 
 bellows, a flood swept away his works, and, finally, his pro- 
 perty was confiscated by the Commonwealth as a punishment 
 for the aid he afiforded to the Royalist cause. 
 
 After this lengthy, but necessary, digression, let us return 
 to Humble Ward and his descendants. Humble was created 
 Baron Ward of Birmingham. His eldest son married the 
 heiress of Sir William Brereton, of Handford, Cheshire. At 
 the death of the fifth Baron of this line the ancient Barony of 
 Dudley passed to Fernandino Lea, whose grandmother was a 
 Ward, and at his death it fell into abeyance. The estates and 
 the Ward Barony passed to John Ward, who was descended 
 from_ a younger son of Humble. This younger son had 
 married the granddaughter and heiress of Thomas Parkes,
 
 The Wards. 31 
 
 who in 1600 had purchased Willingsworth and Sedgeley of 
 the then Lord Dudley, and thus, after a long lapse of years, 
 these manors were again united with the Dudley estates. 
 John was created Viscount Dudley and Ward. The fourth 
 Viscount was advanced to an Earldom, but, dying unmarried, 
 all the honours expired save the Ward Barony, which was 
 inherited by his second cousin, a clergyman, whose son, the 
 present Peer, was created an Earl in i860. 
 
 It may be worth while to glance at the Church livings in 
 the hands of the Earl of Dudley. Of these there are thirteen, 
 whose united annual value is nearly £1,000 beside the resi- 
 dences. The patronage of several of these has always gone 
 with the ancient manors of the old Dudley estates. Dudley, 
 Kingswinford, St. Mary's, Pensnett, Kidderminster, Stour- 
 bridge, and Sedgley, are all vicarages, so in all probability 
 Lord Dudley receives the great tithes from most of these 
 places, which must amount to a very large sum. The vicarage 
 of Dudley is not only worth ^1,080 and a house, but carries 
 with it the patronage of four other livings, whose united value 
 is ^1,300, with a house to each. It cost the Wards nothing 
 to obtain it. I find that in the year 1342 the Bishop of 
 Worcester summoned the Prior and Convent of Dudley to 
 show title to the appropriation of the Church of Dudley, and 
 their title was allowed. It continued in their hands till the 
 dissolution of the monasteries, when it was granted to John 
 Dudley, Duke of Northumberland. At his execution it was 
 given by the Crown to Sutton, Lord Dudley, and has remained 
 in the family ever since. The rectory of Kingswinford (^^950 
 and a house), carries with it the patronage of Brierly Hill 
 {£^00 and a house). Sedgley Vicarage (^^503 and a house) 
 carries with it the patronage of Upper Gornal {£2 1 5 and a 
 house). The Vicarage of Kidderminster (/"i,ooo and a 
 house) carries with it the patronage of four other livings, value 
 in all £^20 with residences. The Kidderminster living, until 
 a comparatively recent date, was in the possession of Lord 
 Foley. I presume that it has been purchased of the Foleys 
 by Lord Dudley, who has also purchased of them his present 
 seat at Witley Court, in Worcestershire.
 
 LX. 
 
 o 
 
 HE name of Villiers will be for ever associated with 
 the worthless favourite of the two first Stuart Kings 
 who fell beneath the knife of Felton ; and though 
 the holders of the Jersey and Clarendon peerages 
 are not descended from him, they owe to his influence the 
 first advancement of their common ancestor. The Villiers 
 family appear to have come over from Normandy at the Con- 
 quest, and for centuries they were comparatively obscure 
 landowners in Lincolnshire, and afterwards in Leicestershire. 
 George Villiers, a younger son of Sir George Villiers, of 
 Brooksby, at the age of twenty-two attracted the notice of 
 James L by his personal beauty. Shortly after he was made a 
 Gentleman of the Bedchamber, and was presented with a pen- 
 sion of /"i, 000 per annum. A year or two later he was made 
 Master of the Horse, and elevated to the peerage as a Vis- 
 count. Then he was presented with the Lordship of Whaddon, 
 in Bucks, worth /"8o,ooo. Then he became Earl, and then 
 Marquis, of Buckingham. Offices were showered upon him 
 in profusion. He was Lord High Admiral, Chief Justice in 
 Eyre, Master of the King's Bench, Constable of Windsor 
 Castle, High Steward of Westminster, and I know not what 
 else — all in five or six years. In his private life an abandoned 
 profligate, in his public life a greedy, unscrupulous, and inso- 
 lent ^linister, he was, perhaps, the worst man who ever 
 held the destinies of England in his hands. The extent to 
 which he profited by the favour of James L and Charles I. 
 may be partly estimated from the fact that his son, on 
 obtaining his father's estates back at the Restoration, had a 
 fortune, so Pepys tells us, of /^ 19, 600 a-year, a very large sum 
 in those times. This son married the daughter of Fairfax, by 
 whom he derived great property in Yorkshire. During the 
 reign of Charles H. he held a number of lucrative appoint- 
 ments, and he was one of the principal members of the Cabal 
 Ministry. Macaulay describes him as a man " in whom the
 
 TJic Villiers. .33 
 
 immorality which was epidemic among the politicians of that 
 age appeared in its most malignant type." Before his career 
 was finished he had dissipated most of the splendid fortune 
 which he inherited. 
 
 His cousin, Barbara Palmer, nk Villiers, daughter of 
 Viscount Grandison, and wife of Roger Palmer, Earl of 
 Castlemaine, " the most profuse, imperious, and shameless of 
 harlots," according to Macaulay, was, for her " personal 
 virtues," according to Dugdale, created Baroness Nonsuch (1), 
 Countess of Southampton, and Duchess of Cleveland, by 
 Charles II., by whom she had three sons and a daughter. 
 The eldest became Duke of Cleveland, of whom more in a 
 subsequent article ; the second was created Duke of Grafton, 
 with hereditary claims upon the revenue, of which I have 
 already spoken when dealing with that family. 
 
 Let us turn now to Edward Villiers, half-brother of the first 
 Duke of Buckingham. As the younger son of a Leicestershire 
 commoner, we may safely assume that he began the world 
 with next to nothing, especially as his brother, the Duke, only 
 started with ^^50 a-year. That was 260 years ago. At the 
 present time, his descendant, the Earl of Jersey, owns in 
 
 Glamorganshire 
 
 7, 1 TO acres 
 
 2^36,929 rental 
 
 Middlesex . 
 
 1,982 „ 
 
 , 
 
 7,588 M 
 
 Oxfordshire 
 
 7-042 „ 
 
 • 
 
 7>477 ,> 
 
 "Warwickshire 
 
 1,090 „ 
 
 . 
 
 1,966 „ 
 
 Kent 
 
 I>713 ;> 
 
 • 
 
 1,813 „ 
 
 Total iS,937 „ /55,773 „ 
 
 How has all this been acquired ~f The Villiers have not earned 
 the purchase-money of these estates, or acquired it by success- 
 ful trading. How have they acquired these 19,000 acres ? 
 Partly by pursuing the profession of courtiers, and partly b}- 
 marriage. In 1622 the Duke of Buckingham obtained from 
 James I. for his brother Edward, the presidency of the 
 province of Munster, and subsequently a peerage. We have 
 seen by what nefarious means lands were acquired by English 
 adventurers in Ireland in those times, so we need not inquire 
 particularly into the Grandison estates. Suffice it to say that 
 the daughter and heir of the last Earl of Grandison married a 
 son of the Marquis of Bute, and that their son, who was 
 created a peer, with the title of Lord Stuart de Decies, has an 
 Irish estate of 37,793 acres, with a rental of / 16,368.
 
 34 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 The youngest son of the first Viscount Grandison, Edward 
 Villiers, fought in the Royalist cause, and became a courtier 
 after the Restoration. He obtained first of all a grant of the 
 Manor and Palace of Richmond for two lives, and his wife was 
 appointed Governess to the Princesses Mary and Anne. After- 
 wards he was made Knight Marshal of the Household, Colonel 
 of a regiment, and Governor of Tynemouth Castle. In the 
 reign of James II. he gave up Richmond, which had cost him 
 nothing, to the King, for a valuable consideration. At his 
 death his second son, who also had a Colonelcy, succeeded 
 him in the Governorship of Tynemouth, as also did that son's 
 son in turn. 
 
 Let us turn now to his other children. He had a daughter, 
 Elizabeth, who, through her mother's interest, went over to 
 Holland as INIaid of Honour to the Princess Mary, and who, 
 notwithstanding her uncomely appearance, became the mis- 
 tress of William III. This circumstance was of great import- 
 ance to the family. Elizabeth herself obtained from her Royal 
 lover a large grant of the old hereditary domains of the Crown 
 in Ireland, estimated by the supporters of the Resumption 
 Bill to be worth /'aG.ooo per annum, but, by Macaulay, at 
 only/^4,000. Mr. Froude says that "these lands consisted 
 of 100,000 acres of the finest land in Munster. The rental 
 was /'6,ooo a-year. The selling value at the time of the grant 
 was/'332,ooo.'" This monstrous grant was cancelled after- 
 wards by a Resumption Bill. Elizabeth Villiers married Lord 
 George Hamilton, who was created Earl of Orkney by 
 William, and whose descendant owns 11,489 acres in Ireland, 
 with a rental of /'s, 7 89. The sister of Elizabeth Villiers was 
 provided with a residence at Richmond Palace ; for the 
 Duchess of Marlborough (on such a matter the best authority) 
 says that Queen Anne, when Princess of Denmark, desired the 
 use of Richmond Palace, where she had lived in her child- 
 hood, but it was refused because a sister of Lady Orkney lived 
 there. 
 
 Elizabeth's eldest brother had also gone over to Holland, 
 and accompanied William and Mary to this country in 1688. 
 His father dying a few months after, he succeeded to the 
 office of Knight Marshal of the Household, was appointed 
 Master of the Horse to Queen Mary, and shortly after was 
 created Viscount Villiers of Dartford. Next he was sent as 
 Ambassador to Holland ; then was appointed a Lord Justice
 
 The Villicrs. 35 
 
 in Ireland ; then was one of the English Plenipotentiaries at 
 the Peace of Ryswick ; then gained a step in the Peerage, 
 being created Earl of Jersey ; then became Ambassador t(j 
 France ; then a Secretary of State ; then Lord Chamberlain, 
 which last office he held during a portion of the reign of 
 Queen Anne. In 1700 he was also appointed Keeper of Hyde 
 Park. Plis sister's connection with King William seems to 
 have been almost as fortunate for him as Arabella Churchill's 
 connection with James II. was to the Duke of Marlborough. 
 
 Of his son, the second Earl, there is nothing remarkable to 
 be said, save that his younger son married the granddaughter 
 of the last Earl of Clarendon, of the old line, and was himself 
 created Earl of Clarendon. The estates of this branch of the 
 Villiers family are but small ; consequently they have had to 
 be provided for in other ways. The first Earl was a Post- 
 master-General, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and 
 Ambassador at Berlin. His two elder sons successively 
 inherited the title, but left no male issue. The latter held the 
 sinecure offices of Chief Justice in Eyre, North of Trent 
 (/'2,25o), and of Prothonotary County Palatine of Durham, 
 2^450 a year. His third son had several children, the eldest 
 of whom was the late Lord Clarendon, who was early in life 
 provided with a Commissionership in the Customs (^'1,400 
 a-year), and ably filled high offices in several Liberal Govern- 
 ments. One of the late Earl's brothers is that honoured friend 
 of the people, Charles Pelham Villiers, ]\I.P. for Wolver- 
 hampton, whose exertions in the Repeal of the Corn Laws 
 deserve to be held in lasting remembrance. Another was the 
 Bishop of Durham, who made himself notorious by the 
 presentation of the rich living of Haughton-le-Skerne {£1,000 
 and a house) to his son-in-law% Mr. Cheese. The Bishop's 
 son obtained the living of Addisham (/"750 and a house), at 
 the early age of 25, just after his marriage with the daughter 
 of Earl Russell. 
 
 We must now return to the Jerseys. The third Earl, who 
 married the daughter of the first Earl of Bridgwater, who was 
 descended from Henry VIII., purchased the manor and man- 
 sion of Middleton Stoney, in Oxfordshire. The latter he 
 afterwards rebuilt. He was a Gentleman of the Bedchamber 
 to Frederick, Prince of Wales, and for many years held the 
 sinecure office of Chief Justice in Eyre, value ^£^2,250 a year. 
 The fourth Earl followed in his father's footsteps, being
 
 36 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 successively a Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Chamberlain, 
 Master of the Buckhounds, Captain of the Gentlemen 
 Pensioners (!), and a Lord of the Bedchamber, all of course 
 well-paid offices. The fifth Earl married a granddaughter of 
 Robert Child, the banker, whose ancestors were wealthy 
 London citizens, two of them having filled the office of Lord 
 Mayor. By this marriage Osterley Park, Middlesex, a man- 
 sion with a park of 350 acres, came into the family, it having 
 been purchased many years before by Sir Thomas Child. His 
 Countess was the Countess of Jersey to whom Byron wrote a 
 poem on the Prince Regent's returning her picture. The 
 Countess was a leader in both fashion and politics ; the Earl 
 was simply a placeman who was twice Master of the Horse 
 and twice Lord Chamberlain. The next Earl only survived 
 his father a few days, and was succeeded by the present Earl 
 of Jersey, who, treading in the steps of his ancestors, draws 
 ^702 per annum as a Lord-in-Waiting. Both in Wales and 
 Oxfordshire he is well spoken of by those who would be the 
 first to find out faults. I believe that the Earls of Jersey still 
 retain their ancestral partnership in the Child banking-house 
 at Temple Bar.
 
 LXI. 
 
 YANKEE tourist, as he gazes upon the ancient 
 pile of Warwick Castle, would imagine that the 
 Grevilles held one of the oldest peerages in 
 
 England. As a matter of fact, however, the 
 
 modern Earldom of Warwick is little more than a hundred 
 years old, dating from 1759. There have been so many Earls 
 of Warwick, of so many different families, that they become 
 somewhat confusing. Briefly, therefore, let us dispose of the 
 extinct peerages of that name. Passing by the famous Guy, 
 Earl of Warwick, whose existence is hardly more than a vague 
 tradition, we first come upon Henry de Newburgh, a Norman, 
 who received a grant of the Earldom and lands from William 
 Rufus. After a time, they were carried by an heiress on her 
 marriage to John De Plessetis, the Newburgh line having no 
 male descendants, and again by a De Plessetis heiress to the 
 Mauduits, and again by a Mauduit heiress to the Beauchamps, 
 and again by a Beauchamp heiress to the Nevilles, and again 
 by a Neville heiress to a Plantagenet, the Duke of Clarence 
 who was drowned in a butt of malmsey in the Tower of 
 London. The son of this Duke was beheaded, simply 
 because he was a Plantagenet, by Henry VIL The castle 
 and lands adjoining then reverted of course to the Crown. 
 Next they were obtained by John Dudley, Duke of Northum- 
 berland, who was beheaded by Mary. His son obtained the 
 Earldom of Warwick, and his grandson. Queen Elizabeth's 
 Earl of Leicester, founded in Warwick the Charity which is 
 known as the Earl of Leicester's Hospital. 
 
 We must now go back some two hundred years. The last 
 Lord Beauchamp of Powyk left three daughters co-heiresses, 
 among whom his lands were divided ; the eldest of these 
 married Robert Lord Brooke. They left a daughter, the 
 wardship of whom was conferred on Sir Edward Greville. 
 The Grevilles, judging from their name, were of Norman 
 descent, but the real founder of the family is supposed to
 
 38 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 have been a wealthy woolstapler. They were seated for some 
 generations at INIilcote, in Warwickshire, and Campden, in 
 Gloucestershire. Sir Edward desired his ward to marry his 
 eldest son, but she preferred his second son, who was a captain 
 in the Navy in the reign of Henry VIII. The lady had her 
 own wa}-, and thus "the manor of Alcester, with many fair 
 lordships and lands, came in right of his wife to Sir Fulke 
 Greville," who further augmented his estate by purchases. A 
 generation or two later another Sir Fulke, who was Chan- 
 cellor of the Exchequer and Treasurer of the Navy to James 
 I., and who was created Lord Brooke, obtained from that 
 Monarch a grant of the Castle of Warwick and the lands 
 adjoining. But what of the Dudleys } Had Elizabeth's Earl 
 of Leicester left no heir .? Yes. He had " a son, Robert 
 Dudley, to whose wife was granted the title of Duchess of 
 Dudley by Charles I., and in this grant the following facts are 
 recited :— That the Earl of Leicester had left a son, Robert, 
 whose legitimacy was contested, but proved by his mother 
 and other witnesses ; that the Star Chamber made a special 
 order that the depositions should be sealed up, and no copies 
 taken ; that thereupon Robert Dudley left the kingdom and 
 refused to return ; and that on his refusal to return his lands 
 Avere seized by James I. Warwick Castle was granted to 
 Fulke Greville, and the Earldom of Warwick to Lord Rich, 
 and they were still retained although the Crown admitted 
 Robert Dudley's legitimacy, and made his wife some small 
 pecuniary compensation for the loss of Kenilworth out of the 
 revenue. Thus we see that the stately domain of Warwick 
 Castle came into the possession of the Grevilles by a direct 
 grant from the Crown less than three hundred years ago, to 
 the exclusion of the rightful owners. Well might the Grevilles 
 adopt for their motto — " I can scarcely call all these things 
 our own." 
 
 The second Lord Brooke was a distinguished member of 
 the Puritan party, eminent alike for his piety and his 
 patriotism. He fought under Essex at Edgehill, and defended 
 Warwick Castle against the Cavaliers ; but, like Hampden, he 
 was slain early in the Civil War, being killed by a shot from 
 Lichfield Cathedral, when he was making an attack upon that 
 place. Henceforth the history of the Grevilles is uneventful. 
 The Puritan lord was succeeded by his three sons, one after 
 the other, the last of whom was succeeded by his two grand-
 
 The Grcvilks. 39 
 
 sons. The last of these was advanced to the dignity of Earl 
 of Warwick on the death of Edward Rich, last Earl of that 
 creation. The founder of the Rich family was one of those 
 courtiers who had grown wealthy out of the plunder of the 
 monasteries, whose grandson was created Earl of Warwick by 
 James L Since the Grevilles obtained the Earldom their 
 history has been as uneventful as before. There is simply 
 nothing of any interest to be noted in regard to any of them 
 till we come to the fourth Earl. 
 
 The fourth Earl's connection with Warwick was the subject 
 of warm debates in the House of Commons in 1834-5. A 
 Committee having been appointed to investigate the charges 
 of bribery and intimidation relative to the Warwick election 
 after the return of the Earl of Warwick's brother, the following 
 facts were brought out. It was proved that Lord W^arwick, 
 who was Recorder of the Borough, as well as Lord-Lieutenant 
 of the County, was the nominator of the Town Clerk, who 
 had been the agent in all the corrupt transactions ; that, in 
 1 83 1, a system of fraudulent rating had been commenced by 
 Lord Warwick's land agent, who had made a number of 
 faggot-voters and supplied them with fictitious receipts at the 
 Warwick Arms ; that a cheque for /"8,ooo was signed by 
 Lord Warwick's agent just before the election, and presented 
 at the bank, and that the money had found its way into the 
 hands of the persons who distributed the bribes ; and, further, 
 that bands of rioters, armed with bludgeons, had been 
 imported into the town to overawe the electors. The Earl 
 himself, in a sort of Salisbury fashion, denied knowledge of 
 these transactions ; but so little was he believed that Sir De 
 Lacy Evans and Mr. Cobbett proposed in the House of 
 Commons that he should be prosecuted, and, but for the 
 interference of the House of Lords, Warwick would at that 
 time have been united with Leamington for electoral purposes. 
 
 And now, having glanced at the head of the house, let us 
 turn our attention to his relatives. We shall see that the 
 Grevilles were voracious tax-eaters. First comes C. C. F. 
 Greville (author of the " Greville Memoirs"), with ^500 as 
 late Naval Officer at Demerara, with ^"2,000 more as Clerk of 
 the Privy Council, and with yet/ 3,000 more as Secretary and 
 Clerk of the Enrolments at Jamaica. How he could attend 
 to his duties both at Jamaica and St. James's I cannot explain ; 
 .1 only know that in the same year his name is down for both
 
 40 Our Old A'obility. 
 
 the ^3,000 and the ^2,000. There Avas another ubiquitous 
 Greville, Charles by name, who drew /"600 per annum as 
 Comptroller of Cash in the Excise at London, £(:>oo more as 
 Receiver of Taxes at Nottingham, ^'350 more as Secretary of 
 the Island of Tobago, and yet again ^"572 allowance as Naval 
 Officer at Trinidad. I suppose the Grevilles must have come 
 of the same stock as the Spaniard of whom it was said, 
 
 " His body is in Segovia, 
 His soul is in ^Madrid." 
 
 Next comes A. F. Greville, with a modest £<:)0 as Bath King- 
 at-Arms, ^150 as a Commissioner of the Alienation Office, 
 and a pension of ^250 as late private secretary to the Duke 
 of Wellington. Next comes Sir C. J. Greville, a IMajor- 
 General, with a sinecure Colonelcy of something over a 
 thousand a year. Beside these there are two other Grevilles 
 in the Army, and yet another, an Admiral in the Navy. In 
 the Church, E. C. Greville had two livings, annual value ^292 
 and ^420, with a house; J. Greville had also two livings, 
 value ^800 and ^159, with two houses ; and R. Greville had 
 also two livings, each worth ^210 and a house. Thus, the 
 head of the family was generously relieved by the nation of 
 any care for his relatives. 
 
 A descendant of the fifth Lord Brooke married the daughter 
 and heiress of the late IMarquis of Westmeath, and was created 
 Baron Greville in 1869. He owns in Ireland 20,611 acres, 
 with a rental of ^14, 169. The lands of the Nugents were 
 obtained by successive confiscations, the first of the family 
 who went to Ireland obtaining large grants of land in West- 
 meath about the year 1200, and another obtaining further 
 grants in Cavan and Longford in the reigns of Elizabeth and 
 James I. It is in these counties that most of Lord Greville's 
 lands are situated. 
 
 The magnificent baronial pile of Warwick Castle was partly 
 destroyed by fire a few years ago, and its noble owner con- 
 descended to allow it to be restored by public subscription. 
 How are the mighty fallen ! The Chief of the great house of 
 Warwick rebuilds his baronial castle by voluntary subscriptions, 
 just as if it were a hospital or a charity-school, although his 
 lordship owns in Warwickshire 8,262 acres, and in Somer- 
 setshire 1,840 acres, with a rental af^i8,337 per annum. To 
 make^the matter worse, I am told by people who have visited
 
 The Grevillcs. 41 
 
 the place that you have to give half a dozen tips to different 
 domestics before you can see all that is to be seen in this 
 historic pile. The Earl owns a large part of Warwick, and 
 the shadow of the castle seems to cast a blight over the place. 
 The capital of one of the finest counties in England looks as 
 if it had been to sleep for a century. wShops and streets and 
 market-place all appear mildewed. The last time I was there, 
 I was struck with the number of houses to let, and, remarking 
 on the fact to an inhabitant, I was told that some years ago 
 some low manufacturer wanted to start a big factory there, 
 but the Earl would not grant him a lease, so he had to take 
 his capital elsewhere, and the serene atmosphere of Warwick 
 Castle remains undisturbed by the proximity of industry. 
 Why such a place should still continue to send two m-embers 
 to the House of Commons is a question which will have to 
 be answered when a redistribution of seats occurs. I spent a 
 day in a polling booth at Warwick once, and was struck with 
 the large number of illiterate electors, who, of course, invari- 
 ably voted for the Tory candidates. The borough in which I 
 live, which has a very large population of middle-class houses 
 and 38,096 electors, has but equal voting power with Warwick, 
 which has but 1,680 electors.
 
 LXII. 
 
 
 T is probable, my Lord Blantyre, that I should not 
 have thought it worth while to devote a column to 
 the long line of mediocrities of which you are 
 
 one of the living representatives, but for a. letter 
 
 of yours which has just been made public. In that letter you 
 remark : — " It is surprising how much is done for our poorer 
 classes from their birth to the grave. Parliament provides 
 for registrations, schools, churches, aliment and clothing, 
 medical attendance, house-room, &c., besides voluntary 
 institutions." To me it is surprising that a noble lord, pre- 
 sumably of good education, should write such nonsense. 
 How much truth and how much error there may be in these 
 statements I have not space now to point out. But they lead 
 to other considerations. If you begin to talk of obligations, 
 we are quite ready to take up the discussion. As a matter of 
 fact, any worn-out labourer on your lordship's estates, who, 
 after working fifty years, is now in receipt of relief, has pro- 
 duced far more wealth than he has ever received or will 
 receive. The world is all the richer that he has lived in it. 
 Can we say the same of you ? Have you ever earned a 
 sixpence by productive industry ? Have any of your 
 ancestors? In the language of St. Paul — " \Mio art 
 thou, that differest from another, 
 which thou didst not receive ? " 
 
 and 
 I 
 
 what 
 
 thought 
 
 hast thou 
 that all 
 the wealth in the world, save that which comes from 
 the natural productiveness of the soil, came from labour. 
 From the style in which you write, it appears as if you thought 
 otherwise. Did landowners create land ? Do noblemen 
 make crops ? Do Parliaments build up schools and churches, 
 and manufacture aliment and clothing ? I always thought 
 that God 
 produced 
 
 schools ; that bakers made bread ; and that tailors made 
 clothes. If you, and the like of you, made all these things. 
 
 created the land ; that ploughmen and reapers 
 crops ; that bricklayers and stonemasons built
 
 Tlic Stuarts of B Ian tyre and Galloway. 43 
 
 and can prove that you did, then those who belong to the 
 industrious classes will not only acknowledge their immense 
 obligations to you, but beg you to still further exercise your 
 creative powers during this present distress. However, till 
 you have proved these powers, they must remain sceptical. 
 
 As you have reminded us of our obligations in that we of 
 the industrious classes receive that we pay for in local and 
 imperial taxes, suppose we remind you of your obligations. I 
 see, in the landowners' return, that you are the owner of large 
 estates : — 
 
 Berwickshiie 2,878 acres. 
 
 Dumbarton 2,946 ,, 
 
 Haddington 2,953 ,, 
 
 Renfrew 4;449 )> 
 
 Lanark 835 ,, 
 
 Total 14,061 ,, 
 
 from which you derive an annual rental of /'2o,558. The 
 Earl of Galloway, who is descended from a common ancestor 
 with yourself, owns in Wigtonshire, Kirkcudbright, and 
 Cornwall 79,346 acres, with a rental of /'32,368. Pray, 
 whence did you and he get all this } Did you purchase it .^ 
 Did your fathers purchase it, or did they make it } I am no 
 Communist. However these lands were gotten, I fully 
 recognise your prescriptive right, so long as the exercise of it 
 does not militate against the well-being of the nation. But 
 we are talking of obligations just now ; and as you think that 
 the obligations of the poor are so great, I want to draw your 
 attention to your own. 
 
 Your ancestors are said to be of the royal blood of Scot- 
 land, and in 1293 one of them received a grant of the lands 
 of Garlics, . in Wigtonshire, from the King. His grandson 
 received a charter of Garlics, and was presented with the 
 barony and lands of Dalswinton by Robert Bruce. Subse- 
 quently another Stewart obtained the estate of INIinto, in 
 1429, "after much opposition from the TurnbuUs, the former 
 possessors." Thomas, the second son of this Sir William 
 Stewart, was the founder of the house of Blantyre. He 
 obtained, from his father, Minto and other lands in Roxburgh- 
 shire, which descended to the posterity of his eldest son, 
 whose female descendants, I presume, hold them still. The 
 Blantyres arc descended from a younger son. The younger
 
 44 Our Old Nobility, 
 
 son of an English squire is not usually very wealthy now ; 
 what must have been the position of the younger son of a 
 Scottish knight three hundred years ago ? At Court he filled 
 various offices — Gentleman of the Bedchamber, Keeper of the 
 Privy Seal, Lord of the Session, and finally Lord High 
 Treasurer. I know that James VL was a very impecunious 
 monarch till his accession to the English Throne ; but then 
 his poverty mainly arose from the folly with which he lavished 
 gifts upon his favourites, of whom the first Lord Blantyre 
 was one. 
 
 I open " Hamilton's National Gazetteer " and I read this : 
 — " Blantyre is the site of a priory of the Augustine Order. 
 At the Reformation it was given by James VL to Walter 
 Stewart [your ancestor], who was shortly afterwards made a 
 baron with the title of Lord Blantyre. The barony is still 
 held by his descendants. The cotton manufacture is carried 
 on here, and gives employment to nine hundred persons. 
 The district contains ironstone and limestone." So, then, it 
 seems that your ancestor got it for nothing, simply by a gift 
 from the Head of the State. " No," you would say, " that is 
 not correct. If you will turn to the Statistical Account of 
 Scotland you will find it stated that he was presented with the 
 benefice of Blantyre, but he purchased the barony." It was 
 only a part that was given him. Can you tell us how much 
 he gave for the rest } He was a younger son at Court, who 
 had to make his own fortune somehow or other. He was the 
 Treasurer of a King who was so desperately hard up that his 
 own nobles had to club together to pay the expenses of his 
 daughter's christening. We can imagine how small was the 
 price he had to pay for Crown lands. Do you think it is at 
 all likely that he gave a sum equal to the present annual 
 rental of the land in question } And from that time forward 
 no man could farm, or spin cotton (cotton was not spun in 
 Scotland at all till 1700), or dig ironstone or limestone, 
 without paying tithe and toll to the Lords of Blantyre. Pray 
 tell us, my lord, which lay under the greatest obligations — the 
 men Avho took the rents of Blantyre, or the men who, by their 
 industry, made Blantyre prosperous .? It is you, not I, 
 remember, that have opened this question. By the way, let 
 me remark that forty years ago the rental of the parish of 
 Blantyre was ^^2,579, and the cotton-spinners of Blantyre, not 
 its lords, supported their own poor. Can you tell us what is
 
 TJie Stuarts of Blantyj^e and Galloivay. 45 
 
 the rental now, and, if there is any increase, what the Lords 
 of Blantyre have done towards creating it ? By the way, 
 there used to be an extensive common of 600 acres, called 
 Blantyre Moor ; what has become of it ? It is nearly all in 
 cultivation now, but who takes the rent from it ? Certain it 
 is that, if that land is reclaimed from barrenness, it was not 
 your ancestors who drained and ploughed it. 
 ,:. The Bolton and Lethington estates were sold to the 
 Stewarts in 1702. The necessary funds for the purchase were 
 bequeathed by Frances, granddaughter of the first Lord 
 Blantyre — " La Belle Stuart," of whom Charles 11. was 
 enamoured, and who married the last Duke of Richmond and 
 Lennox. It matters little how she obtained the money; 
 certain it is that neither she nor her husband, nor their 
 ancestors, ever earned it. They had had extensive royal 
 grants which compelled industrious people to all generations, 
 who lived upon certain lands, to pay an annual tax for the 
 right to live and work, and out of the savings thus obtained 
 Bolton and Lethington, or Lennoxlove, as it is now called, 
 Avere bought. Erskine and Bishopton, in Renfrew, were, I 
 believe, purchased out of the savings from the rentals of the 
 older estates. Possibly some military members of the family 
 may have made something in war time, but the business of a 
 soldier does not exactly come under the category of produc- 
 tive industries. 
 
 Now, my Lord, I have no doubt you are a most estimable 
 nobleman. I understand you have shown your enthusiastic 
 devotion to the Turkish cause by supplying surgeons and 
 medical appliances at your own expense to the Turkish 
 soldiers. As I presume your chief motive was , pity for 
 suffering, though it may have been mixed with political 
 sympathy, I do not doubt that you are a humane and 
 considerate landlord. I take all that for granted ; but pray 
 do not talk any more about the obligations of the industrial 
 classes. It is they who have produced everything you possess, 
 save land in its natural state ; and it is a pity that your class 
 so often forget this fact. Napoleon Bonaparte once was 
 walking along a narrow path when an elegantly-dressed lady 
 met a labourer carrying a heavy load. The lady stood her 
 ground as if expecting the labourer to turn on one side, but 
 the great Head of the Army said to her, " Respect the burden, 
 Madam ! " It was the best thing Napoleon ever uttered.
 
 46 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 Respect the burden, my Lord. The creators of wealth, for 
 the most part, have but a hard time of it. Their lot is 
 generally to toil hard for very scanty reward. They are the 
 first to sufifer when any calamity falls upon a nation, and they 
 usually suffer with uncomplaining patience. You may think 
 that Parliaments have done very much for them, but they 
 think otherwise. At any rate they do not consider them- 
 selves under any particular obligations to the class to which 
 you belong. Your obligations are far greater than theirs. 
 My Lord, I pray you, "Respect the burden." You and I 
 have been relieved of the burden of the rough work of the 
 world, and Parliaments have done far more for landowners 
 than for the industrial classes. We ought to be rather 
 astonished that Parliament has done so little for them than 
 that it has done so much.
 
 LXIII. 
 
 IJHE name of Egmont seems an out-of-place title 
 for a British nobleman. It at once calls to mind 
 the Count Egmont, whose love for ClJirchen was 
 _ the theme of one of Goethe's most pathetic 
 tragedies. However, Goethe's Egmont was a Fleming, who 
 was executed by Philip II., and the Earldom of Egmont was 
 not created till 1733. The Earl owns in 
 
 Cork ..... 16,626 acres 
 
 Sussex ..... 14,021 „ 
 
 Surrey ..... 3,297 ,, 
 
 Bucks ..... 540 ,, 
 
 Total 34,484 ,, 
 
 with a rent-roll of /^ 19,784. I am surprised to find that 
 he has not more. If it were possible to sum up the total 
 value of the public lands and the total amount of public 
 money received by the Percevals, the figures would look 
 altogether beyond credibility. The task, however, is an 
 impossible one ; and I must content myself with giving an 
 outline of the history of this fortunate race of place-holders. 
 The Percevals claim to have come over with the Con- 
 queror, from whom they derived grants of confiscated lands 
 in Somerset, on which they seem to have vegetated for 
 centuries, till at last one Richard Perceval quarrelled with 
 his father, and went on the Continent. After staying four 
 years in Spain, and acquiring a good knowledge of the 
 Spanish language, he was, through the interest of a rela- 
 tive, who had married Lord Burghley's sister, taken into 
 the service of that statesman. Having succeeded in deci- 
 phering some secret despatches which had been captured 
 in a Spanish ship, by which means the projected expedition 
 of the Spanish Armada became known to the English 
 Government, lie was rewarded by Elizabeth with a place of
 
 48 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 ^400 a year and an annual pension of 800 marks for life. 
 Subsequently he was promoted to the Secretaryship of the 
 Court of Wards, worth /^2,ooo a year, and afterwards he 
 was made a Commissioner in the same Court, which brought 
 his annual official income up to ^4,000. On the death of 
 the younger Cecil he was dismissed from all his places, 
 but afterwards was sent to Ireland as Registrar of the Irish 
 Court of Wards, with a salary of 1,000 marks. He then 
 sold the greater part of his ancestral property in Somerset, 
 and invested the proceeds in Irish land and mortgages. 
 Of course, like other English adventurers, he obtained some 
 grants of forfeited lands, and before his death he contrived to 
 secure the reversion of his offices to his two sons. 
 
 His son. Sir P. Perceval, was still more fortunate. Beside 
 holding his father's office, he was Keeper of the Rolls in the 
 Irish House of Lords, Joint Clerk of the Crown in the King's 
 Bench, Clerk of Common Pleas and Keeper of the Records, 
 Joint Customer and Collector of the Port of Dublin, and 
 holder of a monopoly of ale and spirit licenses. In 1627 he 
 obtained a grant of Crown lands ; in 1630 a second grant of 
 lands, with special exemption from the payment of all taxes 
 thereon; in 1634 a further grant of forfeited lands ; in 1637 
 yet another grant of lands, so that his territorial estates in 
 Ireland swelled to 100,000 acres. Besides this, his houses, 
 &c., were valued at ^60,000, and his offices brought him in 
 at least ^2,000 per annum. This Perceval was at first a 
 Royalist, but drifted gradually to the side of the Parliament, 
 and became a member of the Presbyterian party. He seems 
 to have had heavy losses during the Irish Rebellion of 1641-2. 
 
 His son, who allied himself with the Independents, then 
 rising into power, like his father found it profitable to swim 
 with the stream. Beside offices held by his father and grand- 
 father, he obtained others. He was prothonotary of the Court 
 of Common Pleas, Keeper of the Public Accounts, Registrar 
 of the Court of Claims, and I know not what else beside. At 
 the Restoration he again swam with the stream, and was 
 created a baronet. Some little time after the Restoration the 
 Percevals obtained a decision of the Court of Claims, in which 
 they held office, which gave them possession of Kanturk 
 Castle, Co. Cork, which had been mortgaged by the 
 McCarthys, of the race of the ancient Kings of Desmond, to 
 Sir Philip Perceval,
 
 The Pcrccvah. 49 
 
 The third baronet and his brother had a grant in reversion, 
 or rather a grant for three lives of all the various lucrative 
 offices held by the first baronet. The fifth baronet was created 
 Baron Perceval, \'iscount Perceval, and finally Earl of 
 Egmont, with, strange to say, a grant of twenty marks out of 
 the Irish Treasury to enable him to support the honour. I 
 need hardly say that the younger sons of this voracious family 
 were almost invariably well provided for either in Church or 
 State. 
 
 The second Earl, who filled various offices at Court, and 
 was Postmaster-General and First Lord of the Admiralty, 
 was created an English as well as an Irish peer, under the 
 title of Lord Lovell. He was not the Lord Lovel of the old 
 ballad, " out of whose bosom there grew a red rose," for he 
 married two wives and begat sons and daughters. His 
 descendants by the son of the first marriage have died out, so 
 we will turn our attention to the children of the second mar- 
 riage. His second wife was created Baroness Arden, with 
 remainder to her heirs male. Her eldest son Lord Arden, 
 like many of his predecessors, held a number of offices. He 
 was Steward to Queen Charlotte, Lord of the Bedchamber to 
 George III., Master of the Mint, and last and best of all, 
 Registrar to the Court of Admiralty. During one year of the 
 great French War he admitted that his gross receipts there- 
 from amounted to/^38,574, less /^26, 012 deductions, making 
 his net income from the office /'i 2,562, or more than two and 
 a half times the present salary of a Prime jMinister. No 
 wonder he could afford to purchase a mansion at Banstead. 
 One of his sons he provided for in the Navy, and two others 
 in the Church. One of the descendants is the present Earl of 
 Egmont. 
 
 The younger son was Spencer Perceval, who was brought 
 up to the law. He became Solicitor-General, and then 
 Attorney-General, and on accepting office as Chancellor of 
 the Exchequer he wanted to bargain that he should have the 
 Chancellorship of the Duchy of Lancaster for life at a salarv 
 of/ 2,000 a year, but in this he was defeated. He ultimatelv 
 became Prime Minister, and a few months afterwards was 
 shot in the lobby of the House of Commons, from motives of 
 private revenge by one Bellingham. His widow was voted an 
 annuity of £ 2,000 a year for life. She married again not 
 long afterv^■ards, and lived to enjoy her pension for 32 years. 
 
 4
 
 50 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 A lump sum of ^50,000 was also voted for the benefit of her 
 children. One of the sons obtained a sinecure Tellership in 
 the Exchequer worth ^2,700 a year and a Commissionership 
 of Lunacy, value unknown. Another obtained a clerkship in 
 the Tellers' Office, ^529 a-year, and another a Church living, 
 value £s'^1 a-year and a house. Altogether Spencer Per- 
 ceval's family must have received from public money at least 
 a quarter of a million. If the Percevals have been officials of 
 but moderate abilities, they have at least received by no 
 means moderate payment for their services. 
 
 Nork House, Surrey, appears to have been purchased by 
 Lord Arden, whose office in the Court of Admiralty produced 
 him such enormous profits. The Earl of Egmont's seat in 
 Sussex is Cowdray Park, IMidhurst, which for some gene- 
 rations was the home of the INIontagus. Less than half a 
 century ago it was in the possession of the Poyntz family, 
 who derived it by inheritance. It thence passed, I suppose 
 bv purchase, to the Earl of Egmont. The owner of Cowdray 
 Park is also Lord of the Manor of the diminutive borough of 
 INIidhurst, which contains a population of less than 7,000 
 persons. Midhurst has been occasionally used as a family 
 borough, the present Earl having sat for it prior to his 
 succession to the Pcerasre.
 
 LXIV 
 
 T was with some concern that I learned the other 
 day that Viscount Sudley had become one of the 
 directors of a shop in the general provision trade 
 
 (see prospectus of the Universities' Co-operative 
 
 Stores). Unlike Mawworm in "The Hypocrite," I do not think 
 it is a sin to keep a shop, but I am quite aware that shop- 
 keeping is a social sin which, in the estimation of the Upper 
 Ten Thousand, places the sinner outside the pale of " Society." 
 Many a man who, in education and intellect and wealth, 
 would compare not unfavourably with half the honourables 
 and naval and military officers in London, would be black- 
 balled in any second-rate club simply because he is in trade. 
 I don't object to the line being drawn, but the rule has ceased 
 to have any consistency in it. The lord has a right to taboo 
 the shopkeeper, but when the lord himself becomes a shop- 
 keeper it is quite time he ceased to regard shopkeepers as 
 anything less than equals. Where the distinction lies between 
 a shopkeeper and a shop director I fail to see. Both are 
 occupied in business for pecuniary gain, both deal in the 
 same articles, both supply the same class of people ; and 
 neither, if in a large way of business, personally serves across 
 the counter. Why should Mr. Attenborough, the pawnbroker, 
 or jMr. Melton, the hatter, or Mr. Medwin, the bootmaker, 
 be excluded from White's and Brookes's when directors of co- 
 operative shops are admitted ? I am not a West-end trades- 
 men, but if I were I should think it particularly hard, when 
 the Government was screwing out of me as much Income Tax 
 as possible, to know that one of the Income Tax Commis- 
 sioners was a rival in trade in one of those shops where they 
 contrive to dispense with the Tax-gatherer. As Income Tax 
 Commissioner Lord Sudley has a salary of /'600, apparently 
 with no very onerous duties, since he can find time to devote 
 to Co-operative Stores. I at first supposed that the Gores 
 must be in somewhat straitened circumstances, but I am 
 
 4—2
 
 52 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 happy to say that that is not the case. The Earl of Arran 
 — of Arran Isles off the coast of Galway, not of Arran in Scot- 
 land — is the father of Viscount Sudley, and owns 37,229 
 acres in Donegal and Mayo, with a rent-roll of ^9,279. Sir 
 St. George Gore, who died very recently, owned a few thousand 
 acres in Cavan, Galway, Dublin, King's County, and Limerick. 
 Sir Charles Gore has 8,569 acres in Sligo. Major Gore has 
 8,562 acres in Clare. Sir F. A. K. Gore has 30,818 acres in 
 Sligo and Mayo. Lord Harlech has 55,418 acres in Ireland, 
 England, and Wales. In Ireland alone the Gores hold more 
 than 150,000 acres, although no member of the family set foot 
 in that country till the days of Queen Elizabeth. It is hardly 
 necessary to say that these enormous possessions were chiefly 
 derived through confiscation. 
 
 In the reign of Queen Elizabeth there lived in London a 
 certain Alderman Gore, a Merchant Taylor, who had a 
 numerous family, the youngest of whom went over to Ireland 
 as captain of a troop of horse. This officer. Sir Paul Gore, 
 obtained a grant of the barony of Boylagh and Barnagh, in 
 Donegal ; but, after the accession of James I., he was com- 
 pelled to relinquish it in favour of the Earl of Annandale, one 
 of James's Scotch favourites, and to be content to take, in 
 exchange, 1,348 acres of forfeited lands in the same county, 
 which were created into a manor, under the title of Manor 
 Gore, and for which he had to pay an annual rent to the 
 Crown of ^10 i6s. This property, with others, subsequently 
 obtained, was inherited by the descendants of his eldest son, 
 who obtained a baronetcy, and subsequently the now extinct 
 Earldom of Ross. The third baronet greatly increased the 
 fortunes of the family by marrying the heiress of James 
 Hamilton, of Castle Hamilton, by whom he derived that estate 
 and extensive lands in Fermanagh. These Hamiltons were 
 also adventurers who had gone over to Ireland in the time of 
 Elizabeth, one of whose descendants had obtained a grant of 
 the Barony of Manor Hamilton from Charles I. This barony 
 is, or was till lately, in the possession of the Earl of Leitrim. 
 The head of this branch of the family was subsequently 
 created Earl of Ross, the ancient Irish Earldom of that ilk, 
 held, by the Parsons family, having become extinct. In time 
 the second Earldom also became extinct for want of direct 
 male heirs, but most of the estates are held by one of the 
 Gores above mentioned.
 
 The Gores. 53 
 
 The second son of Sir Paul Gore, from whom the Earl of 
 Arran is descended, obtained a grant of the lands of New- 
 town, in Mayo, created into the Manor of Castle Gore in 
 1666. The third son also obtained in 1661 a grant of divers 
 lands in Kilkenny, Sligo, and Gahvay. The old Irish Earl- 
 dom of Arran held by the Butlers having become extinct, one 
 of the descendants of the second son of Sir Paul obtained a 
 new peerage with that title. Henceforth the various branches 
 of the family pursued a quiet and inglorious course of self- 
 aggrandisement, marrying heiresses whenever they had the 
 opportunity, and securing for their younger sons a share in 
 the Church's feast of fat things, such as deaneries, prebends, and 
 rectories, or else quartering them upon the services, where, 
 as examiners of customs, ornamental clerks, &c., they ceased 
 to be a burden upon their wealthier relatives. Since the 
 union of the two countries there is very little to be said of 
 them. Even in the days of George IV. I can only find one 
 solitary Gore with a comfortable sinecure of /^i, 000 a year. 
 
 For many years past the Hon. C. A. Gore, brother of the 
 Earl of Arran, has been a Commissioner of Woods and P^orests 
 at a salary of/ 1,200. During the thirty-nine years that he 
 has been in office he has received nearly ^4.7, 000 for his 
 services. Even now the present expenses of the Woods and 
 Forests are 22 per cent, of the receipts, and of the manner in 
 which the property is treated we had a striking illustration in 
 the case of Epping Forest, where the Crown rights were 
 almost given away to a set of rapacious landowners. Be it 
 remembered that not a rood of this land could be built upon 
 or even enclosed so long as the Crown rights existed. A 
 committee of the House of Commons having, in 1848, re- 
 ported in favour of the sale of the Crown rights to the 
 lords of the manors, they were, accordingly, sold by the 
 Woods and Forests Commissioners, to the extent of about 
 3,000 acres, for the paltry sum of ^6 per acre, the land being 
 actually worth from ^300 to £ 1,000 per acre for building 
 purposes. Fortunately for the people of London, these 
 astounding bargains have only brought to their purchasers pro- 
 longed litigation and ultimate defeat. But looking at that 
 diminutive figure of £(i per acre, I cannot think that the 
 country has derived any great advantages from the Hon. C. 
 A. Gore's prolonged tenure of office. Another brother of 
 the Earl of Arran is Rector of Withcall, in Lincolnshire
 
 54 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 (/^5i6 and a house). There are five other Gores in the 
 Church, with livings of the value o{ £ z\\, /'427, £ \t^, £102, 
 and / 300 respectively, with a house to each. There is 
 another Gore a major-general, and yet another a retired cap- 
 tain in the Navy. 
 
 The Ormsby-Gores still remain to be noticed, the head of 
 this branch of the family being Lord Harlech, who has a seat 
 at Brogyntyn, or Porkington, in Shropshire, on the Welsh 
 border. The Welsh property has been derived by successive 
 marriages. Porkington and other lands had descended to the 
 Owens through a matrimonial alliance with one of the 
 Maurices, who had in the same way obtained it from an ancient 
 Welsh house. The last male descendant of Sir John Owen, a 
 gallant Cavalier who narrowly escaped execution in the time 
 of the Commonwealth, through the personal influence of 
 Ireton, married the sister of the last Lord Godolphin, and, 
 through her, acquired such of the Godolphin property as Avas 
 not entailed on the Duke of Leeds. His daughter and 
 heiress married Owen Ormsby, a large Irish landowner. An 
 ancestor of the Ormsbys, like the Gores and Hamiltons, had 
 gone over to Ireland as an adventurer, in the time of Queen 
 Elizabeth, and obtained considerable grants of forfeited lands 
 in Roscommon, Sligo, and Mayo. This Owen Ormsby had 
 an only daughter, who married a certain William Gore, whose 
 descendants henceforth bore the double name of Ormsby- 
 Gore. The present Lord Harlech is brother of the first lord 
 of that ilk, who, while a commoner, drew for many years 
 /^335 annually as a Groom-in-waiting to the Queen, and was 
 advanced to the peerage in 1875. As Moore says : 
 
 " 'Tis pleasant, while nothing but mercantile fractures, 
 Some simple, some compound, is dinned in our ears, 
 To think that, though robbed of all coarse manufactures, 
 We keep up our fine manufacture of peers."
 
 LXV. 
 
 %]]t ^tlmv. 
 
 3» 
 
 [T is not often that a statesman delivers such a sug- 
 gestive speech as that of Lord Derby at Rochdale. 
 I am anxious that the lessons therein taught should 
 
 not be forgotten, especially the lessons which bear 
 
 upon our national expenditure. I shall take for my text in 
 this chapter a few sentences from Lord Derby's speech, 
 and endeavour to drive the lesson home. Lord Derby 
 said : — 
 
 " We all profess to wish for peace ; I hope most of us do so 
 sincerely ; but do not let us forget that in a country like this 
 there are various interests which tend steadily and constantly in 
 an opposite direction. In the first place, we have a more numer- 
 ous and more highly trained military class than we ever had 
 before. There is a natural, not discreditable, desire among them 
 to test the value of what they have been learning, and to acquire 
 the professional distinction which can only come with actual 
 service. They are much more a writing class than they were ; 
 they have learned to work the press instead of treating it with 
 contempt, and when you recollect that there is in what are called 
 the upper classes scarcely a family that has not some connection 
 with the Army, there is a social influence which tells powerfully 
 when questions of war or peace are in the balance. It is a mere 
 delusion to say, as people are continually saying, that every- 
 body is against war if it can be honourably avoided. On the 
 contrary, there are a good many persons who either think that 
 they will make a very good thing out of a war, or that they will 
 serve to keep off something that they dislike even more r and in 
 either case we must not be surprised if they act under their 
 convictions." 
 
 Of course, all this has been said before in the £c/io and other 
 journals, but probably it will obtain more attention now that 
 it is re-stated by so eminent a statesman. I pass by, for the 
 present, the references made by Lord Derby to the growing 
 influence of the fighting class, and for the present confine 
 myself to the rewards of the successful warrior, more espe- 
 cially for the successful warrior who happens to be in com-
 
 56 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 mand. These rewards must have a highly stimulating effect 
 upon those who have any hopes of obtaining glory of that 
 description. They are rewards which the people generally 
 think little about, but which it is impossible for those most 
 interested to ignore. Already I have given a striking 
 instance in the case of the Marlborough Peerage ; but the first 
 Duke of Marlborough owed his first successes to the favour 
 of one of the mistresses of Charles II., and he was assisted in 
 no small degree afterwards by the position held by the 
 Duchess as the favourite of Queen Anne. It is well, then, 
 that we should take a peerage whose existence is owing solely 
 to the distinguished services of him who first held it, and I 
 purposely select the Nelson Peerage because it is one of a 
 jjurely professional character. 
 
 It is not my province here to discuss whether the Great 
 French War was necessary to us or not ; or, supposing it was 
 a war which in the end we could hardly avoid, when our 
 responsibility for it would properly have commenced. The 
 name of Lord Nelson is dear to the hearts of Englishmen, and 
 of all our fighting heroes his biography is probably the best 
 known. So long as England is a great naval power the 
 memories of the Nile, Copenhagen, and Trafalgar will be 
 cherished. Even those who have an innate horror of war 
 cannot but feel a certain amount of admiration for the hero 
 whose dauntless courage in the face of desperate odds has 
 won for him such world-wide renown. 
 
 The Nelsons were an old Lancashire family. One of them 
 appears to have followed the fortunes of the youngest son of 
 the first Earl of Derby, who, in the reign of Henry VII., was 
 created Bishop of Ely. The See of Ely had considerable 
 possessions in Norfolk, and from that time forward the 
 Nelsons were established in that county. The grandfather 
 and father of Lord Nelson were Norfolk clergymen. It is 
 quite needless for me to dwell upon the career of the great 
 naval commander, whose death at Trafalgar, in the very hour 
 of victory, prevented him from a full enjoyment of the nation's 
 gratitude. I should indignantly repudiate any charge that I 
 have herein insinuated that Nelson was actuated by any low 
 motives of obtaining pecuniary reward ; rather would I echo 
 the v.'ords of our Poet Laureate — 
 
 "Mighty Seaman, tender and liue. 
 And pure from taint of craven guQe."
 
 The Nelsons. 57 
 
 But I remember that when the debate arose in the House of 
 Commons on the Nelson Grant and Pension, William 
 Wilberforcc said he viewed the matter as a pledge of national 
 liberality to encourage imitation. And it is from that point 
 of view that I wish to look at the gains of the Nelson family, 
 still bearing in mind the wise and weighty words of Lord 
 Derby quoted above. 
 
 Let us put on one side the ordinary pay of a naval officer, 
 and the prize-money, which at the battle of the Nile alone 
 amounted to over ^3,000, and the grant by the King of 
 Naples of the Bronte estate, whose annual value was ^3,000. 
 In 1797 Nelson was awarded a pension of^ 1,000 per annum. 
 In the following year he was awarded further pensions of 
 ^1,000 by the Irish Parliament, and / 2,000 by the English. 
 At his death the / 2,000 pension was continued to his 
 childless widow. The East India Company presented him 
 with ^"10,000. Soon after Nelson's death, in 1806, Lord 
 Henry Petty, afterwards Marquis of Lansdowne, proposed, on 
 behalf of the Government, that a sum of /^i 20,000 should be 
 vested in trustees, of which /"i 0,000 was to be given to each 
 of Nelson's two sisters; /'io,ooo to Nelson's brother (a 
 clergyman, who was created an Earl), or his brother's daughter; 
 and ^90,000 to be expended in the purchase of an estate for 
 the holders of the Nelson Peerage. Further, a perpetual 
 pension of^5,ooo per annum was annexed to the peerage to 
 enable its holder to support the dignity of an Earl. It was 
 objected that these rewards would be received " by collateral 
 relatives, personally unknown to the public, wdio could have 
 no claim but what they derived from the accidental honour of 
 bearing Nelson's name" ; but of course the Bill passed with 
 little difficulty. Let us proceed to sum up these grants and 
 pensions : — 
 
 ^1,000 pension 1797 — 1805 . . . _;^'8,oco 
 
 _^i,ooo ,, 1798— 1805 . . . 7,000 
 ^2,000 ,, 1798 — 1 83 1, received by Lady 
 
 Nelson after Lord Nelson's death . . 66,000 
 
 Grant by East India Company. . . 10,000 
 
 Grants to two Sisters .... 20,000 
 
 Grant to Brother ( 1st Earl) . . . 10,000 
 
 Purchase of Estate .... 90,000 
 j^5,ooo pension for 72 years to be continued 
 
 in perpetuity. .... 360,000 
 
 Total ;if57i,ooo
 
 58 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 With the /'go.ooo above alhided to an estate was purchased 
 near Downton, in Wiltshire. The manor and mansion of 
 Standlynch (the latter is now known as Trafalgar House) have 
 been at various time's in the possession of a number of 
 different families. In the reigns of Henry VI. and VII. the 
 estate belonging to Lord St. Amand, who bequeathed it to an 
 illegitimate son. In the reign of Elizabeth it belonged to a 
 family of the name of Greene, from whom it passed to the 
 Bocklands. The male line of the Bocklands died out, and it 
 was then purchased by the Vanderputs, who resold it to Sir 
 Peter Young, who sold it again to ]Mr. Henry Dawkins, from 
 whose executors it was purchased by the trustees appointed 
 by the Act of 1806. Trafalgar House is a comparatively 
 modern erection, the old manor house having been taken 
 down and the present mansion erected by Sir Peter Vanderput 
 in 1733. A subsequent possessor of the estate, Mr. Dawkins, 
 greatly enlarged it. 
 
 The only son of the first Earl Nelson died young, and while 
 his daughter, who married Lord Bridport, inherited the 
 Bronte estate, the Nelson Peerage, with its estates and 
 pension, passed to a son of Mrs. Bolton, the great Lord 
 Nelson's sister. At his death the earldom was inherited by 
 his eldest son, the present Earl.
 
 LXVI. 
 
 %])t ^xmmwbtn. 
 
 o 
 
 jP^RY recently, the magnificent mansion of the Earl 
 of Feversham, at Duncombe Park, near Helms- 
 ley, in the North Riding, was unfortunately de- 
 ^ st'royed by fire. I am all the more pleased to 
 Lnow that it was insured, as it is said to have been a popular 
 place of resort for the people of the North Riding in the 
 summer months. The familiar names of Helmsley and Dun- 
 combe, however, remind me that I have not yet sketched the 
 history of the house to which this great mansion belonged. 
 
 The Earl of Feversham owns 39,312 acres in the North 
 Riding of Yorkshire, with a rent-roll of/'34,329. Two hun- 
 dred years ago his ancestor did not own a foot of land in 
 that or any other county. The wealth of the family is due 
 almost entirely to one man, its founder ; and what manner of 
 man he was we shall see hereafter. For many generations 
 the castle and manor of Helmsley had been in the posses- 
 sion of the De Roos family, most of whose property was 
 derived by marriage with the Albinis. At the confiscation of 
 the monastic property, the far-famed Abbey of Rievaulx, near 
 to Helmsley, with the lands appertaining, was granted to De 
 Roos, Earl of Rutland, whose descendants, the Manners 
 family, still hold many of his ecclesiastical confiscations. 
 The heiress of the sixth Earl of Rutland, however, married 
 Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. The Villiers estates in York- 
 shire were given by the Long Parliament to Fairfax, whose 
 daughter married the second Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. 
 The career of this profligate nobleman, who wasted his sub- 
 stance in riotous living, has been mimortalised in a few lines 
 by one of our great poets. In 1695 his trustees sold the 
 estate in question to Charles Duncombe. 
 
 The Duncombes till then had been obscure Buckingham- 
 shire squires. Charles, who was the son of a younger son, 
 early in life started in business as a goldsmith in the City of 
 London. From small beginnings he rose to be one of the
 
 6o Our Old Nobility. 
 
 wealthiest men in the country. Swift, in his Journal to Stella, 
 under date April 5, 171 1, makes a note of his death as fol- 
 iQ^yg : — " Buncombe, the rich Alderman, died to-day, and, I 
 hear, has left the Duke of Argyll, who married his niece, 
 /^20o,ooo." The first mention I can find of him is that, 
 though a Tory in politics, he was one of a deputation from 
 the City appointed to present an address to William of Orange 
 when he arrived in London, and that he offered to place his 
 purse at the disposal of that Prince. A year or two after the 
 Revolution he purchased of the Chaplins the estate of Bar- 
 ford, near the rotten borough of Downton, in Wilts, by which 
 means he and his nephew after him obtained a safe and snug 
 seat in Parliament. Later in the reign of William, as we are 
 informed by Macaulay, he laid down nearly /"go.ooo for 
 Helmsley " at the moment when the trade of the Kingdom 
 was depressed to the lowest point." How was his enormous 
 wealth obtained } Mainly through the prevalence of a crime 
 which no longer is known — the clipping of the coin. All 
 students of the histor}- of the Revolution period know what 
 grievous injury was inflicted upon the people generally by the 
 state of the coinage, and with what brilliant success Charles 
 Montague, who had among his advisers Newton and Locke, 
 grappled with the difficulty. A mill had been set up in the 
 Tower, which turned out a new and improved coinage ; but 
 as fast as the milled money came out it disappeared, while 
 the old coins, which could be easily clipped, were clipped 
 more than ever, till at last the weight of many of the coins 
 did not exceed half their nominal value. The clipped money 
 was a daily grievance to the traders and workers, inflicting 
 upon them continual and heavy deductions from their labour 
 and profits ; but it will at once be perceived that there was 
 one class to whom a debased coinage brought immense profi-t. 
 What was the poison of labour was the meat of the banker ; 
 and of all the bankers of that time Charles Buncombe appears 
 to have profited most largely by a condition of affairs which 
 involved the people generally in disastrous loss. Of course, 
 Buncombe was not responsible in any way for the crimes of 
 the clippers ; and that he made the utmost use of the oppor- 
 tunities which were placed in his way, in the eyes of many 
 would simply prove him to have been a smart man of business, 
 who always did the best he could for his own interest. I only 
 wish to emphasise the fact that, though Helmsley was ob-
 
 TJic Diincoinbes. 6i 
 
 tained by purchase, the gains of him who bought it were 
 largely derived, not from beneficent trading, but from acci- 
 dental circumstances which enabled him to grow rich as 
 other people grew poor. 
 
 But Charles Buncombe had other means of increasing his 
 wealth ; he held one of those offices connected with the 
 Revenue which enabled him to add largely to his gains. 
 iNIacaulay says : — " Possessed of a private fortune equal to 
 that of any Duke, he had not thought it beneath him to accept 
 the place of Cashier of the Excise, and had perfectly under- 
 stood how to make that place lucrative ; but he had recently 
 (1698) been ejected from office by iMontague, who thought, 
 with good reason, that he was not a man to be trusted." En- 
 raged by his dismissal from his post. Buncombe, who was a 
 strong Tor}', sought an opportunity for revenge ; and, charging 
 ^Montague with malversation of office as Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer, instigated a Parliamentary inquiry. It was a 
 repetition of the old story — " The wicked diggeth a pit, and 
 falleth himself therein," for Montague not only passed scathe- 
 less through the ordeal, but had the satisfaction of seeing his 
 enemy put to confusion. To quote Macaulay once more, 
 Buncombe " made one unguarded admission after another, 
 and was at length compelled to confess, on the floor of the 
 House, that he had been guilty of an infamous fraud, which, 
 but for his own confession, it would have been scarcely pos- 
 sible to bring home to him." The same historian adds : — 
 " That Buncombe was guilty of shameful dishonesty was 
 acknowledged by all men of sense and honour in the party 
 to which he belonged." The fraud was that, being ordered 
 to pay/ 10,000 into the Exchequer, when he had in hand 
 double that sum in cash, he bought Exchequer bills, which 
 Avere receivable at par by the Treasury, at a considerable dis- 
 count, and paid them into the Treasury ; while, in order to 
 make it appear that these Bills had been received by him in 
 payment of taxes, he had employed "a knavish Jew" to 
 forge endorsements of names. 
 
 A Bill of Pains and Penalties to deprive him of two-thirds 
 of his property, which then amounted to considerably more 
 than ^^400, 000, was carried by a considerable majority in the 
 Commons, but was rejected in the Lords by the casting-vote 
 of the Buke of Leeds, who, as we have already seen, was 
 very much tarred with the same brush, and to whom, according
 
 62 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 to popular rumour, Duncombe had made a golden sacri- 
 fice. The following year he was tried in the King's Bench, 
 but acquitted, apparently because the Lord Chief Justice 
 directed the jury that, although he had committed a fault in 
 appropriating a large sum of money to his own uses, it was 
 not the fault set out in the indictment. In 1700 there came 
 a turn in the tide of his fortunes. He was chosen Sherift', 
 and received the honour of Knighthood; and in 1709 he 
 became Lord INIayor of London. As he had been a good 
 party man, fraud and forgery did not stand in the way of his 
 advancement when his own political friends were in power. 
 
 At the death of Sir Charles Duncombe, who was never 
 married, his property was divided between his nephew and 
 his sister or niece. The former sat for many years for the 
 pocket borough of Downton, and in 1747 was created Baron 
 Feversham. He left no male issue, and the title expired 
 with him ; but Mary Duncombe married a Mr. Thomas 
 Brown, who assumed his wife's name. Their son Thomas 
 married the daughter of Sir Thomas Slingsby, and he left 
 only a daughter, who married i\Ir. Robert Shafto, of Whit- 
 worth, Durham. The Yorkshire property then passed to a 
 younger son of Thomas Duncombe, who had two sons. The 
 younger was the father of Tom Duncombe, the Radical M.P. 
 for Finsbury. The elder, who sat in the House of Commons 
 for the rotten borough of Aldborough, was rewarded with a 
 peerage, as Baron Feversham, by Lord Liverpool in 1826. 
 Of the next Lord Feversham there is nothing noteworthy to 
 record. The present Peer, who had previously sat as a Con- 
 servative M.P. for the North Riding, succeeded his father in 
 
 1867, and was advanced to an earldom by Mr. Disraeli in 
 
 1868. One of his uncles, an Admiral, was for some years a 
 groom in waiting, 'and afterwards a Lord of the Admiralty. 
 Another uncle is Dean of York, with a salary of ^2,000 per 
 annum and a residence.
 
 LXVII. 
 
 JHIS family is a curious mixture of the old and the 
 new. Lord Aveland's title — derived from a 
 Wapentake in South Lincolnshire — only dates 
 ____^^^^^^^ from 1 856, and the Heathcote baronetcy only from 
 1732. It would at first sight appear odd to include the 
 Heathcotes among Our Old Nobility ; but it happens that 
 through his mother Lord Aveland is descended from more 
 than one ancient noble house. The IMarquises of Lindsey 
 and Dukes of Ancaster are now represented by him. Lord 
 Aveland owns in 
 
 Lincolnshire .... 17.637 acres 
 
 Rutland ..... 3,638 ,, 
 
 Derby and Hants .... 5 >> 
 
 Total 21,280 „ 
 
 with a rent-roll of /'46,8oo. Lord Aveland's mother, Lady 
 Willoughby D'Eresby, owns in 
 
 Lincolnshire .... 24,696 acres 
 
 Denbigh ..... 396.. 
 
 Carnaivon .... 30.39I .. 
 
 Perth ..... 76,837 ,, 
 
 Total 132,320 „ 
 
 with a rent-roll of f-jj^oo-^. As Lord Aveland is an only 
 son, I suppose he will some day inherit her property, and then 
 the grand total will be 163,600 acres ; annual value, /'i 20,805. 
 I am informed that his Lordship has recently become a Con- 
 servative, but till recently he ranked as a Liberal, and the 
 Heathcotes have, for the most part, been steady and con- 
 sistent Whigs. Lord Aveland, if not formally allied to the 
 Tories, at anv rate voted with the Government on the Afghan 
 ^^'ar. 
 
 The father of Gilbert Heathcote was an Alderman of
 
 64 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 Chesterfield ; Gilbert Heathcote himself was a London mer- 
 chant, who, in the reign of William III., Anne, and George I., 
 amassed a large fortune, and became successively Alderman, 
 Lord Mayor, and M.P. for the City of London. He was an 
 ardent supporter of the Whig party, and did not a little to break 
 down the monopoly of the East India Company at the time when 
 that corporation claimed the exclusive right of trading with 
 India. He was also one of the founders of the Bank of 
 England. Gilbert Heathcote was created a baronet in 1732, 
 and towards the close of his life purchased a large estate in 
 Rutlandshire. Normanton-park had been for several gene- 
 rations the property of the Mackworths, but, one member of 
 that family having lost heavily by the Civil War, and another 
 having deeply involved himself by a ruinous election contest 
 in Rutlandshire, the manors of Is^ormanton and Empingham 
 were sold for ^"39,000. Six years after the new purchaser 
 resold the estate, including — beside the above-mentioned- 
 lands at Weston, Ketton, and Whitwell, to Heathcote, wha 
 built a new mansion at Normanton-park, the stone for which 
 is said to have cost no less than / 10,000. From that time 
 forward the Heathcotes seem to have sat for Rutlandshire 
 pretty regularly. The fifth baronet, who was a prominent 
 member of the Whig party, was created Lord Aveland in 1856. 
 He married one of the two daughters of the nineteenth Lord 
 Willoughby D'Eresby. 
 
 It is necessary now to trace back the history of the 
 Willoughby D'Eresbys, which is not a little complicated. To 
 begin with the Berties, they were a Saxon family, who had 
 some property at Busted, in Kent. One of them having been 
 killed in a quarrel about tithes with the monks of Canterbury, 
 his father solicited Sweyn of Denmark to invade the kingdom, 
 and had the satisfaction of murdering every tenth monk in 
 the archiepiscopal city. Treason and murder, however,, 
 met their due reward in the expatriation of the Berties till 
 1 1 54, when they once more returned, and obtained from the 
 King a new grant of their ancient lands. In the reign of 
 Henry VIII. the heir of the Berties married the daughter 
 and heiress of Lord Willoughby D'Eresby, and their son was 
 summoned to Parliament by that title in the reign of Eliza- 
 beth, having inherited the estates of his mother. The son of 
 that nobleman was created Earl of Lindsey by Charles I., and 
 fell in the Royalist cause at Edgehill. The third Earl
 
 TJie HcatJicotcs. 65 
 
 was created Marquis of Lindsay in 1706. The second 
 Marquis, who was created Duke of Ancaster, married the 
 daughter and heiress of Sir Richard Wynne, of Gwydyr, in 
 Carnarvonshire. The Gwydyr estate is situated in the 
 loveliest part of North Wales, as all who have visited Bettws- 
 y-Coed, Llanrwst, and Trefriew can bear witness. It is rich 
 in minerals as well as in natural beauty, especially in slate, 
 zinc, and lead. Edenham, in Lincolnshire (6,300 acres), was, 
 I believe, part of the ancient property of the Willoughby 
 d'Eresbys ; but the Lincolnshire estates were further increased 
 by the marriage of the next heir to the daughter and co- 
 heiress of Sir John Brownlow. The fourth Duke of Ancaster 
 died childless, and the estates, as well as the barony of 
 Willoughby d'Eresby, passed to his sister. 
 
 We now come to the Burrells. The Burrells had long been 
 small landowners in Kent and Sussex, and a younger son of 
 that family, who was engaged in trade in the City, was 
 created a baronet in 1766, while another held the lucrative 
 office of Surveyor of Crown Lands. The grand-nephew of 
 the first baronet succeeded to the baronetcy and estates, and 
 married the sister of the Duke of Ancaster. On the death of 
 the latter without issue, she succeeded to the property, and 
 her husband was created Lord Gwydyr. On the death of his 
 mother the second Lord Gwydyr inherited the ancient barony 
 of Willoughby d'Eresby. The next and twentieth Lord 
 Willoughbv d'Eresby, of whose extraordinary escapades the 
 less said the better, left no male heirs. The Gwydyr estates 
 passed to a cousin, but the ancient barony and estates to his 
 two sisters, the survivor of whom is the present Lady 
 Willoughby d'Eresby, who married the first Lord Aveland. 
 
 The nineteenth Lord Willoughby d'Eresby married the 
 daughter and heiress of James Drummond, Lord Perth, 
 through whom were derived the large estates in Perthshire. 
 These included, and I suppose still include, an extensive 
 deer-forest, and the far-famed Loch Katrine, the scene of Sir 
 Walter Scott's "Lady of the Lake." The Drummonds have 
 been settled in Scotland about 800 years, and are supposed 
 to derive their name from the lands of Drymen, in Stirling- 
 shire. One of the race declared that it was a name given to 
 them by the King, derived from drum, a height, and 07ide, a 
 wave — in allusion to the storm through which the first Drum- 
 mond safely brought a Saxon Princess who was afterwards
 
 66 Our Old Nobility, 
 
 Queen of Scotland — a rather far-fetched derivation. How- 
 ever, it is stated that the Drummonds are descended from a 
 Hungarian nobleman v/ho accompanied Edgar Atheling and 
 his sisters to Scotland, and on the elevation of one of the 
 latter to the throne he received large grants of lands from 
 the King. One of his descendants added largely to them by 
 marriage with an heiress. About 400 years ago the head of 
 the house was created Lord Drummond, and in the reign of 
 James I. the holder of the barony was advanced to an earldom, 
 with the title of Earl of Perth. The fourth Earl, who was 
 Lord High Chancellor of Scotland under James IL, followed 
 the exiled monarch to France, and was rewarded with the 
 barren honour of a Dukedom which he could not claim. It 
 is remarkable that the Drummonds, though implicated in both 
 the Jacobite rebellions, contrived to keep the estates in the 
 family. The first titular Duke of Perth resided at the Court 
 of the Pretender till his death. His eldest son was engaged 
 in the Rebellion of 1715, and was attainted accordingly; but 
 he had taken care in 171 3 to convey his estates to his infant 
 son. The second titular Duke of Perth died in 1730, and in 
 1 745 his heir took part in the second Jacobite Rebellion, and 
 was mortally wounded at Culloden. His younger brother also 
 took part in the Rebellion. Both were included in the 
 attainder and forfeiture that followed ; but after the death of 
 the younger brother his heirs obtained an Act of Parliament 
 authorising the Crown to grant them the forfeited estates on 
 payment of /'si, 547. This was paid by James Drummond, 
 afterwards created Lord Perth, whose sister, as I have said, 
 married the nineteenth Lord Willoughby d'Eresby. 
 
 I read somewhere recently that Lord Aveland was enter- 
 taining a distinguished party at Noniianton Park, and that 
 about 1,000 head of game per day fell to their guns. If this 
 be true, I should hardly like to be one of the unfortunate 
 tenants whose crops fed the game in question. However, 
 there are plenty of other landowners to keep Lord Aveland 
 company in that respect. 
 
 I ought not to omit to say that the Barony of Willoughby 
 d'Eresby carries with it the hereditar}- title of Great Chamber- 
 lain of England
 
 LXVIII. 
 
 
 4i- 
 
 HO]\I are you going to vote for ?" asked a friend 
 of mine at a Lancashire election some years 
 ago. " Oh, I vote for Stanley," was the reply ; 
 
 "it's the Stanleys that made Lancashire." 
 
 *' Nonsense," my friend retorted, "you mean that Lancashire 
 made the Stanleys." That Lancashire mill-hand only gave 
 expression to one of the most prevalent of absurd popular 
 delusions — a delusion which is constantly repeated, simply 
 because people never pause to think. I propose to examine 
 it in the light of facts. 
 
 I must say that I approach the Stanleys with some reluct- 
 ance. From the respect, and even gratitude, with which I 
 regard the present Earl of Derby, I should have preferred to 
 pass over the family in silence ; but the prominence of the 
 Stanleys, both in history and in the new Domesday Book, 
 requires that their story should not be left untold. Well, at 
 least, that story will serve as a foil to the rectitude, the con- 
 scientiousness, the fidelity to principle, the hatred of blood- 
 shed, which has been so nobly manifested by the present heir 
 of Knowsley. Alike on account of their ancient lineage, 
 their romantic history, their electoral influence, and their 
 vast wealth, the Stanleys occupy a foremost position. Among 
 the Earls the Earldom of Derby occupies the second place in 
 the order of precedence, the Earldom of Shrewsbury alone 
 coming before it. Lord Derby owns in 
 
 Lancashire 
 
 Cheshire 
 
 Tipperary 
 
 Limerick 
 
 Flint 
 
 Total 63,834 „ 
 "With a rent-roll of _2^i 70,268, 
 
 although these figures, of course, do not convey an approxi- 
 mate idea of his annual income, for, while Lord Derby owns 
 
 47,269 
 
 acres 
 
 9,202 
 
 J) 
 
 6,531 
 
 jj 
 
 740 
 
 }) 
 
 92 
 
 )>
 
 68 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 one-eighth of the great county of Lancaster, it must be 
 remembered that his property is situated in the southern and 
 richest portion of that county. 
 
 The Stanleys claim to be descended from Adam de Audley, 
 who was settled in Cumberland in the reign of Henry I. 
 The patronymic they now bear was assumed somewhat later, 
 Avhen one of the family acquired the IManor of Stanlcigh, in 
 Staffordshire. Afterwards one of them acquired by marriage 
 the Manor of Stourton and bailiwick of Wyrrel Forest, in 
 Cheshire. Their rise into power and fame is contempora- 
 neous with the Wars of the Roses. The motto of the family, 
 " Sans changer^'' is diametrically opposite to the truth, for no 
 family ever trimmed its sails more cleverly with the rising or 
 falling winds, or to greater personal advantage. 
 
 With Sir John Stanley the greatness of the house may be 
 said to have commenced. He was a younger son, who in- 
 herited a modest estate at Newton, in Macclesfield. Sir John 
 was appointed Lord Deputy of Ireland by Richard H., and 
 from the same monarch he received a grant of the estate of 
 Castle Blake in that island. He was afterwards successively 
 Lord Justice and Lord Lieutenant. Sir John, like his still 
 more famous grandson, showed a remarkable faculty for dis- 
 cerning, just in time, the winning side in a dispute ; and at 
 last, foreseeing the downfall of Richard, he joined himself to 
 Henry of Bolingbroke, and, on that Prince's accession as 
 Henry IV., Stanley was reappointed Lord Lieutenant of Ire- 
 land. When the Percys revolted, Stanley made himself useful 
 in suppressing the rebellion, and was rewarded with a grant 
 of the sovereignty of the Isle of Man — i.e., with a gift of 
 170,000 acres of land — which remained in the possession of 
 his male and female descendants till about 100 years ago, 
 when, as I have already stated in the sketch of the Athol 
 family, it was repurchased, at enormous cost, by the nation. 
 Under Henry IV., Sir John Stanley held a number of lucrative 
 offices. 
 
 Sir John Stanley also contracted a marriage which greatly 
 conduced to the advancement of his fortunes. His wife was 
 Isabella, daughter and heiress of Sir Thomas Lathom. The 
 Lathoms were a Norman famil}', whose original patronymic 
 was FitzHenry ; but they afterwards assumed the name of 
 Lathom, from the manor of Lathom, of which they obtained 
 a grant. One of them had married a Know'sley heiress, and
 
 TJic Stanleys of Knowsley. 69 
 
 had thus acquired the estate bearing that name. Henceforth 
 the names of Knowsley and Lathom became indissolubly 
 connected with the Stanleys. Lathom House, which was so 
 gallantly defended by the Countess of Derby during the Civil 
 War, was destroyed by order of the Parliament. The ninth 
 Earl rebuilt it, but left it in an unfinished state ; and one of 
 his co-heiresses sold it about 150 years ago. It is now the 
 property of Lord Skelmersdale. Knowsley, near Prescot 
 which has a park between nine and ten miles in circumference, 
 is still the principal seat of the Earls of Derby. The father- 
 in-law of Sir John Stanley presented him, on his marriage, 
 with a house at Liverpool ; and, soon after. Sir John obtained 
 a license to fortify this house, which he had rebuilt or en- 
 larged. Thus commenced the connection of the Stanleys 
 with Liverpool. It is worthy of mention that this old house 
 was sold in 1737, and afterwards converted into a gaol. It 
 was finally pulled down in 1819. 
 
 At the fall of the Lancastrian dynasty, the Stanleys were 
 once more on the winning side, and received from the con- 
 queror, Edward IV., as their reward, large estates formerly 
 belonging to the Duchy of Lancaster. This transaction 
 brings us to Sir Thomas Stanley, grandson of the last-named, 
 who was Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland and Lord Chamberlain 
 to Henry VI. During the Wars of the Roses he also acted a 
 most treacherous part ; but, like his grandfather, he had the 
 knack of making his treasons profitable, and of always appear- 
 ing on the winning side. By turn he was Yorkist, Lancas- 
 trian, and neutral. While still nominally a Yorkist, he mar- 
 ried the Countess of Richmond, mother of Henry Tudor, 
 afterwards Llenry VII. From Richard III. he received a 
 large pension, and extensive grants of manors, lordships, 
 castles, and farms, as also did his brother. Sir William Stan- 
 ley. He was also appointed Steward of the Household to 
 Richard III., and was commissioned by that King to raise 
 forces to oppose Henry as soon as he landed in England ; 
 but all the time he was in league with Richard's enemy, and 
 furnished him with secret information of Richard's plans. 
 How he and his brother turned upon Richard at Bosworth 
 Field, and how one or other of them (it is not quite certain 
 w^hich) set the crown upon Henry's head when the battle was 
 over, is known to every reader of English history. The gains 
 of both brothers were enormous. Sir William was executed
 
 70 Ottr Old Ahbility. 
 
 not very long after by Henry. As for Sir Thomas, almost all 
 the confiscated lands of the vanquished Yorkists in the North 
 fell to his share, including the estates of Sir James Harring- 
 ton of Hornby, Sir Thomas Broughton of Broughton, Lord 
 Lovel, Sir Thomas Pilkington of Chetham, Bythom of By- 
 thom, Pooton of Pooton, Newby of Kirkby, "with at least 
 twenty gentlemen's estates more." From the despoiled Pil- 
 kingtons alone Stanley had no less than seven manors. Of 
 these confiscations I shall have something more to say here- 
 after. Sir Thomas had been created Lord Stanley in the 
 reign of Henry VL ; by Henry VH. he was created Earl of 
 Derby, Knowsley being situated in the hundred of West 
 Derby. 
 
 The third Earl, who lived during the Reformation period, 
 was renowned for his hospitality and lavish expenditure — his 
 housekeeping expenses are said to have amounted to £ \,ooo 
 per annum, an immense sum in those times. His political 
 career, however, was a most inglorious one. Under Edward 
 VL he acted as a Commissioner for the Advancement of the 
 Reformation ; under Mary he delivered Protestants to be 
 burnt at the stake, and had to endure their reproaches for his 
 inconsistency ; under Elizabeth he hunted Catholics to the 
 death. Thus he contrived to keep all he had and to acquire 
 still more. For instance, in the reign of Edward he increased 
 his Knowsley estates by exchanging Derby Place, afterwards 
 the Heralds' College, for lands belonging to the Crown in the 
 vicinity of Knowsley. Like all such bargains in that reign, 
 the exchange was doubtless greatly to the advantage of the 
 subject at the expense of the Crown. He also obtained, in 
 the reign of Edward VL, a grant of the lands belonging to 
 the Collegiate Church of INLmchester, whose annual value in 
 1649 was reckoned at_^i,355. Subsequently the College was 
 reconstituted, and the Stanleys had to disgorge. His son 
 appears to have acquired three small monastic houses in 
 Lincolnshire ; what has become of them I am unable to trace. 
 Ormskirk, in South Lancashire, formerly belonged to a 
 monastic house, but at the suppression of the religious houses 
 it was granted to Lord Derby, and, with the advowson of the 
 Vicarage, is still in the possession of his descendants. 
 
 The seventh Earl, down to the outbreak of the Civil War, 
 was regarded as an adherent of the Puritan Party, but he 
 afterwards joined the Royalists. After the relief of Lathom
 
 The Stanleys of Knowdey. 7 1 
 
 House by Prince Rupert, the Earl and the Prince attacked 
 Bolton, and took it by storm. After the fighting was ended, 
 a wholesale massacre of the townspeople took place, for 
 which the Earl, rightly or wrongly, was held in part respon- 
 sible. On the collapse of the Royalist cause, the Earl retired 
 to the Isle of Man ; but, having taken part in the Battle of 
 Worcester, he was captured, and sent to Bolton to be exe- 
 cuted. At the Restoration, his son, who had risked his life 
 in one of the later Royalist risings, obtained a large part of 
 the family estates once more, but the Stanleys lost heavily by 
 the Civil War. Lathom had been destroyed, Knowsley was 
 little bettter than a heap of ruins, and, as Ormerod says in 
 his History of Cheshire, " half the estates were sold or seques- 
 tered, and the Bill to effect their redemption, which justice 
 had induced both Houses of Parliament to pass unanimously, 
 was rejected by the son of that King for whom the Earl's 
 father had risked his fortunes and laid his head upon the 
 block." His successor asserted that " he possessed no estate 
 in Lancashire, Cumberland, Westmoreland, Yorkshire, Ches- 
 hire, Warwick, and Wales whence he could not see another of 
 equal or greater value lost by his grandfather for his loyalty 
 and his service to his king and country." The strong feeling 
 which he held in this respect he permanently recorded by the 
 inscription on Knowsley ; — " James Earl of Derby and Lord 
 of Man and the Isles, grandson of James Earl of Derby, and 
 of Charlotte, daughter of Claude Duke of Tremouille, whose 
 husband James was beheaded at Bolton, 15 Oct., 1652, for 
 strenuously adhering to Charles II., who refused a Bill passed 
 unanimously by both Houses of Parliament for restoring to 
 the family the estates lost by his loyalty to him. 1732." 
 
 This Earl and his brother both died without issue, and 
 while a portion of the Stanley property went to co-heiresses, 
 the Earldom of Derby and the major part of the estates re- 
 verted to the Stanleys of Bickerstaffe, who were descended 
 from a younger son of the son of the first Lord Derby. The 
 manor of Bickerstaffe they had acquired by marriage. The 
 present Earl has no children, and the heir presumptive is his 
 brother, Colonel Stanley, the present Secretary of State for War. 
 
 We have seen how the Stanleys acquired most of their 
 property ; let us now proceed to glance at the state of that 
 property at the present. I believe that Lord Derby is as 
 liberal and enlightened a landowner as anyone would judge
 
 72 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 him to be simply from reading his speeches. He understands 
 that a rural landowner's first duty is to refrain from doing any 
 mischief, and has said so in almost those identical words. I 
 wish that all the landowners in England had as clear an under- 
 standing of the limits of their rights, and of the way to sub- 
 serve their real interests, as Lord Derby. But our inquiry is 
 not whether Lord Derby is or is not a good landlord, but 
 whether the Stanleys made Lancashire, or Lancashire the 
 Stanleys. 
 
 The North of England at the present time is great in 
 wealth, enterprise, and power; but its preponderance is quite 
 of modern growth. That growth has been one of immense 
 rapidity. In 1692 the real property of Lancashire assessed 
 for the Land Tax amounted to ^^97,242 ; in i860 it amounted 
 to /"i 1,453,851. Take another fact. In 1590 Chorlton Hall 
 and Estate at INIanchester was sold by Edmond Trafiford for 
 ^320 ; at the close of the last century the same property 
 fetched / 60,000; its present value would have to bereckoned 
 by hundreds of thousands. Whence the enormous increase in 
 prosperity } Take the Land Tax. In the time of William 
 III. it was 4s. in the pound ; the poundage of Lancashire at 
 the present time is one-eighth of a penny. Have the Stanleys 
 made this difference, or in any appreciable degree contributed 
 to bring it about } I suppose that no one, whatever interest 
 he may find in the Wars of the Roses, will contend that the 
 dethronement of Richard II. or the accession of Richard III., 
 or the establishment of Henry VII. upon the throne, had 
 much to do with the prosperity of modern Lancashire. The 
 Stanleys profited greatly, as we have seen, by each of these 
 transactions ; but Lancashire did not grow rich till a very 
 much later date. It is the cotton manufacture which has 
 made Lancashire what it is, and the cotton manufacture is 
 quite of modern growth. In 1760 the whole amount of its 
 production was /^ 200,000 ; in i860 it had grown to 
 /^85, 000, 000. Was this, or any considerable proportion of 
 this, owing to the Stanleys ? No. They had, by betraying 
 certain kings and fighting for others, obtained the right to 
 say to the industrious and enterprising men of Lancashire, 
 " Before you build your mills and your warehouses and docks, 
 before you shall live near enough to those mills, warehouses, 
 and docks to work in them, you must agree to pay us out of 
 your profits or earnings so much per annum, you taking all
 
 TJic Stanleys of Kiwzvsley. 73 
 
 risks." And it must be borne in mind that the right to impose 
 such conditions involved the duty of taking a proportionate 
 share in the defence of the country. It is on record that once 
 in time of peril a Stanley mustered 20,000 armed men on a 
 Lancashire heath ; I wonder how many men Lord Derby' s 
 Land Tax would keep at the present time. It was not the 
 mere accidental possession of the soil of Lancashire by any 
 particular families that made it strong and rich and prosper- 
 ous, but the inventive skill of Hargreaves, Arkwright, and 
 Crompton, the capital and enterprise of the Peels and 
 Philipses and Potters and Cheethams ; the industry of her 
 myriads of operatives. 
 
 Let us take Bury as a sample. It formerly belonged to the 
 Pilkingtons, who had seven manors in Lancashire, all of 
 which were confiscated and granted to the Stanleys after the 
 Battle of Bosworth. The comparative smallness of its value, 
 down to within the last hundred years, may be gathered from 
 the fact that, in 1793, the population was less than 3,000. In 
 I 83 1 it had grown to 15,000, in 1861 to 37,563, and in 1871 
 to 41,517. The latter figures apply to the borough area, thus 
 swelling the total by about 10,000; but we shall be within 
 the mark in stating that Bury has grown tenfold in population 
 since 1793. According to Baine's "History of Lancashire," 
 with the exception of a few small freeholds, one-half of the 
 town is glebe, belonging to the rectory (Bury being a family 
 living of the Stanleys) ; the other is leasehold under Lord 
 Derby. As to the rectory, I note that in 1764, a Stanley 
 being rector, an Act of Parliament was passed empowering 
 the Rector of Bury to grant building leases for ninety-nine 
 years of the glebe lands. In 1834 the annual value of the 
 living was estimated at ^1,937. What it is at the present 
 time I am unable to state, as Bury is one of those livings the 
 value of which is not given in Clergy reference books. Several 
 district churches are now in existence, and, as the patronage 
 is in the hands of the Rector, probably a large portion of 
 the endowments came out of the funds of the mother church. 
 Considering the actual value of the patronage appendant to it, 
 the living of Bury must be almost a small bishopric, the 
 property be it remembered, of the Stanleys. In 1867 the 
 rateable property in Bury was ^^3 62, 300. How much of this 
 was actually in the hands of the Stanleys of course I cannot 
 say, but if the authority I have previously quoted is right in
 
 74 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 stating that, with the exception of a few small freeholds. 
 Bury is the freehold property of the Stanleys and their family 
 living, at some time or other, as the leases fall in, we know to 
 whom nearly all this vast property will belong. The Stanleys 
 sign leases, and silly people fancy that in writing their names 
 the Stanleys have made Lancashire. 
 
 Had I space I might pass in review other properties held 
 by the Stanleys in the Cotton Districts. The Manor of 
 Bolton, for instance, belonged to the Harrington family, one 
 of whom was attainted for his devotion to the cause of 
 Richard HI. One fourth of the manor is still the property 
 of the descendant of the first Earl of Derby, who obtained a 
 grant thereof from Henry VH. Some of the Stanley con- 
 fiscations were, like Broughton-in-Furness, sold in the time of 
 the Great Rebellion ; others, like Upholland, near Wigan, 
 were sold by the daughters of the ninth Earl ; others, like 
 Broughton, in South Lancashire, were alienated to make 
 provision for a bastard son ; but the most valuable still remain 
 in the possession of the heir of Knowsley. 
 
 Down to the early part of the last century the Stanleys held 
 but little property in and around Liverpool, the most import- 
 ant being the old tower already described. But about the 
 year 1 710 the extensive estates of the IMoores, of Bank Hall, 
 in Liverpool, Bootle, and Kirkdale, who had long held a 
 prominent position in the town, were sold to the Earl of 
 Derby for the sum of /"i 2,000. The Manor of West Derby, 
 indeed, was once the property of the Stanleys, but it was long 
 since sold by them, and, after passing through various hands, 
 it came into the possession of the Salisbury Cecils by the 
 marriage of a former Marquis of Salisbury with an heiress of 
 the Gascoynes. The Moore estate cost /"i 2,000 in 1710. 
 Now let us pursue our inquiry whether Lancashire made the 
 Stanleys or the Stanleys made Lancashire. I presume no one 
 will be bold enough to' affirm that the accidental and quies- 
 cent possession of land by one particular man in itself caused 
 the development of the Liverpool trade. The cotton manu- 
 facture made Liverpool what it is ; and I have yet to learn 
 that the Stanleys made the cotton trade. Had Liverpool re- 
 mained a fifth-rate seaport, the greater part of the Stanley 
 estates would have produced no more than an agricultural 
 rent, and on the coast line nothing at all. But as Liverpool 
 grew it began to construct docks ; as it grew bigger it en-
 
 The Stanleys of Knozvsky. 75 
 
 larged them. ]\Iost of the land upon which the docks were 
 constructed belonged to the Corporation; but in 1843 further 
 extension was necessary, and one thousand linear yards of 
 frontage to the river in the township of Kirkdale were bought 
 of Lord Derby for ^17,500. Liverpool alone made that land 
 valuable, and Liverpool bought it at a high figure. 
 
 But the time arrived when it was necessary to enlarge the 
 Dock accommodation. Lord Derby had yet an enormous 
 frontage to the sea which only the Dock authorities could 
 utilise. In 1 847 the whole of the foreshore to the extremity 
 of the township of Bootle was acquired by the Dock Trustees. 
 The price was that the excavations made should be used in 
 making land for Lord Derby, at the expense of the Dock 
 Trust. When the land, which had before produced next door 
 to nothing, was duly made, it was purchased by the Dock 
 authorities. The quantity was 270,000 square yards, and the 
 price was ^90,000. I very much doubt whether that particular 
 slice of land at the time Avhen i\Ir. jNIoore sold it with his 
 other property would have fetched as many pence. 
 
 I have dealt with the Stanley family at such a length that I 
 must refrain from drawing any conclusions from the facts 
 which I have adduced. Indeed, to the thoughtful reader, 
 comment is unnecessary. Viscount Halifax once said that, 
 even including local rates, and including what they pay of 
 the general taxation of the countr}-, the landed proprietors pay 
 a less amount of taxation, in proportion to the whole amount 
 raised, than any other people in Europe. Richard Cobden 
 warned the same class "not to force the middle and indus- 
 trious classes of England to understand how they have been 
 cheated, robbed, and bamboozled upon the subject of taxa- 
 tion." In the present state of the country, is it not high time 
 that the middle and industrious classes should inquire how 
 and by whom they have been " cheated and bamboozled" ?
 
 LXIX. 
 
 JS the heaven is rendered ornate and bright by the 
 stars, so not only realms, but royal diadems, 
 shine by the light of dignities, and the more 
 
 noble and brave be he who is exalted to the 
 
 fasces of honour, so much the more valorous doth he become ; 
 when, as gifts increase, the motives for confirming them 
 increase, and from him to whom more is committed a more 
 perfect order of conversation and polity is expected. Hence 
 it is that we, considering the strenuous probity and circum- 
 spect foresight, and begemmed splendour of manners and 
 lineage, of o\ir most dear Cousin John, Baron of Talbot," (S:c. 
 So runs the preamble of the patent of nobility held by the 
 Earl of Shrewsbury, the Premier Earl of England. The first 
 sentence is a rather tangled one ; but I quote it in order 
 respectfully to commend the last clause of it to the Earl of 
 Aylesford and other inheritors of titles: — "To whom more is 
 committed a more perfect order of conversation and polity is 
 expected." The patent in question was only granted in 1442, 
 but the Talbots were ennobled long before. 
 
 The Talbots have claimed to have been settled in England 
 before the Conquest ; but the probability is that they came 
 over with the Conqueror or shortly afterwards, and obtained 
 a small estate in Bedfordshire as under-tenants of the Earl of 
 Buckingham. Somewhat later a Talbot obtained an extensive 
 grant of lands in Herefordshire. The great-grandson of this 
 Talbot was engaged in a good deal of fighting on the Welsh 
 border, and married a daughter of Rhys ap Griffith, Prince of 
 South Wales. One of his descendants married an heiress, by 
 whom other property in Herefordshire and South Wales was 
 acquired. This same Talbot, who married a second Welsh 
 heiress, also had lands in Oxon, Berks, and Kent. One of his 
 descendants died possessed also of lands in Gloucester and 
 Wilts. Another Talbot, of whom more hereafter, married an 
 heiress whose chief possessions were in Yorkshire. Strange 
 to say, the present head of the house has no estates either in
 
 The Talbot s. 77 
 
 Bedfordshire, Hereford, Glamorgan, Oxon, Berks, Kent, 
 Gloucester, Wilts, or Yorkshire. The present Earl owns in 
 
 Staffordshire 
 Cheshire . 
 Worcester 
 Shropshire 
 Derby 
 
 18,954 acres. 
 8,640 ,, 
 3,608 ,. 
 2,186 ,, 
 1.348 ,, 
 
 Total 34,736 
 With arentroU of/'58,335. 
 
 Mr. C. Talbot has 33,920 acres in Glamorgan, and ]Mr. John 
 Talbot 6,026 acres in Roscommon. 
 
 Sir John Talbot, who made his family one of the foremost 
 in England, inherited from his father estates in Herefordshire, 
 and from his mother the inheritance of the Le Stranges of 
 Blakeniere, near Whitchurch, in Salop. By a marriage with 
 the heiress of Lord Furnivall, he succeeded to large estates 
 in and around Sheffield, which have descended bv marriaire 
 to the Dukes of Norfolk. He also in the same manner be- 
 came possessed of the estate of Alveton, or Alton, on which 
 is erected the far-famed seat of Alton Towers. Alton was in 
 the possession of the Crown soon after the Conquest. It is 
 not certain to whom it was granted, but shortly afterwards 
 the De Verdons acquired it by marriage ; in the same way it 
 passed to the Furnivalls, through whom it passed to the 
 Talbots. Ingestre, in the same county, from whence the Earl 
 of Shrewsbury derives a secondary title of Viscount, was de- 
 rived later on by the marriage of another Talbot with an 
 heiress of the Chetwynds, who in turn had obtained it by 
 a marriage with an heiress of the Mittons, who had probably 
 obtained a grant of it not long after the Conquest. Thus it 
 may safely be said of the greater part of the Staffordshire 
 estates that they have been inherited by the descendant, 
 either on the male or female side, of the very persons who 
 originally obtained grants of them from the Norman Kings. 
 
 It is worthy of notice that the Earls of Shrewsbury derived 
 considerable benefit from the confiscation of monastic pro- 
 perty. Among their grants I find Worksop Priory, Notts ; a 
 small religious house at Derby ; the site of another small 
 house at Knaresborough ; Tickhill Collegiate Church, York- 
 shire ; Rufiford Abbey, Notts ; Flanesford Prior}', Hereford, 
 and lands belonging to Rocester Abbey, Staffordshire. All
 
 78 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 these appear to have passed away ; even the land in Rocester, 
 Blore, Klayfield, and Swincoe, in Staffordshire, belonging to 
 Rocester Abbey, in the time of Elizabeth had passed to a 
 younger son. 
 
 Sir John Talbot, Lord Talbot, and subsequently Earl of 
 Shrewsbury, played an important part in his time, was for 
 some years Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and was one of the 
 most conspicuous figures in the French wars of Henrv V. and 
 Henry VI. Though we may lament that so much English 
 blood and treasure were spent in these unprofitable struggles, 
 the prophecy which Shakespeare put into the mouth of 
 Henry V. on the eve of Agincourt has been amply fulfilled — 
 
 " Then shall our names, 
 Familiar in their mouths as household words, 
 Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter, 
 Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Glo'ster, 
 Be in their flowing cups freshly remembered." 
 
 In the following reign Talbot was taken prisoner by Joan 
 of Arc, and, after three years' captivity, was ransomed. It 
 was for his valour and conduct in the subsequent French 
 wars that he was created Earl of Shrewsbury. In 1453 the 
 hero of no less than forty-seven battles and skirmishes was 
 killed by a cannon-ball. I suppose, as an Englishman, I 
 ought to feel grateful to him for all this fighting ; but, if I 
 ought, I don't. To me the net result of it all appears to be 
 simply that he was conspicuous enough to be immortalised by 
 Shakespeare as 
 
 " The Talbot so much feared abroad. 
 That with his name the mothers still their babes." 
 
 The first Earl of Shrewsbury had grown grey in the service 
 of the House of Lancaster, but the house of Talbot was 
 secured from any possible danger of taking the losing side at 
 Bosworth from the fact that the heir was but a child. In his 
 after years he stood stoutly by Henry VII. and Henry VIII. , 
 and, as we have seen, had some share in the spoil of the mo- 
 nasteries. His son was for fifteen years the gaoler of Mary, 
 Queen of Scots. His second wife was the famous Bess of 
 Hardwicke, whose daughter, Mary Cavendish, his heir mar- 
 ried. The latter had no children, and was succeeded by his 
 brother, who also died childless. 
 
 The title and estates then passed to a distant kinsman
 
 The Talbot s. 79 
 
 descended from the third grandson of the first Earl. This 
 grandson, Gilbert Talbot, had obtained from Henry VII. 
 grants of the manors of Grafton and Upton Warren, in Wor- 
 cestershire, with divers other lands in that county which had 
 been forfeited by the attainder of Stafford, Duke of Bucking- 
 ham. In the Civil War the Talbots fought on the Royalist 
 side, and their castle at Alton was destroyed. The Earl who 
 was in possession at the time of the Revolution of 1688 had 
 been bred a Catholic, but abjured Romanism, and is said to 
 have mortgaged his estate in order to raise money to assist 
 the expedition of the Prince of Orange. Like several other 
 vacillating statesmen of that period, though he more than 
 once held office under William, he had secret relations with 
 the exiled King. He was elevated by William to the Duke- 
 dom of Shrewsbury. The double part he played was, how- 
 ever, redeemed at last by the energy and decision he showed 
 at the death of Anne. Unsummoned he attended the Council, 
 and uniting with Argyll and Somerset, he prevailed over 
 Bolingbroke and the other Jacobite intriguers. Inconsistent 
 and unfaithful as he was, England owes gratitude to the man 
 who, at the Revolution of 1688 and the accession of the 
 House of Hanover, placed his great influence at the service 
 of Constitutional Government when the cause was trembling 
 in the balance. 
 
 The Duke of Shrewsbury left no children, and the duke- 
 dom expired ; but the earldom passed to a distant kinsman, a 
 Catholic priest. From him it passed thrice from nephew to 
 nephew. At length it passed to one who, having no issue, 
 bequeathed the estates to the Howards, in spite of the Family 
 Act which the Duke of Shrewsbury had obtained, entailing 
 his estates for ever. The case was fought out in the Law 
 Courts, and decided against the Howards, and title and 
 estates passed to a descendant of the third son of the second 
 Earl. One of the Talbots of this line had risen to be Lord 
 Chancellor, and acquired by marriage with a Welsh heiress 
 considerable property in Glamorgan. His son was created 
 Earl Talbot and Baron Dynevor— the latter peerage passing 
 to his daughter, who married George Rice, a Welsh land- 
 owner. The Dynevor peerage is still held by their descend- 
 ants. Earl Talbot left no sons, and was succeeded by a 
 nephew who had married a Chetwynd heiress, and from whom 
 the present Earl of Shrewsbury is descended.
 
 8o Our Old Nobility. 
 
 The Earl who was living at the time of the passage of 
 the first Reform Bill ought not to be passed by unnoticed. 
 He was a Roman Catholic, but he was a staunch sup- 
 porter of "the Bill." In one of the debates in 1832, he 
 declared that he was at a loss to know from what evils the 
 Constitution (as it was then) had saved the country. We had 
 had expensive wars ; we had ^800,000,000 of debt ; we had 
 had rebellion and revolution, great and frequent commercial 
 embarrassments, and the strange picture of an intelligent and 
 active population idle and starving in the midst of abundance. 
 The only way to test the value of the Constitution was to 
 pass a measure to give its merits fair-play. They must either 
 consent to right the people, or the people would right them- 
 selves. The Clergy, who had too frequently been the willing 
 ministers of the worst forms of tyranny, and participators in 
 all acts of extravagance, spoliation, and corruption, ought to 
 be the first to come forward to discharge their duty to the 
 country. He further declared that " if the House of Com- 
 mons needed reform, so likewise would the House of Lords, 
 to prevent the danger of continual collision, and to secure 
 that unity of action essential to the management of the affairs 
 of a great nation." It would be rather difficult to find such 
 an outspoken peer now.
 
 LXX. 
 
 ©Ire Jiteiu:uiriaf?. 
 
 I HE Fitzmaurices have been for more than a century 
 among the most distinguished of the great Whig 
 houses. Politically, the house is now represented 
 
 ^__ by Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, INI. P. for the little 
 
 family borough of Calne, who is certainly something more 
 than a Whig, and who occasionally contributes political 
 articles to the magazines. In Wiltshire he is a tower of 
 strength to the Liberal party. On the rare occasions when he 
 addresses the House, though he is not the man to command 
 a large audience, he shows a thorough knowledge of his sub- 
 ject, and possibly in the future, with the family advantages 
 which he possesses, he may become a much more prominent 
 politician than he is now. His elder brother, the Marquis of 
 Lansdowne, does not take a very active part in public affairs, 
 but fulfils the duties of a liberal and enlightened landowner. 
 I knovv' something of the condition of Wiltshire, where for the 
 most part the agricultural labourers are in a low condition, 
 and if I were asked to point out the district in which they 
 obtain the highest wages and occupy the best cottages, I 
 should certainly give the palm to the estates of the Marquis 
 of Lansdowne. Indeed, some time back, when there was a 
 dispute between the farmers and the men, in which the Mar-, 
 quis endeavoured to play the part of a mediator, the men were 
 divided, because a considerable number of them lived in the 
 cottages of the Marquis, and had a Very strong sense of the 
 advantage of being his tenants. 
 
 The Marquis of Lansdowne owns in Wilts 1 1,145 acres, and 
 in Hants four acres. The greater part of his property is in 
 Ireland, where he owns in Dublin, Kerry, Kilkenny, King's 
 County, Meath, Limerick, and Queen's County 124,368 acres, 
 making a total in England and Ireland of 1 35,5 1 7 acres, with a 
 rent-roll of /'s 3,465. Besides this, the Dowager Marchioness 
 his mother, who claims the Barony of Nairne, has 9,070 acres 
 in Perth and 134 in Kinross, with a rental of £^,%\2. 
 
 6
 
 82 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 The Fitzmaurices derive their ancient lineage from the 
 family by whose name they are now known, but most of their 
 wealth from the Pettys, whose name they used to bear alone. 
 The third Marquis, who for some years before his death was 
 the Nestor of the Whig party, was prominent in the politics of 
 the opening ^years of the present century as Lord Henry Petty. 
 Petty is certainly not so pretty as Fitzmaurice, but it happens 
 that Sir William Petty is one of the most distinguished of the 
 ancestors which the family can boast. 
 
 Sir William Petty was the son of a Hampshire clothier, 
 and as a boy giving evidence of great ability, he was sent to 
 Oxford, where he made the best use of his advantages. Sub- 
 sequently he went on the Continent, and continued his studies 
 at Leyden, Paris, and other Universities. Returning to Eng- 
 land about the close of the Civil War, he took up his resi- 
 dence at Oxford as a Physician, and became a Professor at 
 the University. The man who had studied under Thomas 
 Hobbes, and who was associated in university work with John 
 Owen, though he had made a great reputation, had yet to 
 make a great fortune. The opportunity, however, arrived in 
 1 65 1, when he was appointed Physician-General to the Irish 
 Army. The allowance was but £ \ per day, but Ireland was 
 then to adventurous spirits what India became a hundred 
 years later. He practised as a physician in Ireland for a time, 
 but he also obtained the offices of Clerk of the Council and 
 Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant. The division of confiscated 
 lands among the English soldiers afforded a fine opportunity 
 for using his scientific attainments, and he was appointed to 
 make a careful survey of the island. He was paid by a per- 
 centage on the redistributed lands, and his profits were so 
 enormous that he acquired about 50,000 acres of land in Kerry, 
 his Irish estates being estimated at a value of nearly ^6,000 
 per annum. Though high in office under Cromwell, he had 
 not taken such a decided part in political affairs as to preclude 
 him from making his submission to Charles II. at the Resto- 
 ration, and having his newly-acquired property settled upon 
 him by special order of the King, together with considerable 
 additions thereto. He was knighted by Charles II., was one 
 of the founders of the Royal Society, and in his old age still 
 pursued his career of invention and scientific research. Of 
 all the men who profited by the Cromwellian confiscations, he 
 was apparently the worthiest. He is said to have expended
 
 J lie Fitzmaurlces. 83 
 
 /^io,ooo in planting an English colony at Kenmare, in the 
 county of Kerry, where he established fisheries and iron- 
 works. In 1685 the colonists were driven away by the natives, 
 but they returned when William III. had accomplished the sub- 
 jection of Ireland. In modern times the Fitzmaurlces have 
 liberally expended their money in roads and piers in the 
 neighbourhood. Sir William lived almost till the Revolution 
 of 1688, and was succeeded by his son, who was created Baron 
 Shelburne, and, agreeably Avith family traditions, sided with 
 William. His younger brother succeeded, and obtained a 
 re-grant of the Kerry estates, then 80,000 acres, and two steps 
 in the Peerage as Earl of Shelburne. He purchased an estate 
 at Wycombe, Bucks, which included that pocket borough, 
 which was afterwards sold (shall we not say borough as well 
 as estate 't) to the Carringtons. He died without issue, and 
 bequeathed his estates to John Fitzmaurice, his nephew 
 (second son of the Earl of Kerry), one of whose descendants 
 ultimately succeeded to the title and estates of the latter 
 nobleman. The second Earl of Shelburne obtained by pur- 
 chase the estate of Bowood, Wilts. 
 
 We must now turn to the Fitzmaurlces. It is probable that 
 the first of this family who set foot in England was one of 
 the foreign favourites of Edward the Confessor. From him 
 are descended the Fitzgeralds and the Fitzmaurlces. One of 
 his descendants, William Fitzwalter by name, assisted Earl 
 Strongbow in the conquest of Ireland in the reign of Henry 
 II. He returned to England ; but his second son, Raymond, 
 remained, and obtained as his reward a considerable grant of 
 land in Kerry. His eldest son (illegitimate) succeeded him, 
 and from him the name of Fitzmaurice is probably derived. 
 It is unnecessary to go into details as to the part played by 
 the P'itzmaurices in the stormy history of Ireland ; suffice it 
 to say that they largely profited by the confiscation of the 
 Abbey lands in the reign of Henry VIII., though these did 
 not long remain in the possession of the family. In the 
 reign of Elizabeth the Fitzmaurlces had, by repeated rebel- 
 lions, forfeited their lands ; but from James I. the head of 
 the house obtained pardon and restoration. The twenty-first 
 Lord Kerry married the daughter of Sir William Petty above 
 mentioned, and at the death of the twenty-fourth Lord Kerry 
 the estates of both families became united. 
 
 The first ^Marquis of Lansdowne is better known to fame 
 
 6—2
 
 84 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 as the Earl of Shelburne, the friend of Chatham, Fox, and 
 Lord Holland. Few statesmen of his time had more liberal 
 and enlightened views. When all the Jingoism of that age 
 supported the Tory Government in the disastrous struggle 
 with the revolted Colonies, the voice of Shelburne was raised 
 with that of Chatham and other true patriots in denouncing 
 the war. In 1784 he was created Marquis of I.ansdowne, 
 and withdrew from political life. At the outbreak of the 
 French Revolution he emerged from his retirement to de- 
 nounce the war made by England upon the nev\- Republic. 
 Faithful in his maintenance of the Whig policy of peace and 
 retrenchment, he continued to oppose the great war with 
 France down to his death, soon after the opening of the 
 present centur}\ 
 
 The career of the second ^Marquis was, happily, a short 
 one ; and he was succeeded, in 1 809, by his younger brother, 
 Lord Henry Petty, who was already looked upon as one of 
 the rising statesmen of the Whig party. It was the third 
 Marquis who inherited the Kerry estates and title, and who 
 thereupon reassumed the ancient family name of Fitzmaurice 
 in addition to that of Petty. A supporter of Catholic Eman- 
 cipation twenty years before that measure was carried ; an 
 avowed Free-trader a quarter of a century before Peel 
 abolished the Bread-tax ; a member of the Reform Cabinet 
 of Earl Grey ; and, in later years, the trusted and confiden- 
 tial adviser of the Queen, the Marquis of Lansdowne fairly 
 earned the gratitude of his countrymen during his long and 
 useful life. His grandson is the present Marquis. 
 
 The name of Fitzmaurice is also borne by the Earl of Ork- 
 ney, who owns 11,489 acres in Tipperary, Queen's County, 
 and Kerr}', with a rent-roll of ^5,789. He is descended 
 from Lord George Hamilton, afterwards Earl of Orkney, who 
 was a prominent figure in the Irish War of William III. One 
 of his descendants, the third Countess of Orkney, married a 
 Fitzmaurice, the brother of the first Marquis of Lansdowne.
 
 LXXI. 
 
 PRESUIME that the narrow Protestants who used 
 to accuse me of hostility to the Reformation be- 
 cause I did not shrink from exposing the deeds of 
 the time-serving Protestants in the reigns of 
 Henry and Edward have long since found out their mistake. It 
 may be that because I have endeavoured to do justice to such 
 great Whig houses as the Cavendishes, Fitzwilliams, and Fitz- 
 maurices, some may yet be disposed to think that I am 
 actuated by party prejudice in favour of the Whigs. Perhaps, 
 in dealing with the Dalrymples, I may be able to remove such 
 an impression. I know that men are sometimes actuated by 
 an unconscious bias ; but because I am aware of that fact, I 
 believe I have spoken favourably of the great Whig houses 
 only in so far as they have really aided the popular cause by 
 honest and disinterested service. 
 
 So far as the landed possessions of the Dalr}'mples are con- 
 cerned, they are exclusively a Scottish family. In the new 
 Domesday Book the Earl of Stair is credited with the posses- 
 sion of 83,872 acres, with a rent-roll or £^^,6jf.o. The 
 Countess of Stair has also 19,266 acres, with a rent-roll of 
 /^I3,6i6; and the trustees of the eighth Earl have 13,201 
 acres,- with a rent-roll o'l £10,101. In all, the Dalrymple 
 family have, in Wigtonshire alone, 82,666 acres, the total 
 acreage of which county is but 288,960 ; so that they hold two- 
 sevenths of the whole county. 
 
 The origin of the Dalrymples is somewhat obscure. Ac- 
 cording to Burke, a certain William de Dalrymple acquired 
 the lands of Stair IMontgomery, in Ayrshire, by his marriage 
 with an heiress of the Kennedys. These Dalrymples were 
 among the first families of importance in Scotland who 
 accepted the Protestant faith, for we find that as early as 1494 
 the wife of the son of this William de Dalrymple was accused 
 before the Council of James IV. of holding heretical doctrines. 
 The charge was, however, dismissed. The great-grandson
 
 86 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 of this lady was one of the first who, about 1544, openly pro- 
 fessed the doctrines of the Reformation. 
 
 The Dalrymples still hold considerable property in Ayrshire, 
 at Stair, from which place they take their title, and elsewhere. 
 Forty years ago the estates of Bargany, which derived addi- 
 tional value from its coalpits and ironworks, was the property 
 of Henrietta Dalrymple Hamilton, Duchess of Coigny, but 
 the present Earl married the daughter of that lady, and thus 
 has consolidated the property. 
 
 The real founder of the family v.-as James Dalrymple, a 
 lawyer, who was a Lord of Session under Cromwell. He 
 retained the office under Charles H., ultimately becoming 
 President of the Court. Burnet describes him as " a 
 man of very mild deportment, but a false and cunning 
 man ; a great perverter of justice, in which he had a very 
 particular dexterity of giving some plausible colours to the 
 greatest injustice." It was this Dalrymple who was first 
 seated in AVigtonshire. Early in life he married a lady by 
 whom he became possessed of certain lands in the parish of 
 Old Luce in that county. A much larger portion of his 
 acquisitions in Wigtonshire, however, was purely ecclesiastical 
 property, which for a time was in the possession of the Earl 
 of Cassilis. INIr. Burton's account of the way in which Gilbert, 
 Earl of Cassilis, became possessed of the lands of Glenluce 
 Abbey is worth quoting. According to the family historian, 
 Gilbert was " ane particular man and ane greedy man, and 
 cared not how he gat land so that he could come bv the 
 same." He had his eye on a few of the estates of the Abbey 
 of Glenluce, and had dealings with the Abbot about them. 
 That Abbot, however, died before the writs were signed, 
 " and then he dealt with ane monk of the same abbacy, wha 
 could counterfeit the Abbot's hand writ and all the haill con- 
 vent, and gat him to counterfeit their subscriptions. When 
 this was done, fearing that the monk might make unpleasant 
 revelations, he got a certain carl to 'stick' (stab) him, and 
 then he got ane to accuse the carl of theft and hung him in 
 Cronsgate, and so the lands of Glenluce Avere conquest." A 
 pretty story of forger}- and murder, is it not .^ I dare say 
 not a few such tales would have been told if historians had 
 been always faithful. The Earl did not, however, perma- 
 nently profit by this villainy, for some half-century after I find 
 that Glenluce was erected into a barony by James VL And
 
 The Dalryviplcs. 87 
 
 then, according to the " Statistical Account of Scotland," it 
 " was afterwards annexed to the See of Galloway, the revenues 
 of which had been much reduced, and towards the end of 
 the 1 7th century it was again erected into a barony, and 
 became the property of the noble family of Stair," or in 
 other words Charles II. robbed the Church, and enriched the 
 Dalrymples with the plunder. 
 
 This is not the only piece of ecclesiastical plunder now held 
 by the Dalrymples. They hold a considerable estate in Mid- 
 lothian, viz., the Oxenford Castle property. The barony of 
 Cranston w-as formerly the property of the ^Nlacgills, who 
 acquired the Church of Cranston, which anciently belonged 
 to the monks of Kelso. These estates were brought by a 
 Macgill heiress into the Dalrymple family. The Manor and 
 the Chapelry of Cousland, too, were annexed to the Barony 
 of Cranston at the Reformation. Thus, these lands, with 
 their then unknown wealth of coal-pits and stone-quarries, 
 passed out of the hands of the Church to swell the possessions 
 of the House of Dalrymple. 
 
 Whatever his faults, the natural bias of Sir James Dal- 
 rymple seems to have been towards Presbyterianism and 
 liberty ; and he, therefore, was unfitted to be the tool of a 
 Government so abominable as that w^hich ruled Scotland at 
 the close of the reign of Charles II. He accordingly 
 quitted office, and retired to Holland. We have seen already, 
 in the history of other Scotch families, how cleverly they con- 
 trived to hold with the hare and run with the hounds — father 
 and son, brother and brother, taking different sides, the one 
 as W^hig, the other as Jacobite. The Dalrymples were the 
 first to teach the Scottish aristocracy the lesson. When Sir 
 James retired to Holland, his son remained behind, became 
 Lord Advocate, and assisted in the evil work of the last few 
 years of the reign of Charles II. As ^lacaulay remarks, 
 " The Revolution brought a large increase of wealth and 
 honours to the House of Stair." The younger Dalrymple 
 was quite ready to desert James for William. The father was 
 raised to the peerage ; the son was reappointed Lord Advo- 
 cate, and soon afterwards Secretary of State for Scotland, in 
 which capacity he left behind, to quote the words of Lord 
 Stanhope, " a memory on which a load of infamy rests." 
 The story of the Massacre of Glencoe — the darkest episode 
 in the history of the reign of Vv'illiam HI. — is familiar to
 
 88 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 almost ever}.' reader. Beside other massacres of more modern 
 date, it looks insignificant in size ; but its cold-blooded, deli- 
 berately-planned wickedness, and the treachery, the false- 
 hood, the mispeakable villainy of the man who planned it, 
 have given a lurid horror to the deed, and damned its 
 perpetrator to everlasting infamy. In the valley of Glcncoe, 
 on the borders of Argyll and Inverness, were some fifty cot- 
 tages, inhabited by about 200 persons. A party of more than 
 a hundred soldiers were quartered on these people, by whom 
 they were treated with all possible kindness, and with whom 
 they lived some twelve days. Before dawn on the morning of 
 the thirteenth day, the soldiers rose up at the word of com- 
 mand, and commenced an indiscriminate slaughter. Over 
 thirty persons, men, women, and children, were butchered ; 
 the rest fled to the mountains, where most of them perished 
 of cold and hunger in that terrible February. The few who 
 returned came back to find their homes a heap of blackened 
 ruins, and their cattle driven off by the inhuman murderers. 
 
 The chief guilt of this savage deed rests with the younger 
 Dalrymple. The proofs are indisputable. We have the evi- 
 dence of his own letters to the commanding officer of the 
 party. "Your troops," he wrote, "will destroy entirely the 
 countr}' of Lochaber, Lochiel's lands, Keppoch's, Glengarry's, 
 and Glencoe's. Your powers shall be large enough. I hope 
 the soldiers vrill not trouble the Government with prisoners." 
 I think, by the way, that I recollect the use of a somewhat 
 similar phrase not very long ago in connection with a certain 
 campaign in Asia — and it was not used by Asiatics either. 
 
 But this is not all. It was not Dalrymple's fault that the 
 massacre did not assume gigantic proportions. As Mr. Green 
 remarks, " He had hoped that a refusal of the oath of alle- 
 giance (to William) would give ground for a war of extermi- 
 nation." In this he was disappointed. By the appointed 
 day Lochiel, Glengarry, Keppoch, and the other Highland 
 Chiefs had taken the oath. Macdonald of Glencoe came in, 
 the very last day, to Fort William ; but, as there was no 
 person there to administer the oath, he had to travel to Inve- 
 rary, which he reached six days after the appointed time. The 
 evidence of IMacdonald's submission was suppressed by the 
 Dalrymples, the father having a hand in the business as well 
 as the son. An order, conveniently vague in its language, 
 was laid before the King, which the monarch, according to
 
 Tlic Dalryniplcs. 89 
 
 Burnet, signed without reading. The rest we know. The 
 truth only came to light but slowly, and then the sole punish- 
 ment the younger Dalrymple received was dismissal from 
 office. That was his sole punishment then ; but he will ever 
 remain gibbeted in history with Guise and Alva, with Kirk 
 and Claverhouse, with Soojah Dowlah and Shefket Pasha, as 
 a pitiless man of blood, who spared neither age nor sex, 
 slaying not as a soldier, but as an assassin. One feels some 
 little satisfaction in recording that the posterity of the author 
 of the Glencoe Massacre has died out, and that the title and 
 estates arc now held by the descendants of one of his 
 younger brothers.
 
 LXXII. 
 
 HE Spectator, in noticing the reprint of the first 
 series of " Our Old NobiHty," expressed a doubt 
 whether this kind of writing could be productive of 
 useful results. The editor of the Spectator, at the 
 time of the first Reform agitation, was of exactly the opposite 
 opinion, for he devoted special supplements to information of 
 a somewhat kindred character, from which, however, I have 
 derived hardly any assistance. I venture to hope that, as the 
 work of the Spectator proved useful in regard to electoral 
 reform, my own will not be altogether ineffective when the 
 subject of Land Tenure Reform comes to the front. I be- 
 lieve, too, that more recently the Spectator published a series 
 of articles on " The Great Governing Families of England," 
 which have furnished me with several useful hints, although 
 the great houses were therein treated far too tenderlv. This 
 very phrase, "Great Governing P'amilies," used as recently as 
 1865, and equally applicable now, expresses a most disagree- 
 able truth. Believing, as I do, in government by the people 
 and not by a few great houses, I humbly venture to hope that 
 I may assist in tearing off the mask of a gigantic imposture, 
 and lead some tenants of the great houses to understand that 
 they are under no obligation to those who receive their rents, 
 and especially that they are under no obligation to sacrifice 
 their political convictions to please the owners of the soil 
 they till or the houses which they inhabit. 
 
 Let us take, for instance, his Grace the Duke of Beaufort, 
 who owns in — 
 
 Gloucestershire .... 
 Monmouth .... 
 
 Brecon ..... 
 Wilts ..... 
 Glamorgan .... 
 
 Total 51,082 
 With a rental of ^56,209. 
 
 16,610 acres 
 
 27,299 
 
 JJ 
 
 4,019 
 
 )> 
 
 1,939 
 
 J> 
 
 1. 215 
 
 )>
 
 TJie Somersets. 91 
 
 The Gloucestershire estates were partly acquired by pur- 
 chase. The far-famed seat at Badminton, which has a 
 park ten jniles in circumference, was purchased of the 
 Botelers in 1608 by a younger son of the head of the house 
 of Somerset, and was bequeathed by his only daughter 
 to the Somerset who was afterwards created the first 
 Duke of Beaufort, by whom the mansion was erected in 
 1682. Other manors in Gloucestershire appear to have been 
 acquired by purchase still more recently. But it is in the 
 counties on the Welsh border that 1 am more particularly 
 interested. Monmouthshire returns two Conservatives, one 
 of whom is a son of the Duke. That the overwhelming 
 majority of county electors in South Wales are Liberals I pre- 
 sume that no one who knows anything of the district would 
 doubt for a moment. Nowhere is Nonconformity more 
 staunchly Liberal than in South Wales, and nowhere does 
 Nonconformity appear in such strength. It is the territorial 
 tradition alone that makes the return of a Conservative in 
 either of these counties possible. That evil tradition has been 
 recently broken in Brecon, for which the Liberal candidate, 
 who in 1874 was defeated by a majority of 558, now sits as 
 member. That which is possible in Brecon is possible in 
 Monmouth ; but the tenantry of the Duke of Beaufort and 
 other territorial magnates have yet to learn that when they 
 have paid their rents they have discharged their obligations in 
 full. The Somersets are Plantagenets ; and the Herberts, 
 from whom they derived most of their Welsh property, were 
 Normans. They represent the power of the sword, the 
 forcible dispossession of the weak by the strong. Time has 
 consecrated the conquest, and I have no desire to disturb it, 
 though my fathers dwelt in Wales long before the first of their 
 ancestors set foot upon its soil. But so long as Welshmen 
 who cultivate their lands sacrifice their convictions at the 
 polling-booth, and vote as their landlord or his agents order 
 them, so long they wear the shameful badge of conquest. 
 The ballot was brought into use to protect their liberties ; 
 those who do not make use of the advantage are slaves. The 
 Duke of Beaufort may lord it over the soil, but when he tries 
 to lord it over our consciences every true-hearted Welshman 
 should cry — Hands off! 
 
 "Old John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster," third son 
 of Edward IH., had a family by his first wife, his eldest
 
 92 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 son being Henry IV. ; by his mistress, Catherine Swinford, 
 ■whom he afterwards married, he had three sons and a 
 daughter who took the name of Beaufort from a castle in 
 France, Avhere they were born. The second of these sons was 
 the Cardinal Beaufort of Shakespeare, the eldest was created 
 Marquis of Somerset and Dorset. The son of the latter was 
 created Duke of Somerset, and had an only daughter, who 
 was married to Edmond Tudor, Earl of Richmond, and be- 
 came mother of Henry VII. He also left an illegitimate son, 
 Charles, who took his father's title as a patronymic. Charles 
 Somerset was therefore the half-brother of the mother of 
 Henry VII., and, as was to be expected, he shared in the 
 spoils of the final victory of the House of Lancaster. He 
 obtained a number of employments from Henry, but, what was 
 of far greater importance to the fortunes of his descendants, 
 he became a great lord of the soil by his marriage with the 
 daughter and" heiress of William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke 
 and Huntingdon, through whom he acquired the larger part of 
 that nobleman's estates. He was Lord Chamberlain to Henry 
 VII. and Henry VIII. ; in the reign of the former monarch he 
 was known in right of his wife's possessions as Baron Her- 
 bert ; by the latter monarch he was created Earl of Worcester. 
 We must now turn to the Herberts, whose early history is 
 somewhat obscure. It is not quite clear who the original 
 Herbert was. According to one account he was the bastard 
 son of Henry I. — the bar-sinister frequently appears when 
 dealing with the Somersets. According to another account, 
 he was Lord Chamberlain to -that King, whose mistress he 
 married. We need not go into the troubled history of South 
 Wales in those times, but pass on to William Herbert, first 
 Earl of Pembroke. As a simple Knight he distinguished him- 
 self in the French campaigns of Henry V., but his fortune was 
 mad" by espousing the Yorkist cause. The strength of the 
 Lancastrian cause had lain chiefly in the North and West ; 
 the bloody fight at Towton was follow^ed by enormous confis- 
 cations, and one of the chief gainers thereby was Herbert, who 
 obtained immense grants of lands in South Wales. For 
 instance, I find, in Jones's "History of Brecknockshire," that 
 Edward IV.,'very early in his reign, granted the castle, town, 
 manor, and lordship of Crickhowel, Ystradyw-isaf, and Tre- 
 tower, with other large possessions in Wales, to Sir William 
 Herbert. Pembroke, Haverfordwest, Tenby, and several
 
 The Somersets. 93 
 
 other places in Pembrokeshire were acquired in like manner, 
 as also several estates in Glamorgan and elsewhere. The 
 right of the Tory Duke of Beaufort to compel Liberal Welsh- 
 men to vote as he pleases rests upon a grant of estates confis- 
 cated by Edward IV., because their former owners supported 
 the King whose father Herbert had served as a soldier. 
 
 We may trace the ^lonmouthshire estates most easily by 
 means of' the ancient buildings ; the possession of a castle 
 usually indicates the ownership of much of the surrounding 
 property. Monmouth Castle — the birthplace of Henry V., 
 who was hence called Henry of Monmouth — was granted by 
 Henry HI. to one of his younger sons, whose descendant, 
 Blanch, married John of Gaunt. Raglan Castle, one of the 
 principal seats of the Somersets till it was deposited in the 
 time of the Civil War, was held by several Norman families 
 in succession, and was probably derived by the Herberts from 
 one of them by marriage. Chepstow Castle, where Henry 
 INIarten, the Regicide, was immured for several years, appears 
 to have been purchased by the Earl of Pembroke. Tintern 
 Abbey was granted to the Earl of Worcester in the reign of 
 Edward VI. I presume, but am not able to state with cer- 
 tainty, that the Glamorganshire property of the Somersets, at 
 Oystermouth, near Swansea, and elsewhere, was formerly 
 part of the Herbert estates, and obtained in like manner with 
 the rest. 
 
 Of the subsequent history of the Somersets there is little of 
 interest to record. The fourth Earl of Worcester, who had 
 been Master of the Horse to Elizabeth, was made Lord Privy 
 Seal to James I., with an annual salary of /"i, 500 for life. 
 The fifth Earl is said to have expended '/^3oo,ooo in the cause 
 of kingly despotism, and he and his son used their great in- 
 fluence to waste the lives of Welshmen in the battles of 
 Charles I., as their ancestors had done during the Wars of 
 the Roses. Clarendon speaks of the Earl of Worcester as the 
 richest man in the kingdom, and in the time of the Common- 
 wealth the estates were worth no less than /'2o,ooo per 
 annum. Earlv in the Civil War Charles I. created the Earl 
 of Worcester a Marquis. The second JMarquis was a dabbler 
 in Science, and published "A Century of Inventions," from 
 one of which the idea of the steam-engine is said to have 
 been derived. The third Marquis was created Duke of Beau- 
 fort by Charles II. ; he made an ineffectual effort against the
 
 94 On 7' Old Nobility. 
 
 Prince of Orange, but subsequently took the oath of allegi- 
 ance. For the next generation or two the Somersets were 
 regarded as timid Jacobites, without the courage of their 
 opinions. 
 
 During the present century I count no less than five 
 Somersets in the Church (the Duke has twenty-four livings 
 in his gift), and twelve in the Army. JNIost of the latter, of 
 course, rose to a high position. The most distinguished of 
 them was Lord Fitzroy Somerset, who served through the 
 Peninsular War, lost an arm at Waterloo, subsequently held 
 several lucrative military offices, and was created Lord Raglan. 
 At the outbreak of the Crimean War he was appointed Com- 
 mander-in-Chief of the British Army, which post he held 
 when the victories of Alma and Likerman were won. He 
 died in the Crimea during the siege of Sebastopol. 
 
 Before the constituencies of South Wales, whether borough 
 or county, allovv' themselves to be overawed by the territorial 
 influence of the Duke of Beaufort, I would entreat them to 
 consider whether they owe anything to him or his. The 
 very lands he holds are his by right of conquest. The 
 Somersets have always been on the side of tyranny, and when 
 they have not been Catholics they have ahvays been High 
 Churchmen. If they had had their way, Charles L would 
 have trampled under foot the liberties of his country ; 
 James IL would have ruled England through the Jesuits ; 
 Nonconformists would still be excluded from holding any 
 public office, and would yet have to pay Church-rates. Is 
 there a Welsh Nonconformist who is degraded enough to sell 
 his soul and dishonour his conscience for such a race }
 
 LXXIII 
 
 Sire M'lnrWraiuf?. 
 
 •o 
 
 HE patent of nobility held by Lord Leconfield 
 dates only from 1859, and yet, if we take into 
 account the fact that his estates have been ac- 
 quired not by purchase, but by matrimonial 
 alliances, he is fully entitled to rank among " Our Old No- 
 bility," especially as his Irish estates have descended by be- 
 quest for more than a thousand years, and the greater part of 
 his English estates for considerably more than half that 
 period. It is a case of " New Men and Old Acres," so far, 
 at least, as the connection between the two is concerned ; 
 for the Wyndhams can only in that sense be regarded as new 
 men. They are a Saxon family, anciently seated at Wymond- 
 ham, in Norfolk, from which place they are supposed to 
 derive their name. Mr. H. W. Wyndham still holds 6,483 
 acres in that county, and is, I believe, the son of the hero of 
 an extraordinary case which those of my readers who have 
 arrived at middle life can hardly fail to remember. We must 
 not, however, look in Norfolk for the estates of Lord Lecon- 
 field. A Wyndham in the reign of Henry VIII. obtained a 
 good share of the spoil of the monastic houses ; and his son 
 and grandson both married Somersetshire heiresses. Later 
 on, the Norfolk property fell to a younger son ; and the So- 
 mersetshire property, at Orchard and elsewhere, to an elder 
 son, one of whose descendants was created a Baronet. From 
 this latter line Lord Leconfield is descended, but we must 
 not look for his estates in Somersetshire. The second 
 Baronet was Sir William Wyndham, a statesman of the reigns 
 of Anne and George I., who, according to Lord Stanhope, 
 held the threads of the whole Jacobite conspiracy in 171 5, 
 and narrowly escaped condign punishment through the in- 
 fluence of his father-in-law, the Duke of Somerset. The son 
 of Sir William Wyndham became afterwards Earl of Egre- 
 mont ; and the father of the present Lord Leconfield was the 
 eldest illegitimate son and adopted heir of the third Earl.
 
 96 
 
 02Lr Old Nobility 
 
 Succeeding as he did to vast estates, it was only natural that 
 he should be created a Peer. The Egremont title only 
 takes us back to 1 749, but it takes us to a period when the 
 Wyndhams succeeded to estates which had been in the pos- 
 session of great Norman houses for centuries. Lord Lecon- 
 field (Leconfield is in Yorkshire) holds estates in six dif- 
 ferent counties as follows : — 
 
 Sussex .... 
 
 30,221 acres 
 
 Yorkshire 
 
 24,733 „ 
 
 Cumberland 
 
 11,147 „ 
 
 Clare .... 
 
 39.048 „ 
 
 Limerick .... 
 
 S>298 „ 
 
 Tipperary .... 
 
 273 „ 
 
 Total 110,720 ,, 
 With a rental of ^^88,484. 
 
 He also has no less than twenty-four Church livings, one of 
 which is worth /"i, 538 and a house; another, ^"1,371 and a 
 house : the total annual value of them all, exclusive of resi- 
 dences, being/" 1 0,393. 
 
 The Yorkshire, Sussex, and Cumberland estates are part of 
 the ancient inheritance of the Percies. When speaking of 
 the Percies, I said that for a hundred years they were a power- 
 ful family before they set foot in Northumberland. For their 
 ancient home, where they settled soon after the Conquest, 
 we must go to Yorkshire, in the neighbourhood of Spofforth, 
 where they once had a magnificent mansion, the ruins of 
 which are, I believe, still in existence. These estates are 
 now the property of Lord Leconfield. By marriage the great 
 houses of Percy and Louvaine became united. The Lou- 
 vaines acquired their possessions by an enormous Royal grant. 
 Adeliza, Queen of Henry L, had a brother, Joceline de Lou- 
 vaine, to whom were granted vast estates in Sussex, at Pet- 
 worth and other places in that county. Petworth Park, which 
 is twelve miles in circumference, and the rest of the Percy 
 estates in Sussex, are now the property of Lord Leconfielcl. 
 William the Conqueror granted a large part of Cumberland 
 to Ranulph de iMeschines, one of his followers, who, in turn, 
 granted great estates at Egremont and elsewhere, in the same 
 county, to his brother William. From him the Egremont 
 property passed by marriage to one family after another, till 
 at length an heiress brought the domain to the Percies. The
 
 The IVyndhams. 97 
 
 Egremont estates are now the property of Lord Leconfield. 
 There have been a few small modern acquisitions by purchase 
 in Sussex, and possibly in Yorkshire and Cumberland ; but 
 by far the greater part of the English estates of Lord Lecon- 
 field have passed constantly either by descent or bequest, 
 ever since the Norman period. He certainly could not com- 
 plain if Parliament should ever see fit to re-impose upon the 
 land the ancient burdens which his forefathers undertook as 
 the condition upon which their lands should be held. 
 
 I must now proceed to show how these great ancestral 
 estates of the Percies passed to the Wyndhams. Charles, 
 sixth Duke of Somerset — known to history as the " Proud 
 Duke " — married the daughter and heiress of the Duke of 
 Northumberland. Ultimately the Percy estates were divided 
 between the Duchess's son's daughter and her daughter's son. 
 Her son's daughter married Sir Hugh Smithson, who became 
 the first of a new line of Percies, and who was the occasion 
 of the only witty saying ever uttered by George HL Not 
 satisfied with being created Duke of Northumberland, Smith- 
 son vainly applied for a Garter. " I am the first Duke of 
 Northumberland to whom it has been refused," said he. 
 " Yes," said King George, " and he is the first Smithson that 
 ever asked for it." The daughter's son of the Duchess was 
 Charles Wyndham ; Sir William Wyndham, his father, having 
 married the daughter of the sixth Duke of Somerset. On the 
 death of the seventh Duke of Somerset without issue, the 
 Seymour title and estates passed to a distant kinsman, and 
 the Earldom of Egremont (a brand-new title), with that 
 portion of the Percy estates which did not pass to Smithson, 
 w-as inherited by Charles Wyndham. 
 
 We must now pass to Ireland, and here we tread upon 
 ground which has passed in unbroken succession, either by 
 inheritance or bequest, from a time beyond which the memory 
 of man or the records of history run not to the contrary. 
 The estates in Clare and elsewhere were formerly in the 
 possession of the O'Briens, Earls of Thomond, descended 
 from the ancient Royal line of Brien Boroihme, who fell at 
 the Battle of Clontarf in 1014. In the wilds of the West of 
 Ireland the O'Briens were acknowledged as Kings ot 
 Thomond till, in the reign of Henry VIII., that title was 
 relinquished for two Irish peerages, the Earldom of Thomond 
 and the Barony of Inchiquin. The Barony of Inchiquin is
 
 98 Our Old Nobility, 
 
 still held by the O'Briens, with 21,884 acres in Clare and 
 Limerick. The Earldom of Thomond exists no longer, but 
 the estates formerly appertaining thereto are now the pro- 
 perty of Lord Lcconfield. The Wyndhams, however, do not 
 possess O'Brien blood as well as the O'Brien estates. The 
 eighth Earl of Thomond married the sister of Sir William 
 Wyndham's wife, and left his estates to a kinsman, with 
 remainder to Sir William's youngest son, who subsequently 
 succeeded to them, but died without issue. Thus these 
 estates passed into the Wyndham family. 
 
 The history of the Wyndhams is certainly a very curious 
 one. At the Reformation they were simple Norfolk squires; 
 in the reign of Charles IL the head of the elder branch had 
 become a Somersetshire baronet, but, by a series of matri- 
 monial accidents, about one hundred and thirty years ago, 
 the family had achieved a complete change of base. Prior 
 to that time the Wyndhams do not appear to have held a 
 single acre of the vast estates now owned by Lord Leconfield. 
 The marriage of the Jacobite statesman. Sir William Wynd- 
 ham, has resulted in the acquisition by his descendants of 
 the lands held for so many centuries by the Percies and 
 O'Briens. 
 
 The Wyndhams, as a rule, have not been distinguished as 
 tax-eaters ; their good fortune has placed them above 
 necessity. Yet there was one of them, the brother of one of 
 the Earls of Egremont, who was a most exemplary sinecurist. 
 This was the Hon. P. C. Wyndham, who, about half a century 
 ago, was Secretary of the Council, Remembrancer of the 
 Court of Exchequer, and Clerk of Common Pleas in Barba- 
 does, also Registrar in Chancery, and Clerk of the Patents in 
 Jamaica, all which duties were of course discharged by 
 deputy, and brought their fortunate holder an annual income 
 
 A relative of the present Lord Leconfield, the Hon. P. S. 
 Wyndham, has sat for nineteen years for West Cumberland, 
 or, rather, for the 11,000 acres owned by the family. Two 
 other Wyndhams figure as considerable landowners — Mr. 
 William Wyndham, who owns 2,866 acres in Somerset and 
 5,734 in Wilts ; and Captain A. W. Wyndham, who has 62,25 
 acres in Mavo.
 
 LXXIV. 
 
 HERE are several branches of this fortunate family, 
 two of which possess peerages. The Earl of Zet- 
 land owns in Yorkshire 9,623 acres; in Fife, 
 Stirling, Clackmannan, and Dumbarton, 13,110 
 acres ; in Orkney and Shetland, or Zetland, 43,446 acres. 
 With regard to the latter, Sir Walter Scott, in a note on 
 ^lagnus Troil, one of the characters in " The Pirate," says : — 
 " The Udallers are the allodial possessors of Zetland," who 
 hold their possessions under the old Norwegian law, instead 
 of the feudal tenures introduced among them from Scotland." 
 The introduction^ of feudal tenures was nothing more or less 
 than a permanent robbery of the landowners and their de- 
 scendants. The land was theirs absolutely till the abominable 
 feudal tenures were introduced. In 1 643 the islands were 
 granted to the Earl of Morton, and this grant was confirmed 
 in 1707, and made absolute in 1742. Twenty-five years after 
 the Earl of Morton sold his rights (?) to Sir Lawrence Dun- 
 das, ancestor of the Earl of Zetland, who had made a great 
 fortune as an army contractor. Army contractors in those 
 days made immense fortunes with astonishing rapidity. Ap- 
 parently the Dundases of this branch have still ' further 
 advanced their fortunes by marriages into the Fitzwilliam and 
 other landed families. But I must not dwell upon the House 
 of Zetland, my purpose rather being to show of what stuff 
 peers were made at the beginning of the present century. 
 
 The first Lord INIelville obtained a peerage in 1802. For 
 many years he had been the confidant and coadjutor of Pitt. 
 He was a son of a Lord President of the Court of Session, 
 and, as Fox' said, " ever showed an eagerness to heap up 
 emoluments 'and to systematise corruption." In 1775 he 
 was appointed Lord-Advocate of Scotland, and for a period 
 of thirty years he held a succession of rich ofiftces, sometimes 
 three or four together. When he held one of the chief offices 
 in the Cabinet he was appointed Privy Seal of Scotland, and
 
 lOO Our Old Nobility. 
 
 \\. the same time his wife obtained a pension of ^1,500 
 a-year. He also had a grant of the Stewardship of Fife, with 
 arrears of pay amounting to /^3, 000, arrears which the very 
 persons who signed the warrant declared they were unac- 
 quainted with. 
 
 Sir Erskine May rightly says, in regard to that period, that, 
 " with free institutions, the people were governed according 
 to the principles of despotism." One of the Bills passed at 
 that time empowered the Crown to secure and detain persons 
 suspected of conspiring against the King's person and govern- 
 ment ; another provided that a prisoner, on the evidence of a 
 single witness, and undefended by counsel, might be sen- 
 tenced to capital punishment ; another provided that if a meet- 
 ing of twelve or more persons remained together for one hour 
 after being ordered to disperse, the offenders should suffer 
 death. Well might Fox declare that " every man who talked 
 freely might be, and would be, in the hands and at the mercy 
 of Ministers." Such was Toryism in its palmiest days. For 
 all these things, next to Pitt, Dundas was responsible. I 
 think of the true and brave men whom he hunted down, caused 
 to rot in gaol, or to be transported beyond the seas ; and then 
 it is with a stern satisfaction that I proceed to describe the 
 disgrace and downfall of their persecutor. 
 
 Lord Melville, who had held various lucrative offices for 
 thirty years, was a pluralist who was at the same time i\Iinister 
 of War, President of the Board of Control, and Treasurer of 
 the Navy. The latter office was practically a sinecure, the 
 work being done by a deputy. Former Treasurers had made 
 much gain by keeping large balances in their hands — dirty 
 profits which the elder Pitt proudly refused to touch — but on 
 INIelville's appointment, at his own suggestion, this evil 
 custom was made illegal, and his salary was raised from 
 ^ 2,000 to ^4,000 ; and yet in 1803 it was discovered by a 
 Committee of Inquiry that Alexander Trotter, the deputy of 
 Lord Melville, contrived for several years to have balances in 
 his hands deposited with Coutts, the banker — one of Trotter's 
 relatives — ranging from ^40,000 to nearly half a million. 
 For some years these balances constantly exceeded ^100,000, 
 and with this money Trotter habitually discounted bills and 
 speculated in stocks. 
 
 Trotter entered the Navy Office as a junior clerk at ^50 a 
 year, v.ith a slowly rising increment. After a time he was
 
 TJic Dundases. loi 
 
 appointed deputy by Melville, at a salary of /'soo, which was 
 afterwards increased to /'Soo. In 1791 this man's dividends 
 from stock in his possession were only / 80 ; in 1802 they 
 were /"i 1,308, and he had purchased considerable landed 
 property. Even according to his own statement, Trotter's 
 property derived by marriage and inheritance did not exceed 
 ^10,000 ; and yet he estimated that he was worth /^65,ooo 
 when he was examined before the House of Lords. If this 
 latter statement was correct, somebody else must have made 
 considerable gains beside Trotter himself, and the question 
 at once arises whether Lord Melville was a partner in his 
 fraud. This it is impossible to determine with certainty, 
 because the precious pair burnt the documents that might 
 have incriminated them. I quote the statement made by the 
 Cort Committee and signed by its chairman, the late Rev. 
 Dr. Booth, a statement which is fully borne out by the pro- 
 ceedings leading up to Lord Melville's trial. " When in 1803 
 Parliament had appointed a Commission of Naval Inquiry to 
 examine the irregularities of the Treasurer, Lord IMelville, 
 and his paymaster, Alexander Trotter, they mutually agreed, 
 a few weeks before the sitting of the Commission, by a joint 
 release exhibited on the subsequent impeachment of Lord 
 ]\Ielville, to burn, and accordingly did burn, their accounts 
 for /^i 34,000,000 of public money, which had passed through 
 their hands." The very last thing which an honest min, 
 with an inquiry pending over his head, would have done, 
 would have been to burn the documents which he knew 
 would be called for. In the face of such conduct Lord INIel- 
 ville's personal denials go for nothing. . 
 
 Lord ^lelville, however, admitted that he had a general 
 knowledge of Trotter's practices. But that was not all. 
 Trotter, when examined before the Commission of Inquiry, 
 refused to answer whether his chief had shared in his unlaw- 
 ful gains. But that was not all. It was shown that when 
 Lord Melville left office for a short time that he was a de- 
 faulter to the extent of /^i 3,000, and that when he came into 
 office again /^7,6oo of the deficiency was still unpaid. It was 
 shown, further, that when he had promoted this junior clerk 
 with a paltry salary to the office of paymaster that he had bor- 
 rowed /^io,ooo and / 20,000 of him at a time ; and that, in 
 all, so far as could be ascertained. Trotter had advanced to 
 his chief ^ 46,000, partly with interest, but much of it without
 
 102 Otir Old A^obility. 
 
 any interest. Further, it was shown that with some of these 
 sums Trotter had purchased stock on Lord Melville's account. 
 It would be easy to quote a multitude of damning facts which 
 came out at the trial, but my space forbids. I have, however, 
 quoted quite enough to justify the declaration of William 
 Wilberforce that he could not find Avords sufficiently 
 strong to express his utter detestation of Lord Melville's 
 conduct ; and I must add that, after his lordship had been 
 heard in his own defence at the bar of the House of Com- 
 mons, the same eminent man protested that " he considered his 
 defence an aggravation of his guilt." Lord Melville had, of 
 course, to resign the places that he held, and his name was 
 struck off the Privy Council. Ultimately, he was tried by the 
 House of Lords on ten counts, and acquitted by majorities 
 ranging from 27 to 135 ; but, as ]\Iiss Martineau says, " it was 
 felt at the time, and has been felt since, impossible that many, 
 if any, should believe him actually innocent of the charges 
 brought against him." 
 
 I cannot forbear contrasting the treatment of Lord Mel- 
 ville and Henry Cort. Cort was an inventor who had made 
 most important discoveries in the manufacture of iron, on 
 which he spent /^2o, 000. In 1789 Mr. Adam Jellicoe, De- 
 puty-Paymaster of the Navy, with the consent of his supe- 
 riors, advanced Cort ^27,ooo,and entered into partnership 
 with him. When Jellicoe died a few years after, it was dis- 
 covered that he had stolen this money and other sums from 
 the office. The ironworks were seized, but, instead of being 
 retained or sold by the Government, they were actually 
 handed over to Jellicoe's son — Cort, who was probably inno- 
 cent, being turned out. Now let us turn to Lord Melville. 
 Cort died in 1800, and a few days after Lord Melville pre- 
 sented a memorial to the Lords of the Treasury, setting forth 
 the value of Cort's inventions and asking on that account a 
 release of ^'25,000, the amount for which he was responsible 
 owing to Jellicoe's defalcations, his own deficiency at the 
 time being / 190,000. He obtained the release. And what 
 did Cort get } A few years after. Lord Melville's own son 
 was First Lord of the Admiralty, and reported that Cort's 
 merits had been sufficiently recognised by the pensions con- 
 ferred on Cort, his widow, and children, viz.: — ^160 a year 
 to Cort, received for six years; ^100 to his widow, received 
 for sixteen years ; and £io to her children after her death.
 
 The Dimdases. 103 
 
 The ^Dundas family have proved themselves to be the 
 most voracious set of tax-eaters in modern times. It is im- 
 possible to trace them all ; and, if I did, it would be weari- 
 some. As it is, my list is a tolerably long one. The first 
 Viscount Melville died in 181 1, and in the same year I find 
 an annual pension of /^i,ooo granted to the Viscountess. 
 The second Viscount had nearly a score of relatives in receipt 
 of places or pensions. He himself was Lord Privy-Seal of 
 Scotland {£^(i']S), which, I believe, was a life office, and 
 which he obtained in 181 1. He died in 1851. If he held 
 the office till his death, he must have netted over £100,000 
 therefrom. Then there was a Lady Elizabeth, who, I pre- 
 sume, was his sister, and who was granted in 1801 a pension 
 of /"soo, and lived on till 1852. The second Viscount's, 
 eldest son was a General in the Army, Governor of Edin- 
 burgh Castle, and Colonel of the 60th Foot. His second son 
 was a Vice-Admiral, and was for some years a Lord of the 
 Admiralty, with a salary of /^i 0,000. His third son, the pre- 
 sent Lord, was Storekeeper-General of the Navy. His fourth 
 son went into the Church, and obtained the Crown living of 
 Epworth, value /'988 and a house. The family motto is. 
 Quod potui perfecti — "I have done what I could"; and it 
 must be allowed that they have done a great deal in putting 
 public money into their own pockets. 
 
 Now let us pass to the Zetland branch, the chief of which 
 formerly held the title of Baron Dundas. The second son of 
 the first Lord Dundas was a Colonel in the Army. Another 
 son, by favour of the Fitzwilliams, into whose family his 
 father had married, for many years held two rectories, with 
 two houses and /"829 per annum. Afterwards his son was 
 appointed to one of them (Harpole), ^"529 and a house. 
 Another son was a- Vice-Admiral, and for some time a Lord 
 of the Admiralty (/'i, 000; ; and another was a Lieutenant- 
 General. There was also a William Dundas, M.P., a cousin, 
 I believe, of Lord Melville, who held three or four Scotch 
 sinecures for many years, whose united annual value was 
 between three and four thousand pounds. I find also a 
 Dundas as Commander-in-Chief and Governor of Landguard 
 Fort ; another as Joint-Keeper of the Signet ; another as 
 Governor of the Cape of Good Hope ; another as Governor 
 of the Prince of Wales's Island ; another as Commissioner 
 of E.xcise ; another as Commissioner of the Navy at Bombay ;
 
 io4 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 another with a pension of/'30o for himself and £ loo for his 
 children; and another, a female, with a pension of / 780. 
 It is quite possible that one man held more than one office, 
 and it is very likely that I have omitted to mention some 
 offices altogether ; if so, my excuse must be the number of 
 the tribe. I must not omit to mention that it was a Dundas 
 who suggested in the House of Commons, during the dis- 
 turbances over Lord Robert Grosvenor's Sunday Closing 
 Bill, that the mob should be dispersed by cannon. Of late 
 years this fortunate family have not had such opportunities of 
 living upon the public purse ; yet I find one — the Hon. 
 Robert Dundas— who had been in the Admiralty forty-two 
 years, and who on his retirement in 1869, had a salary of 
 ^1,300, receiving an annual allowance of /'i, 072. Another 
 was a Colonial Governor for twenty-two years ; and yet 
 another has been in turn Solicitor-General and Judge Advo- 
 cate-General twice.
 
 LXXV 
 
 mn iflgl 
 
 fS. 
 
 *i 
 
 REASON, sacrilege and proscription," says 
 Gibbon, " are often the best titles of ancient 
 nobility." The Boyles are not very ancient, 
 but to them the third item in this statement is 
 most appropriate. In the present paper I am speaking ex- 
 clusively of the Irish Boyles ; the Boyles Earls of Glasgow 
 are quite a distinct house. Until the time of Elizabeth the 
 ancestors of the Earl of Cork and Orrery and of the Earl of 
 Shannon were an obscure Herefordshire family. In that 
 reign the founder of the house, a younger son of a younger 
 son, was a law student in London, so impecunious that he 
 was unable to continue his studies, and therefore resolved to 
 become an adventurer in Ireland. One of his descendants, 
 the present Earl of Cork and Orrer}-, has in 
 Cork 
 
 Kerry 
 Limerick 
 Wexford 
 Somerset 
 
 19,689 acres 
 
 11,552 „ 
 2,762 ,, 
 
 231 „ 
 3,398 „ 
 
 Total 37,632 „ 
 With a rentroll of _^l9,i66. 
 
 Another descendant, the Earl of Shannon, has 12,743 acres 
 in Cork, with a rentroll of /^9,322. The first Earl of Cork, 
 who arrived in Ireland m 1588 — less than three hundred years 
 ago — tells us in his autobiography, "All my wealth was 
 ^27 3s. in money, a diamond ring, a bracelet of gold, a 
 taffety doublet, a pair of black-velvet breeches laced and cut 
 upon taffety, two cloaks, competent linen and necessaries, 
 with my rapier and dagger." A modest inventory this ; he 
 was very much like the typical countrv boy, who reaches 
 London with the traditional half-crown in his pocket. How- 
 ever, like the " undertakers "—most appropriate name — who 
 went over to Ireland in Elizabeth's reign, in order to enrich 
 themselves, he did not very long remain in this impecunious
 
 io6 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 condition, and before his death he could compute his income 
 at ^'50 a day, exclusive of houses and parks. 
 
 Eoyle had not been long in Ireland when he laid the foun- 
 dation of his fortunes by a marriage with a Limerick heiress, 
 who brought him an estate of £ 500 per annum. His rise 
 was so rapid that his purchases of lands excited the unfounded 
 suspicion that he was in the pay of Spain, and he came over 
 to England to justify himself. After a short imprisonment he 
 was released by Elizabeth, and appointed Clerk of the Council 
 in Munster. The rebellion of Fitzgerald, Earl of Desmond, 
 though a misfortune to Boyle at the outset, proved in the end 
 to be greatly to his advantage, as he obtained a large part of 
 the confiscated Desmond property. Sir Walter Raleigh, too, 
 who had acquired considerable lands in jMunster, in 1602 
 sold them to Eoyle for the small sum of / 1,500. This pro- 
 perty, the greater part of which is now in the possession of 
 the Duke of Devonshire, is worth considerably more than 
 ^30,000 per annum. Later on he appears to have obtained 
 grants of land as assignee of Carew and others. He also 
 obtained by purchase the estate of Marston, in Somerset, 
 which is still the seat of the family. Boyle, who had been 
 created Earl of Cork, in his old age assisted Charles I. in 
 preparing for his expedition against the Scots at a cost of 
 ^20,000, a very large sum in those days. I am not surprised 
 at his rapid acquisition of confiscated lands, but looking at 
 his purchases, the lavish scale of his expenditure, and his 
 pecuniary assistance to Charles L, and to the poverty of Ire- 
 land, I cannot understand whence he obtained so much 
 money. From an English point of view, it was no wonder 
 that he became know^n as " the Great Earl of Cork ;" but the 
 Irish must have regarded him very much as a Zulu dispos- 
 sessed of his lands regards a Dutch Boer. An inquiry having 
 been made into the condition of Munster in 161 1, it was re- 
 ported that all Lord Cork's lands were inhabited by English. 
 We are also told that " he encouraged the settlement of Pro- 
 testants, the suppression of Popery, and the transportation of 
 many septs and barbarous clans from the fruitful province of 
 Leinster into the wilds of Kerry " — very agreeably, no doubt, 
 to the new colonists of the fruitful province, but very much 
 to the disadvantage of those who were driven away to the 
 wilds. 
 
 The Earl of Cork appears to have taken particular care of
 
 The Boyles, 107 
 
 his relatives. His brother obtained two Irish Bishoprics — 
 Cork and Cloyne, and Ross. Another relative became Arch- 
 bishop ofTuam, and yet another Bishop of Waterford. Some- 
 what later one of the descendants of the priestly Boyles 
 became Archbishop of Armagh, and obtained a considerable 
 grant of lands in Wicklow. Subsequently he became Lord 
 Chancellor of Ireland, and his son, who inherited his estates, 
 was created Viscount Blesinton, a title now extinct. 
 
 The sons of the first Earl of Cork inherited the abilities or 
 the good luck of their father. Three of them were created 
 Irish peers in his lifetime, and the fifth, Robert Boyle, dis- 
 tinguished for his reputation as a philosopher, more than 
 once refused a peerage. The second son, Viscount Boyle, 
 was killed in the Irish Rebellion of 1642. The eldest son 
 (afterwards second Earl) further advanced his fortunes by a 
 marriage with the daughter and heiress of Clifford, Earl of 
 Cumberland, who possessed large property in the North of 
 England. He took the Royalist side in the Civil War, but 
 contrived to escape the sequestration of his estates, and after 
 the Restoration was appointed Lord High Treasurer of Ire- 
 land, and was created Earl of Burlington. His great-grand- 
 son, the fourth Earl, claimed and obtained the ancient barony 
 of Clifi:brd, and at his death his daughter and only child, who 
 married a Duke of Devonshire, carried the Clifford property 
 and part of the Irish estates to the Cavendishes. He was 
 distinguished for his architectural taste, and was the builder 
 of Old Burlington House in Piccadilly ; Cork Street is still to 
 be found at the end of the Burlington Arcade. Burlington 
 House, as well as Chiswick House which had been acquired 
 by purchase, passed to the Cavendish family. 
 
 At the death of this Earl the Cork title and estates passed 
 to the Earl of Orrery, whose descendants still possess both 
 titles. We must now go back to the third son of the first 
 Earl who in his father's lifetime had been created Lord Brog- 
 hill, and who was a conspicuous figure in the time of the 
 Commonwealth. Frequent allusions are made to him in 
 Cromwell's letters, he having been one of the Protector's 
 principal lieutenants in the subjugation of Ireland. He was 
 a prominent member of Cromwell's first Parliament, and sat 
 upon the Committee on Kingship, to which scheme he was 
 strongly favourable ; if we may trust a family chaplain, with 
 the base design of making Cromwell unpopular. From the
 
 io8 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 Cromwell Parliament he obtained two grants of confiscated 
 lands, one to the value of £1,000 per annum, and the other 
 of 2,000 acres of cultivated soil. After the Protector's death. 
 Lord Broghill sent his younger brother to invite Charles II. 
 over to Ireland, for which service the said brother was created 
 Viscount Shannon at the Restoration, a title which expired 
 with his grandson. Broghill himself was created Earl of 
 Orrery, and appointed to a number of lucrative offices in Ire- 
 land. Like the aristocratic Protestants of the time of the 
 Tudors, the aristocratic Puritans of the time of the Stuarts 
 were quite ready to make their convictions subordinate to 
 their interests. Broghill had much more substantial rewards 
 than an earldom. Besides his numerous offices, he had five 
 grants under the Irish Act of Settlement, which, by the way, 
 was drawn up by his own hand. He also farmed the excise 
 of beer and spirits in Ireland, and on the suppression of his 
 office as President of Munster he obtained a pension of ^800 
 per annum. Later on I find him obtaining a grant of ^^5, 000, 
 and oi £ 100 per annum from Crown Lands. 
 
 The fourth Earl of Orrery was a distinguished scholar, who 
 bequeathed his library and philosophical instruments to 
 Christ Church College, Oxford, where he was educated, and 
 after whom Mr. George Graham, the inventor of " Lhe 
 Orrery," bestowed the name on that astronomical instrument. 
 His son, the fifth Earl, as I have already indicated, became 
 also fifth Earl of Cork. A younger grandson of Lord Brog- 
 hill, first Earl of Orrery, after filling the offices of Speaker of 
 the Irish House of Commons, Chancellor of the Exchequer, 
 and Lord Justice, was elevated to the Irish Peerage under 
 the title of Earl of Shannon. His descendant sits in the 
 House of Lords under the English title of Baron Carleton, 
 and possesses 12,743 acres in Cork, with a rentroll of 
 
 Apart from the unquestionable wrongs which the Irish have 
 had to endure at the hands of successive generations of con- 
 fiscators, the world has not had much reason to regret the 
 rise of the Boyles to affluence and power. Literature, art, 
 and science have found in them earnest patrons, and even 
 ardent votaries. One of them obtained an elaborate eulogy 
 from Burnet ; another was comj)limented as " the generous 
 Burlington" by Gay ; another was the friend of Swift ; and 
 yet another the friend of Pope, to whum the poet dedicated
 
 TJic Boylcs. 109 
 
 his essay on "Taste," and wrote a number of letters. Lord 
 Beaconsfield has told us, in one of his earlier works, that 
 " greatness no longer depends on rentals, the world is too 
 rich ; nor on pedigrees, the world is too knowing;" and this 
 truth the Boyles have generally appeared to recognise. In 
 more recent times the Boyles have hardly retained the pro- 
 minent position they formerly occupied ; but the present Earl 
 of Cork is known as one of the most consistent and active 
 members of the Liberal party.
 
 LXXVI. 
 
 (POWIS BRANCH.) 
 
 iHAT which Ireland was to EngHsh adventurers in 
 the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, India was 
 in the eighteenth. Between the two classes, how- 
 
 -— ^ ever, there was a wide difference. The Irish, 
 
 unlike the natives of India, saw the soil of their country 
 appropriated by landlords of another race ; but many of the 
 English adventurers, at great cost, effected vast improvements 
 in the country. The natives of India were fleeced mimerci- 
 fully by Englishmen, whose chief object was to get as much 
 wealth out of the country in the shortest possible time, and 
 then take it away with them. I have not yet dealt with any 
 landlords of the Nabob class, and I therefore now propose to 
 take the house whose founder was immeasurably superior to 
 most Anglo-Indian nabobs. 
 
 Three earls bear the name of Herbert — Pembroke, Car- 
 narvon, and Powis. Of the first I have already spoken ; of 
 the last I now propose to speak. Strictly speaking, the Earl 
 of Powis is not a Herbert, but a Clive ; but in the female line 
 he is descended from the Herberts, and inherits a considerable 
 portion of the estates once held bv a branch of this great 
 Norman-Welsh house. He owns in' 
 
 Shropshire .... 26,986 acres. 
 
 Montgomery .... 33,545 „ 
 
 Total 60,531 ,, 
 With a rent-roll of ^62,925. 
 
 The union of the two houses of Herbert and Clive can 
 hardly be described as an alliance of new men and old acres, 
 for the Clives are certainly as old a family as the Herberts', 
 and held lands in the IMarches of Wale's long before the 
 Herberts were known in the district. But to the Clives, at 
 the beginning of the last centur}-, there must have appeared
 
 The Herberts. 
 
 1 1 1 
 
 an immense distance between themselves and the owners of 
 that stately pile in Montgomeryshire known to the Welsh as 
 Castell Coch, or the Red Castle, and to the English as Powis 
 Castle. For though some of the Clives had sat in Parliament 
 as county members, the father of Robert Clive had but an 
 estate of ^500 a-year, followed the profession of a solicitor, 
 was in embarrassed circumstances, and was glad to accept an 
 Indian writership for his eldest son at a time when the East 
 India Company was nothing more than a society of traders. 
 
 I have no space to describe, even in the most cursory 
 manner, the brilliant and rapid career of Robert Clive in India. 
 In 1744 he obtained a writership, in 1747 he temporarily 
 exchanged the pen for the sword, and achieved his first sue 
 cesses. Soon after he was appointed to the lucrative office of 
 Commissary-General. In 175 1 he again distinguished himself 
 as a military leader, and at the age of 27 he returned to 
 England with such large gains in the shape of prize-money 
 that he was able to extricate his father from pecuniary embar- 
 rassment, and to excite the wonder of the Metropolis by his 
 extravagant mode of living. In two years he returned to 
 India. I am more concerned with his gains than with his 
 career as a soldier and administrator. Having set up in the 
 room of Sujah Dowlah, a wretched tyrant, one of that Prince's 
 officers, Meer Jaffier, as Nabob of Calcutta, he received 
 enormous gifts from the man whom he had placed in power. 
 At one time Meer Jaffier presented him with ^210,000, and 
 afterwards with the quit-rent for life of the lands held by the 
 East India Company near Calcutta, amounting to not far 
 short of ^30,000 per annum. By the time Clive had reached 
 the age of 34 he had an annual income of upwards of ^"40,000, 
 and there is every reason to believe that he might have made 
 yet larger gains if he had so chosen. Meer Jaffier, at his 
 death, bequeathed to Clive a legacy of ^70,000, which the 
 legatee generously devoted to the relief of Indian soldiers. 
 
 While it is impossible to acquit Clive of the charge of 
 beating villians by their own weapons, among which forgery 
 was included, it must be remembered that his enormous gains 
 were not wrung, like the gains of many of his successors, 
 directly from the suflerings of the Y\Tetched natives. He 
 played for high stakes with high players. The wealth he 
 obtained was from princes, not from ryots, and it was not the 
 fruit of personal extortion. In his later years, too, the efforts
 
 1 1 2 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 of Clive were strained to the utmost to restrain the rapacity of 
 those who had been dazzled and demoralised by his own 
 astonishing career. Fiercely assailed as Clive was after his 
 final return to England, it is now generally recognised that 
 the worst charges against him were unjust, and that the final 
 judgment of Parliament will also be the final judgment of 
 history. 
 «<a It was but natural that Clive, in the midst of his successes, 
 
 should determine to become a great landowner. In his native 
 county, Shropshire, the Walcots, of Walcot Hall, had been 
 settled for many generations. Clive availed himself of an 
 opportunity to purchase the Walcot estates, which have since 
 remained in the possession of his descendants, Walcot Hall 
 being one of the seats of the Earl of Powis. But he wanted 
 a residence nearer London. Sir John Vanbrugh, the architect 
 for whom was composed the well-known epitaph — 
 
 " Lie heavy on him, Earth, for he 
 Has laid full many a load on thee," 
 
 purchased some land at Esher, in Surrey, whereon he built 
 himself a house. In 171 5 it was sold to Pelham, Duke of 
 Newcastle and Earl of Clare, by whom the house was greatly 
 enlarged and beautified. The Duke added to the property 
 partly by purchase and partly by enclosing a heath, and after 
 his second title the place was called Clarcmont. Kent, a 
 celebrated landscape gardener, was employed in laying out 
 the grounds of — 
 
 " Esher's peaceful grove, 
 Where Kent and Nature strive for Pelham's love." 
 
 At the death of the Duke, Clive purchased the property and 
 rebuilt the house at a cost of /^ 100,000. The neighbouring 
 peasantry used to say that the great, wicked lord had built the 
 walls so thick in order to keep out the Devil, who would one 
 day carry him away. At Clive's death the place was sold ; 
 and, after passing through several hands, it was purchased by 
 the Government as a residence for the amiable Princess 
 Charlotte, who there died in childbed. Of late the mansion 
 has been the residence of the Orleans family. To return to 
 the Clives, Robert Clive received a peerage, and at his death 
 was succeeded by his eldest son. who married the sister and 
 heiress of the last Earl of Powis of the Herbert creation. 
 
 I find it more difficult to obtain information in regard to
 
 The Herberts. 113 
 
 Welsh property than in regard to English, but I have little 
 doubt that the Herberts owed their property in Montgomery- 
 shire to the favour of the Crown. During the reigns of the 
 Norman and Plantaganet kings the Marches or borders of 
 Wales were the scene of constant struggles between the Welsh 
 and the Barons. At length Mortimer, Earl of March, the 
 favourite of the Queen of Edward II., became the most 
 powerful baron in that district, seating himself at Wigmore, 
 in Herefordshire. He came to an ignominious end, but his 
 descendants obtained the restoration of their lands. A Mor- 
 timer heiress at last brought them by marriage to the Royal 
 Family, and for some time they were in the possession of the 
 Crown. The great stronghold on the English side was Mont- 
 gomery Castle, which appears to have been given into the 
 custody of Sir Richard Herbert by Edward IV. By what 
 process this castle, and the great estates in Montgomeryshire, 
 ultimately came into the absolute possession of the Herberts 
 I am unable to say, but it is not at all probable that they 
 acquired either by purchase. Powis Castle itself, by the way, 
 was purchased by the Herberts of the Greys in the reign of 
 Elizabeth. The Richard Herbert just mentioned was brother 
 of William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, and, like him, was a 
 staunch adherent of the Yorkist cause during the Wars of the 
 Roses. Richard Herbert, during a Welsh war, laid siege to 
 Harlech Castle, which made a stout defence. It is said that 
 the popular Welsh tune, " The March of the Men of Harlech," 
 was composed in commemoration of the event ; if so, the 
 English words now wedded to the tuno are sadly out of place. 
 There is another story in reference to this siege which I would 
 fain believe to be true. Dafydd ap Ivan ap Einion only sur- 
 rendered the castle on condition that his life should be spared ; 
 nevertheless Edward IV. would have executed his vanquished 
 foe had not Sir Richard Herbert demanded of the King that 
 either he should restore the brave Welshman to the castle, 
 and send some one else to take it, or else take his own life 
 instead of his prisoner's. Sir Richard, like his brother, was 
 afterwards beheaded by the victorious Lancastrians. One of 
 his younger sons re-obtained possession of Montgomery 
 Castle, and in the reign of Henry VIII. was Steward of the 
 Marches of North Wales and East Wales. His son, as 
 already noted, increased his estates by purchase. Of the 
 grandsons of the latter the fifth was George Herbert, the poet ; 
 
 S
 
 114 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 the eldest became Lord Herbert of Cherbury. Cherbury, by 
 the way, is a little town on the Shropshire side of the border, 
 two or three miles from Montgomery, and has given its name 
 to one of the Hundreds of the County of Salop. Lord Herbert 
 of Cherbury, chiefly known for his Deistical writings, after 
 acting as Ambassador to France, was elevated to an Irish 
 peerage by James L, and to an English peerage by Charles L 
 Of the succeeding Lords Herbert of Cherbury there is little 
 noteworthy to record. Twice the peerage expired, and twice 
 it was revived in favour of the nearest kinsman, who inherited 
 the estate. One of the Herberts of Cherbury married a niece 
 and heiress of the ]\Iarquis of Powis — also a Herbert — by 
 which means the family estates were considerably augmented. 
 The Herberts of the Powis line, by the way, narrowly escaped 
 forfeiture through adherence to James II. and his son ; but 
 the son obtained the reversal of the outlawry which the father 
 had incurred. The second Lord Clive, who, as lord of the 
 manor of Llanyblodwell, was the landlord of my own great 
 grandfather, after his marriage with the heiress of the Herberts, 
 was created Earl of Powis.
 
 LXXVII. 
 
 IJODLINESS is profitable to all things, having the 
 promise of the life that now is " — especially if 
 there be a National Church gorged with wealth 
 _ upon which younger sons can be quartered. 
 
 The Tories have fought repeated and obstinate battles for the 
 maintenance of the Irish Protestant Establishment. It is 
 well, therefore, that the people should remember how that 
 institution worked, and to whose advantage. As I have 
 already glanced at the history of the Beresfords, I do not 
 think that I could find a better illustration than the Trenches. 
 There are two branches of the house. The Earl of Clan- 
 carty owns in 
 
 Gal way . . . . . 24,010 acies 
 
 Roscommon .... i>454 >> 
 
 Total 25,464 ,, 
 with a rent-roll of ^^i 1,142. Lord Ashtown has in 
 Yorkshire .... 6,386 acres 
 
 Eight Irish Counties . . . 44>i75 >> 
 
 Total 50,543 ,, 
 With a rent-roll of ^28,202, 
 
 We shall see presently by what sinister means the peerages 
 were obtained. Mr. Henry Trench has also 10,760 acres in 
 six Irish coimties, with a rent-roll of /'^,'ji^. The Trenches 
 therefore hold between them more than 80,000 acres of land 
 in Ireland, every inch of which has been acquired during the 
 last three hundred years. It is hardly necessary to remark 
 that the Trenches are not an Irish family, but belong to that 
 numerous class of adventurers who, in the sixteenth and 
 seventeenth centuries, "undertook" the exploitation of the 
 
 8—2
 
 ii6 Our Old Nohility. 
 
 sister island. They profess to be of French extraction, being- 
 descended from a Protestant refugee who settled in Northum- 
 berland about 1575. According to one account, Frederick 
 Trench settled in Galway in 1605 ; according to another, in 
 1 63 1. Not long before, the whole of Connaught had been 
 the scene of most frightful cruelties, which were perpetrated 
 by the English upon the unhappy inhabitants. Writing of the 
 year 1577, Mr. Froude says: — "When the people were quiet 
 there was the rope for malefactors, and death by natural law 
 for those whom the written law would not touch. When they 
 broke out there was the blazing homestead and death by the 
 sword for all, not for the armed kerne only, but for the aged 
 and infirm, the nursing mother, and the baby at the breast." 
 Writing of the year 1582 the Four Masters say, " Neither the 
 sanctuary of the saint nor of the poet, neither the wood nor 
 the forest valley, the town nor the bawn, was a shelter from 
 the Captain (Brabazon) and his people, till the whole territory 
 was destroyed by him." Such was the condition of Con- 
 naught a few years before the first Trench made his appear- 
 ance there. Frederick Trench is said to have purchased the 
 extensive estate of Garbally, in County Galway. Irish estates 
 were certainly cheap in those days ; but Northumberland was 
 not then a money-making county, and I am at a loss to con- 
 ceive whence these Huguenot refugees could have obtained 
 the purchase-money. However, whether they obtained a 
 direct grant, or bought cheaply from those who had so lately 
 received a grant of confiscated lands, matters very little. 
 
 The great-grandson of this Frederick Trench, Richard by 
 name, married the heiress of David Power, of County Galway. 
 As the Clancartj/ branch of the Trench family now call them- 
 selves Le Poer Trench, I presume that the Powers were de- 
 scendants of the Roger Le Poer who accompanied Strongbow 
 to Ireland, and was a large gainer by the earliest of the many 
 confiscations that have taken place in the island. By this 
 marriage Richard Trench's estate was considerably increased. 
 His son was created Baron Kilconnel, in 1797, and his eldest 
 son sat in the last Irish Parliament, voted for the Act of Union 
 on condition of receiving certain promised rewards. Almost 
 immediately after the Act had passed the father was made a 
 viscount, and the year following he was advanced another step 
 in the Peerage as Earl of Clancarty. That name has been 
 recently made familiar by a popular play, and therefore I may
 
 1 kc Trencher. 1 1 7 
 
 as well explain in passing that the Earldom of Clancarty held 
 by Donough McCarty, the hero of JMr. Tom Taylor's drama, 
 had become extinct. The new Earl, however, was descended, 
 through the Powers, from a sister of Donough McCarty. 
 
 The sons of the first Earl of Clancarty of the new creation 
 were all born with a silver spoon in their mouths. The eldest, 
 who voted for the Act of Union as Member for County Gal- 
 way, obtained his own reward, apart from the reversion of his 
 father's new title, in the shape of an appointment as one of 
 the Commissioners on the affairs of India, and subsequently 
 of the sinecure of Irish Postmaster-General. He was after- 
 wards appointed Ambassador to Holland, and, on his retire- 
 ment from that easy post, obtained a modest pension of 
 ^2,000 per annum. For a man who never displayed any 
 remarkable abilities, he certainly was successful at the trade 
 of politics. 
 
 The second son of the first Earl was brought up to the 
 Church, and becar<ae first Bishop of Elphin, and afterwards 
 Archbishop of Tuam and Bishop of Clonfert. Though he 
 had in the two latter dioceses only 3,000 Protestant families 
 to look after, he received the enormous annual income of 
 ^'17,326. His eldest son went into Holy Orders, and was, of 
 course, well provided for, his father having numerous good 
 livings in his gift. The next son of the first Earl became 
 an Admiral ; two out of his three sons were also quartered 
 upon the Irish Church. The next son was in Holy Orders, 
 and became Archdeacon of Ardagh, with three fat livings, 
 whose united annual value was ^2,206; his eldest son be- 
 came a pluralist in that diocese of Tuam which proved such 
 a mine of wealth to the fortunate Trenches. 
 
 Let us now turn to the other branch of the family, of 
 which Lord Ashtown is the head. The younger son of the 
 first Trench who settled in Ireland went into Holy Orders, 
 and became Dean of Raphoe. He, or one of his immediate 
 descendants, appears to have acquired lands in the County 
 of Galway. A little later, Frederick Trench acquired lands 
 in Tippcrary by his marriage with the heiress of Francis 
 Sadleir. Of his sons, the third became Dean of Kildare ; 
 his eldest son, in turn, being quartered on the Irish Church. 
 Frederick Trench's eldest son was M.P. for Portarlington, 
 and afterwards the first Lord Ashtown. 
 
 The Act of Union, it will be remembered, was passed by
 
 Ii8 Onr Old Kobilily. 
 
 one vote in the Irish House of Commons. That vote was 
 the vote of the Member for PortarHngton. How was it 
 gained ? There had been previous rumours that the Ministers 
 had entered into negotiations with him, but that his conditions 
 were too exacting. As a certain class of voters hang back 
 till near the close of the poll, so with Mr. Trench. He even 
 went so far as to rise in his place and declare that he should 
 vote against the Ministry. Cooke and Castlereagh conferred 
 a short time together, and then Cooke went and sat down by 
 the side of Trench and had a short conversation with him. 
 A few minutes afterwards Trench had the unblushing audacity 
 to rise, and, amid the disgust of the House, declare that he 
 had thought better of the subject since he had unguardedly 
 expressed himself, and was now prepared to vote with the 
 Ministry. As Sir Jonah Barrington says, " scarcely was there 
 a member of any party who was not disgusted. . . . Mr. 
 Trench's venality excited the indignation of every friend of 
 Ireland." A few months after Mr. Trench became Lord 
 Ashtown. With regard to the Ashtown estates in Yorkshire, 
 I need only remark that they have been acquired by marriage 
 with the Olivers, who derived them in the same way from the 
 Gascoignes, a family to whom the famous Chief-Justice 
 Gascoigne belonged. 
 
 Lest the Spectator should again ask Cui bono ?■ I will ask 
 the question myself, and endeavour to answer it. Here is a 
 family which, as late as the reign of Elizabeth, was unknown 
 in Ireland ; it now owns more than 80,000 acres of Irish soil. 
 It has had no other means of acquiring this large property 
 than by the exploitation of the Irish people or by marriage 
 with other houses of the same class. Its gains by the Irish 
 Protestant Establishment may be reckoned by hundreds of 
 thousands, I might almost say millions. And, like other great 
 Irish landlords, the Trenches have the right to evict from 
 their holdings the descendants of those who b}- their labour 
 and energy have given to the soil of Ireland the value which 
 it now possesses. The demand of the Irish tenant farmer is 
 for fixity of tenure, that so long as he pays his rent no one 
 shall be able to dispossess him of his holding. If the greater 
 portion of the soil of England was held by men of another 
 race and another creed, who had fastened upon the country 
 within the last three hundred years, is it not very likely that 
 Englishmen would make a similar demand ? I'he Norman
 
 The Trenches. 1 1 g 
 
 merged into the Englishman centuries before most of the 
 families that now rank as great Irish landlords set foot in 
 Ireland. The English people can never thoroughly under- 
 stand the Irish Land Question until they look at it from the 
 Irish standpoint.
 
 LXXVIII. 
 
 (CARLISLE BRANCH.) 
 
 !HE lamented death of the late Mr. C. Howard, 
 ]\LP., brother to the Earl of Carlisle, reminds me 
 that I have as yet only glanced at the ducal line 
 of that great family. Beside the Duke of Nor- 
 folk, the Earls of Suffolk, Carlisle, and Effingham, Lords 
 Howard de Walden and Howard of Glossop, and the Earl of 
 Wicklow, all bear the same famous name, and all except the 
 last are undoubtedly descended from the same stock — an 
 honour which the Earl of Wicklow also claims. Taking the 
 estates of all these, and of three Commoner Howards, I find 
 that this fortunate family owns more than 211,000 acres of 
 land in the United Kingdom. The Earl of Carlisle, though 
 not the wealthiest of the Howards, has more extensive estates 
 than the Duke of Norfolk himself. He owns in — 
 
 Cumberland .... 47, 73° acres. 
 
 INorthumberland .... i7i78o ,, 
 
 Yorkshire .... 13,030 ,, 
 
 Total 78,540 „ 
 With a rentroll of ^^49,602. 
 
 Those who are familiar with "The Lay of the Last Min- 
 strel " will recollect " Belted Will Howard," one of the pro- 
 minent characters in the poem, but who, as Scott tells us in 
 his notes, by a poetical anachronism was introduced into the 
 romance a few years earlier than he actually flourished. It 
 was "Belted Will Howard" who was the founder of the 
 Cumberland branch of the family. He was a younger son 
 of the fourth Duke of Norfolk, who was beheaded in the 
 reign of Elizabeth, having been drawn into treason through 
 Mar)' Queen of Scots. In the following reign. Lord William 
 Howard was restored in blood. It was a marriage with a 
 Dacrc heiress that made him a great landholder. 
 
 The Dacres settled in Cumberland very soon after the Con-
 
 The Howards. 121 
 
 quest. They are said to have been kinsmen of De Meschines, 
 a Norman, whom William created Earl of Cumberland, and 
 to whom he granted the whole county. De Meschines granted 
 the barony of Gillesland to the ancestor of the Dacres. There 
 is a place called Dacre, in Cumberland, but it is doubtful 
 whether the family derived their name from the place, or the 
 place derived its name from the family. Scott says that the 
 family took the name to commemorate the part played by one 
 of them at the Siege of Acre ; but Mr. Howard, the author of 
 " Memorials of the Howard Family," regards this as a 
 groundless fiction. Be that is it may, for some centuries the 
 Dacres were one of the most powerful families in Cumber- 
 land, taking an active part in the incessant border wars. By 
 marriage with an heiress one of them acquired the barony of 
 Greystoke, which also had been granted by De Meschines to 
 another of his Norman associates. In time there appeared 
 two branches of the Dacre family — the Lords Dacre of the 
 North, and the Lords Dacre of the South. The title held by 
 the latter branch still exists, the heir presumptive to it being 
 the present Speaker of the House of Commons. Lord Wil- 
 liam Howard married one of the three sisters and co-heirs of 
 the last Lord Dacre of Gillesland. Each of these sisters, by 
 the way, married a Howard. By this marriage Lord William 
 became possessed of Naworth Castle, the ancient seat of the 
 Dacres of the North, and of the barony of Hinderskelle, 
 near Malton, in Yorkshire, on Avhich estate Castle Howard, a 
 mansion built by Sir John Yanbrugh, was subsequently erected. 
 Greystoke barony came into the possession of the Dukes of 
 Norfolk, and is now owned by one of the younger branches 
 of the ducal house. 
 
 The Barony of Dacre of Gillesland was revived at the 
 Restoration in favour of Lord William Howard's descendant, 
 and in addition he obtained the higher titles of \'iscount 
 Morpeth and Earl of Carlisle, and was at one time Ambas- 
 sador to the Czar of Muscovy, and at another Governor of 
 Jamaica. The third Earl was for a time First Lord of the 
 Treasury. The fourth married the heiress of one of the co- 
 heirs of Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle ; but, as he left only 
 daughters by that lady, I presume his share of the Newcastle 
 property passed to them. He married, secondly, a daughter of 
 the fourth Lord Byron — hence the connection of his son, 
 the fifth Earl, with the Byron family.
 
 122 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 jMen are sometimes kept in remembrance by the strangest 
 accidents. The fifth Earl of Carlisle was Lord Lieutenant of 
 Ireland. He published some poems, which ran through 
 three or four editions ; and some tragedies, which gave rise 
 to Dr. Johnson's somewhat toadyish remark, " that when a 
 man of rank appeared in the character of an author, he de- 
 served to have his merit handsomely allowed." But these 
 things, and the Earl himself, would have been long since 
 entirely forgotten, had not the Earl been the guardian of 
 i^ord Byron. To the Earl of Carlisle the " Hours of Idle- 
 ness " were dedicated " by his obliged ward and affectionate 
 kinsman, the author." But the guardian treated the ward 
 with studied coolness, or, at any rate, the ward fancied that 
 he did so ; and in "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" 
 the " affectionate kinsman " attacked the noble author of 
 the forgotten tragedies of "The Stepmother" and "The 
 Father's Revenge," in lines which the author himself after- 
 wards pronounced as " much too savage " : — 
 
 "What heterogeneous honours deck the peer ! 
 Lord, rhymester, petit-maitre, pamphleteer ! 
 So dull in youth, so drivelling in his age. 
 His scenes alone had damned our sinking stage ; 
 But managers for once cried, ' Hold, enough ! ' 
 jNor drugged their audience with the tragic stuff. 
 Yet at their judgment let his lordship laugh. 
 And case his volumes in congenial calf ; 
 Yes ! doff that covering where morocco shines, 
 And hang a calf-skin on those recreant lines." 
 
 Byron afterwards scribbled on his copy of the book, oppo- 
 site this passage, "Miserable record of misplaced anger and 
 indiscriminate acrimony ;" and, in a well-known passage in 
 " Childe Harold," he alludes to a younger son of the Earl 
 who fell at Waterloo : — 
 
 "Yet one I would select from that proud throng. 
 Partly because they blend me with his line, 
 And partly that I did his sire some wrong. 
 And partly that bright names will hallow song ! 
 And his was of the bravest, and when shower'd 
 The death-bolts deadliest the thin files along, 
 E'en where the thickest of war's tempest lower'd, 
 They reached no nobler breast than thine, young, gallant Howard." 
 
 The seventh Earl, known for the greater part of his life as
 
 llie Hoivards. 123 
 
 Lord jNIorpcth, was one of the most deservedly popular no- 
 blemen of the present century. His father was a member of 
 Lord Grey's Cabinet, without portfolio. Lord IMorpeth, like 
 his father before him, entered Parliament for Morpeth, which 
 was then a pocket borough of the family. In 1827 he was 
 the seconder of Sir Francis Burdett's motion in favour of 
 Catholic Emancipation ; a little later, in an eloquent speech, 
 he seconded Sir Fowell Buxton's resolution in favour of the 
 abolition of Slavery in the Colonies. As early as 1832 he 
 tleclared himself in favour of the remission of the Adver- 
 tisement Duty and the Stamp Duty on Newspapers. Through- 
 out the prolonged debate on the first Reform Bill he steadily 
 supported the popular cause, having by that time become one 
 of the members for the great county of York. He held office in 
 several Liberal Administrations as Secretary for Ireland, as 
 Commissioner of Woods and Forests, as Chancellor of the Duchy 
 of Lancaster, and twice as Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. It is 
 rarely that an Irish Viceroy can be denominated popular, but 
 the Earl of Carlisle was one of the most popular Viceroys that 
 have ever held office. In the Conservative reaction of 1841 
 he lost his seat for the West Riding of Yorkshire ; but a few 
 years after he was re-elected to Parliament, and voted in the 
 majority with Sir Robert Peel for the Abolition of the Corn 
 Laws. Sanitary Reform, Factory Legislation, the Education 
 of the People, and INIechanics' Institutes found in the Earl 
 of Carlisle a warm and earnest supporter. He won for him- 
 self an honourable position in literature. Besides his poems, 
 he published volumes of travels in America, Turkey, and 
 Greece ; lectures on the writings of Pope and Gray, and on 
 the importance of Literature to Men of Business ; and in 
 his elder years he evinced the same interest which he had 
 manifested in his youth as to the Slavery Question by writing a 
 preface to " Uncle Tom's Cabin." 
 
 The seventh Earl of Carlisle, who w'as never married, was 
 succeeded in 1864 by his next surviving brother, a clergy- 
 man, who in 1832 obtained the living of Londesborough, in 
 Yorkshire, a little parish of 324 inhabitants, value £']9^ and 
 a house, which, strange to say, he still holds. He is over 
 seventy years of age, and has never married. Mr. Charles 
 How^ard, the late Member for East Cumberland, had an only 
 son, Mr. George Howard, who was recently elected Member 
 for East Cumberland. Mr. George Howard is married
 
 124 ^^^^^ Old Ahbility. 
 
 to a daughter of the second Lord Stanley of Alderley, 
 and has given promise, by his consistent Liberalism, of 
 faithful adherence to the principles which have made the 
 Carlisle branch of the Howard family one of the most 
 popular of the great houses.
 
 LXXIX. 
 
 Ut 
 
 ET the Churchills and the Nelsons, and even the 
 Wellesleys, hide their diminished heads while I 
 speak of the Pratts. The Duke of Marlborough, 
 Lord Nelson, and the Duke of Wellington, splen- 
 didly as they were rewarded, at any rate left an indelible 
 record on the history of their country. One fell in the moment 
 of victory, and the others proved their prowess on many a 
 hard-fought field. I have to tell of a man without any record 
 that any one cares to remember, who yet received in the course 
 of his lifetime a million of public money. It is safe to say 
 that if he had never lived he never would have been missed. 
 Though several times an office-holder, he cannot claim a 
 place in the ranks of English statesmen. He is as utterly 
 forgotten as the great-grandfathers of the vast majority of 
 those who read this page. And yet from first to last he must 
 have received a million of money from the taxpayers of this 
 country. We pay our Prime Ministers during their short and 
 uncertain tenure of office a paltry ^5,000 per annum, and 
 usually, if they choose to accept it, they are in a position to 
 claim a pension of /'2,ooo when they retire ; but I have to 
 speak of a man who never did anything for his country worth 
 mentioning, and who received a million as his reward. Beside 
 him even the Anglo-Indian Nabob of the last century sinks 
 into insignificance. I was warned long ago that my materials 
 would soon be exhausted ; that after twenty or thirty families 
 had been glanced at little would remain to be told ; and yet I 
 have dealt with no less than seventy-eight families and have 
 not yet noticed the Pratts. 
 
 But, withal, the Pratts can boast of a singularly unique 
 distinction, of which they may well be proud. I doubt if 
 there is any other noble family which can fairly make a like 
 claim. We have seen that there have been many roads to the 
 Peerage. The Court, the field, the deck, the Bar, the Ex- 
 change, illicit love, and unlawful gain have all largely con-
 
 126 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 tributed to swell the ranks of the Peerage ; but where shall 
 we find a Barony like that of Camden, which was directly 
 obtained through the services which the first Lord Camden 
 rendered to the cause of popular liberty ? There is not a 
 particle of exaggeration in the eulogism which Lord Campbell 
 has pronounced upon him: — "Englishmen to the latest 
 generation will honour his name for having secured personal 
 freedom by putting an end to arbitrary arrests under general 
 warrants, for having established the Constitutional rights of 
 juries, and for having placed on on imperishable basis the 
 liberty of the Press." 
 
 The very name of Camden has an aroma of antiquity about 
 it, derived doubtless from the author of " Britannia " ; but the 
 Camden peerage is of quite modern date. A little over a 
 hundred years ago the first Lord Camden received his title 
 from Camden Place, Kent. The Camden estates consist of : — 
 
 Kent ..... 7.214 acres 
 
 Sussex ..... 3.755 >, 
 
 Brecon ..... 6,430 ,, 
 
 Total 17,399 ,, 
 With a rent-roll of ^16,380. 
 
 We need not trouble ourselves with the early history of the 
 Pratts ; suffice it to say they were impoverished by the Civil 
 War, and that John Pratt, an eminent lawyer, who flourished 
 at the beginning of the last century, restored the fortunes of 
 the house. In the year 17 14 he was elevated to the position 
 of Lord Chief Justice. He appears to have purchased the 
 Wilderness Estate, in Kent, near Sevenoaks, and Bayham 
 Abbey, in Sussex ; though, strange to say. Lord Campbell 
 asserts that he left his family in almost abject poverty. His 
 son, Lord Chancellor Camden, purchased the seat at Camden 
 Place Chislehurst, now the residence of the ex-Empress 
 Eugenie, and at one time the abode of Camden, the antiquary. 
 From this place he derived his title. Lord Chancellor Camden 
 married the heiress of Nicholas Jeflfreys, of the Prior)-, Brecon, 
 through whom the Welsh estates were derived. The Brecon 
 property is chiefly spoil of the monastic houses, but had been 
 obtained by purchase by the Jeff"reys family. 
 
 Lord Chancellor Camden was a younger son, for whom 
 little provision was made save an excellent education. From 
 Eton, where he made the acquaintance of tlie elder Pitt, he
 
 The Pratt s. 1 2 7 
 
 proceeded to Cambridge, and thence to the Bar. For some 
 time he made no progress, and, in despair, he was about to 
 take Holy Orders, when Henley, the leader of his circuit — 
 afterwards Lord Northington — befriended him, and, having 
 obtained a brief for him as his junior, stayed away on the plea 
 of illness, and allowed Pratt to win the cause alone. Hence- 
 forward Pratt's rise was rapid, and he was appointed Attorney- 
 General in the Ministry of the elder Pitt. Thence he was 
 elevated to the scat of Lord Chief Justice of the Common 
 Pleas. John Wilkes having been arrested on a general war- 
 warrant, i.e., a warrant not specifying the name of the person, 
 Pratt issued his habeas corpus to the Lieutenant of the Tower, 
 and discharged Wilkes from custody. In subsequent actions for 
 damages brought by persons who had been arrested on general 
 warrants, Pratt used the strongest language of denunciation 
 against the proceedings of those in power, and he pronounced 
 a warrant to search for and seize the papers of persons prose- 
 cuted for libel as utterly illegal and void. His independent 
 conduct gave him well-merited popularity, and he became one 
 of the idols of the people, as witness the portrait of him, with 
 its inscription, that still hangs in Guildhall as a memento of 
 the gratitude of the citizens of London. The City was, even 
 then, the staunch and loyal supporter of popular rights, and 
 those who served the people might always reckon on the aid 
 and sympathy of the Corporation. When the first Rockingham 
 Ministry assumed ofiftce, a forgotten Law-lord stood in the 
 way of Pratt's elevation to the Woolsack ; but he had become 
 the idol of the people, and it was necessary, in obedience to 
 the popular demand, that something should be done for him. 
 Therefore it was that he was elevated to the Peerage under 
 the title of Lord Camden. The Rockingham Ministry was 
 succeeded by that of Chatham, and Camden's old schoolfellow 
 and lifelong friend appointed him Lord Chancellor. At that 
 time there was no regular provision of ^5,000 per annum for 
 ex-Lord Chancellors, and, in exchanging the permanent 
 position of Lord Chief Justice for an uncertain position on the 
 Woolsack, Lord Camden was quite justified in stipulating for a 
 retiring pension of ^1,500 per annum, and the reversion of 
 an Exchequer Tellership for his eldest son. When Chatham 
 ceased to take an active part in public business the Ministry 
 reverted to unpopular courses. Though Camden approved of 
 the expulsion of Wilkes from the House of Commons, he
 
 1 2 8 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 disagreed with his colleagues as to the advisability of his 
 expulsion after the freeholders of IMiddlesex had re-elected 
 him, as also in the foolish and suicidal course which was taken 
 in the dispute with the American Colonies. At last, on 
 Mansfield's insinuation that he was a consenting party to the 
 measures for coercing America, Camden openly broke away 
 from the Ministry. Henceforth he staunchly supported 
 Chatham in his vain endeavours to restrain the English 
 Government from the folly and crime of war with the revolted 
 colonies. The closing years of Lord Camden's life were 
 marked by a steady and consistent support of the popular 
 cause. He pleaded eloquently for justice to Ireland ; he 
 denounced the abuses of the Pension List, declaring that, if 
 necessary, he was ready to give up his own, though no pension 
 in existence had been better earned ; he shared the younger 
 Pitt's youthful views on the necessity of Parliamentary Reform, 
 and strongly supported them ; and, above all, he was the 
 main cause of the passage through the House of Lords of 
 Mr. Fox's Libel Bill, which for ever settled the question that 
 juries and not judges should decide what was and what was 
 not a libel. Lord Camden who had been some years pre- 
 viously advanced to an earldom, died in 1794, at the ripe old 
 age of 81, leaving behind him a name that will ever be precious 
 to the hearts of free Englishmen. 
 
 I pass now to the second Earl, who was subsequently 
 created a IMarquis. At the age of 2 r he received the sinecure 
 appointment of a Tellership in the Exchequer. Two years 
 after, he was appointed a Lord of the Admiralty, and, a little 
 later, one of the Commissioners of the Treasury. In 1795 he 
 was Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland; in 1804, Secretary of State 
 for the Colonies ; in 1805, Lord President of the Council, an 
 office which he held, with a short interruption, till 181 2, But 
 all the while he was a Teller of the Exchequer. In that year a 
 stout old Radical, Mr. Creevy, brought before Parliament the 
 scandalous amount of emoluments which Lord Camden 
 received from his office. At the time of his appointment to 
 the post, which it must not be forgotten was a sinecure, he 
 did not receive from it more than ^^2,500 a-year. During 
 the American War the profits rose to ^^7,000, and in 1807 to 
 no less than ^23,000. In 1812 we were in the thick of the 
 struggle with Napoleon Bonaparte, and the nation was much 
 distressed by the cost of the prolonged war ; nevertheless.
 
 The Pratts. 129 
 
 when i\Ir. Creevy, after proving his case, proposed that the 
 profits of Lord Camden should be limited to some fixed and 
 settled sum of money, more suited to the present means and 
 resources of the nation, his demand was rejected. The 
 scandal, however, had become so great, and was so constantly 
 denounced, that Lord Camden resigned his claim on the extra 
 emoluments of his sinecure, which was worth at that time, 
 according to the " Georgian Era," between thirty and forty 
 thousand pounds per annum. It appears, however, that it 
 was not until five years afterwards that he resigned his full 
 claims. Then, having received for doing nothing the enor- 
 mous sum of ^^740, 000, he agreed to take /"3,683 annually 
 for his arduous labours. As he lived till 1 840 he must have 
 received about /^85, 000 more. 
 
 The second Marquis died a year or two ago, and was 
 succeeded by his son, an infant only a few months old.
 
 LXXX. 
 
 t |l3|bxnn 
 
 AM beginning to feel at home at last. So far as 
 one can judge of race by location, I apprehend 
 that my ancestors — British, Saxon, and Danish — 
 t ;-;^^.„-,„.^. , were in England long before the Norman. Still, 
 as~these were all conquered races — mere Afghans and Zulus, 
 who, by the divine right of triumphant scoundrelism, calling 
 itself superior civilisation, had to put their necks beneath the 
 yoke — I ought to feel the vast superiority of those whose 
 fathers came over with the Conqueror, But when I reach the 
 Ryders I begin to feel at home. The British aristocracy is not 
 altogether an exclusive caste. The great-great-grandfather 
 of the Earl of Harrowby kept a shop in Smithfield ; I had a 
 great-grandfather who kept a shop in Fetter-lane, not five 
 minutes distant. Among our Lares and Penates we still keep 
 a pair of broken images which once figured in the shop win- 
 dow of our ancestor ; I wonder whether Lord Harrowby still 
 keeps among his household gods the identical yard-stick with 
 which his ancestor measured silks and calico. Lord Harrowby 
 is too good a man to be offended at being reminded that his 
 forefathers rose from the ranks. I might also remind Lord 
 Sandon when, like a consistent Conservative, he votes against 
 the Burials Bill, he votes to perpetuate one of the odious 
 badges of inferiority under which those from whom he sprang 
 once suffered. 
 
 The term "Liberal-Conservative" is not so often heard 
 now as it was five-and-twenty years ago, but it still represents 
 a mental temperament which must exist as long as the Con- 
 servative party itself. However loyal Conservatives may be 
 to their party, there are divers shades of Conservative feeling. 
 Culture, travel, religion, philanthropy, each in their own 
 several way, temper the Conservative instinct. Take, for 
 example, the Conservatism of the Earl of Beaconsfield, the 
 Marquis of Salisbury, and Mr. Cross. Every thoughtful 
 Liberal, as soon as he gets away from specific questions, will
 
 The Rydcrs. 131 
 
 at once recognise that they are of a difierent species. The 
 first we despise, the second we hate, the third we reason 
 with. In the adventurer we know that success is the only 
 morality, in the landlord that class-privilege is the criterion 
 of politics, in the Liberal-Conservative that reason and senti- 
 ment have considerable weight. Family traditions are fre- 
 quently an important element in the political life of great 
 houses, and it would be easy to point out several aristocratic 
 families of an essentially Liberal-Conservative type. Of these 
 the Ryders will form a very fair example. 
 
 There has always been a strong dash of Puritanism in the 
 Ryders, which may perhaps be attributed to the fact that their 
 earliest ancestor, of whom anything positive is known, was a 
 Nonconformist minister. The Rev. Dudley Rider (they 
 spell the name with a " y " now) w^as Rector of Bedworth, in 
 Warwickshire, then a good living worth ^200, and now of 
 the value of /"s62 annually. This he renounced for con- 
 science sake when the Act of Uniformity was passed in 1662. 
 It is stated, too, that he also sacrificed a good estate, for his 
 uncle, who had made him his heir, refused afterwards to have 
 anything to do with a man who had incurred the odium of 
 Nonconformity. After his ejection from Bedworth, Mr. 
 Rider removed to Weddington, from whence he was driven 
 by the iniquitous Five Mile Act, passed by the Tories of those 
 days. After preaching at King's Lynn and elsewhere, he re- 
 tired into private life, and died in 1683. 
 
 The eldest son of the Rev. Dudley Rider became a trades- 
 man at Nuneaton ; his son went into the Church, and became 
 Archbishop of Armagh. The second son came to London, 
 and opened a mercer's shop in Smithfield. He appears to 
 have been faithful to the Nonconformity of his father, for his 
 children were sent to a Dissenting academy at Hackney. His 
 second son, who appears to have been originally intended for 
 a Dissenting minister, studied at Edinburgh and at Leyden, 
 and, having entered himself as a student in the Temple, threw 
 off the Nonconformity which was then an insuperable bar to 
 his professional advancement. While at the University he 
 seems to have suffered from straitened means, but he had a 
 happy faculty of pushing his way in the world, and was for- 
 tunate enough to be the friend and fellow student of Lord 
 King, by whom he was recommended to Walpole. In 1733 
 he was appointed Solicitor-General, and four years after 
 
 9—2
 
 132 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 Attorney-General. His time of office was unmarked by any 
 exciting event save the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, Sir Dudley 
 Ryder appearing for the prosecution at the trial of the chiefs 
 of the Rebellion. Once he had the misfortune, by order of 
 the House of Commons, to prosecute an audacious printer 
 for a libel on that august assembly ; but, though he tried 
 to bully the Jury into a verdict of guilty, they acquitted the 
 prisoner ; and Sir Dudley had the additional mortification, on 
 returning home, to be compelled to treat a mob to drink the 
 health of the Jury. In 1754 he was made Lord Chief Jus- 
 tice ; but Lord Hardwicke obstinately objected to his eleva- 
 tion to the peerage. Two years afterwards, the Duke of 
 Newcastle needing votes in the House of Lords, it was inti- 
 mated to him that he would be created a peer, but before the 
 patent of peerage was made out he suddenly expired, and the 
 Government was shabby enough to withhold the title from his 
 son. The son, however, having sat for Tiverton nearly 
 twenty years, zealously supporting Lord North's Ministry, was 
 at length raised to the Peerage by the title of Lord Harrowby. 
 Harrowby, by the way, is a small place in Lincolnshire, not 
 far from Grantham. He adopted as his family motto, Scn'ala 
 fides cineri — " The promise made to my ancestor's ashes is now 
 kept " — very appropriate under the circumstances. 
 
 The first Lord Harrowby had three sons. The first sat in 
 his father's lifetime for Tiverton, as did also the second, who 
 held at diflferent times several lucrative offices. The third 
 went into the Church, and became Bishop of Lichfield ; one 
 of his sons had a canonry in Lichfield Cathedral. The second 
 Lord Harrowby, a staunch supporter of Pitt, and that states- 
 man's second in the Tierney duel, filled a number of offices in 
 his lifetime. He was successively Under-Secretary of State, 
 Comptroller of the Household, Treasurer of the Navy, Pay- 
 master of the Forces, Ambassador to Berlin, President of the 
 Board of Control, and President of the Council. \\\ 1809 he 
 was advanced to an Earldom. He appears to have been a 
 moderate Conservative, for whom the stift' Toryism of the 
 Wellington Administration was too strong. Although a 
 staunch supporter of Catholic emancipation, he was a pro- 
 minent member of the Evangelical party, and took a warm 
 interest in their religious and philanthropic societies. 
 
 His eldest son, the present Earl, who is now over 80 years 
 of age, originally sat for what v/as once the family borough
 
 T}ie Ryders 
 
 oo 
 
 of Tiverton. Before the passing of the first Reform Uill the 
 election of members was vested in the Corporation of that 
 borough, and it deserves to be recorded in Lord Harrowby's 
 honour that, having declared himself in favour of Reform, 
 the Corporation of Tiverton in 1830 refused to re-elect him. 
 In the following year, however, he was elected for Liverpool, 
 and his name appears in the Division List as voting in favour 
 of the second reading of the Reform Bill of 1832. Faithful 
 to the Liberal-Conservative tradition, he also voted for the 
 Abolition of the Corn Laws. He continued to sit for Liver- 
 pool till 1847, when ^^^s father's death removed him to the 
 Upper House. Faithful also to the Puritan traditions of 
 the family. Lord Harrowby has always been a warm supporter 
 of the institutions of the Evangelical party. He has been 
 Secretary to the Board of Control, Chancellor of the Duchy 
 of Lancaster, and Lord Privy Seal. As he was first elected 
 for Tiverton in 1819, his legislatorial career has extended over 
 60 years. Probably no living legislator can boast of so long 
 a period of active service. 
 
 The Earl of Harrowby owns in 
 
 Staffordshire .... 
 
 Lincoln .... 
 
 Gloucester .... 
 
 Warwick .... 
 
 Total 12,625 >' 
 With a rent-roll of/22,696. 
 
 All of this has doubtless been acquired in a perfectly legitimate 
 manner. Sandon Hall, near Stone, in Staffordshire, was pur- 
 chased by the first Lord Harrowby, in 1776, of Lord Archibald 
 Hamilton, the Dukes of Hamilton having previously acquired 
 the estate by marriage. 
 
 Lord Sandon, the eldest son of the present Earl, is better 
 known to the world now than his father. I once had to 
 transact a littie business with him, and his urbanity contrasted 
 verv favourablv with the manner of some men with whom I 
 had previously been brought into contact on the front Oppo- 
 sition bench. He seems to have inherited the family traditions. 
 According to Dod, he formerly ranked as a Liberal, and even 
 now his Conservatism has not the flippancy of Mr. Cavendish 
 Bentinck or the pugnacity of Lord Cranbrook. Of all the 
 members of the present Government, not even excepting the 
 
 4.940 
 
 acres 
 
 4.253 
 
 >» 
 
 3.207 
 
 >• 
 
 'JO" 
 
 
 --:> 
 
 ?»
 
 134 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 ever suave and courteous Chancellor of the Exchequer, he 
 seems the last man to create political enemies. He sat for 
 Lichfield for three years, but since 1868 he has sat, as his 
 father did before him, for Liverpool. It will be remembered 
 that he was one of the members of the first London School 
 Board. 
 
 The Ryders have certainly had their share of good things 
 in both Church and State, but not to such an extent as to give 
 them a reputation for greediness, or occasion anything like 
 scandal.
 
 LXXXL 
 
 T has sometimes been urged against the direct 
 representation of labour and the payment of mem- 
 bers that thereby a door would be opened to pro- 
 
 fessional politicians. Using the term in no 
 
 opprobrious sense, it is obvious we have not a few professional 
 politicians. Journalists are professional politicians, so are 
 not a few lawyers who enter upon a Parliamentary career, so 
 are others who belong to neither of these classes. I think I 
 have already furnished proofs that the profession of politics 
 has been eminently advantageous to not a few of our great 
 families ; but there are some noble houses whose members 
 have uniformly followed the profession of politics, except 
 those who were provided for in the Church, the Army, or the 
 Navy. Let us take the Edens for example. 
 
 The Edens cannot be ranked among the great territorial 
 houses. Neither Lord Auckland nor Lord Henley appear in 
 the list of landowners holding 5,000 acres and upwards. Sir 
 William Eden owns 6,096 acres in Durham, and 1,832 in 
 Yorkshire, and Mr. John Eden owns 5480 acres in Durham. 
 Small as are their landed possessions, and modern as are their 
 titles, the Edens have a remarkable, if not a very eventful, 
 history. They have been certainly liberally rewarded by the 
 natiori for their services, and of one of them, at least, it may 
 be safely said, that, so far from his services being valuable, it 
 would have been a good bargain for the country if it had paid 
 him ten times the amount received simply to do nothing at 
 all. 
 
 The Edens are an old Durham family, who held lands of 
 the Bishop of Durham as far back as the fifteenth century, 
 By what exact process they rose from tenants to landlords I 
 am unable to say ; but in the reign of Charles IL one of them, 
 who greatly advanced the fortunes of the House by a marriage 
 with a Lambton heiress, was created a Baronet. The third 
 Baronet had five sons. The eldest succeeded him ; the
 
 136 Oiir Old Nobility. 
 
 second was appointed Governor of Maryland, and his descend- 
 ants subsequently inherited the title and estates of the family. 
 The fourth son obtained the appointment of Deputy-Auditor 
 of Greenwich Hospital ; and of his sons, one became a 
 Lieutenant-General in the Army, with the colonelcy of a 
 regiment ; another became an Admiral, and has been Secre- 
 tary to the First Lord of the Admiralty, Commodore Super- 
 intendent at Woolwich, Aide-de-Camp to the Queen, and a 
 Lord of the Admiralty ; another was Assistant-Comptroller 
 of the Exchequer, and another was in the East India Com- 
 pany's service. The third and fifth sons of the third Baronet 
 were both advanced to the peerage, the one as Lord Auck- 
 land, the other as Lord Henley. I proceed to glance at both 
 branches of the house. If the lengthy catalogue of places 
 and pensions becomes wearisome to the reader, I shall have 
 all the more claim upon his sympathy in the patient endea- 
 vour to trace them all out. 
 
 William Eden, afterwards the first Lord Auckland, at the 
 age of twenty-nine was appointed Director and Auditor of 
 that ancient sink of corruption, Greenwich Hospital. The 
 next year he was made an Under-Secretary of State. A seat 
 was soon provided for him in the Duke of Marlborough's 
 pocket borough of Woodstock. Next he became a Commis- 
 sioner of the Board of Trade, and then Chief Secretary for 
 Ireland, in which latter^ capacity he was not remarkably suc- 
 cessful ; ]\Ir. JMassey speaks of him as escaping with difficulty 
 from Dublin amid the execrations of the populace. He also 
 acted as A^ice-Treasurer for Ireland. In the early part of his 
 career he had had some experience in diplomacy, as one of 
 the Commissioners for negotiating Peace with America, and 
 during Pitt's administration he acted at different times as 
 Ambassador to France, Spain and Holland. He was at first 
 created an Irish Peer, but afterwards obtained an Flnglish 
 Peerage. Somewhat later he was Postmaster-General, and 
 he finally retired in 1801 on a pension of ^^2,300 and £"100 
 for his wife. He died in 1814 and his wife in 1818. The 
 pay of Ambassadors ranged from five to eleven thousand 
 pounds. Altogether, Lord Auckland must have found the 
 profession of politics extremely profitable. He had two 
 daughters, who had a pension of ^204 each. 
 
 He obtained for his eldest son one of those lucrative sine- 
 cures, an Exchequer Tellership ; but he died in his father's
 
 The Edciis. 137 
 
 lifetime. The next son, the second Lord Auckland, had a 
 pension of /^3oo, dating from 1814, and another of £\oo, 
 dating from 1820, and he lived on till 1849. In Earl Grey's 
 IMinistry he held both the offices of JNIaster of the Mint, 
 salary ^'3,000, and the President of the Board of Trade, 
 salary^ 2,000. In 1835 he was appointed Governor-General 
 of India (salary / 25,000), and remained there till 1842. He 
 is distinguished as being the author of the first Afghan War. 
 The history of that shameful and criminal folly is too well 
 known to need repetition here. Suffice it to say that it 
 resulted in the total destruction of a British Army in Afghan- 
 istan, and in the Indian authorities being compelled to set 
 again upon the throne of that country the very man whom 
 they had displaced. The war began successfully, and when 
 the British troops were in possession of Cabul, Lord Auck- 
 land ordered that " Afghanistan " should be inscribed upon 
 the colours, and the English Government hastened to elevate 
 him to an Earldom. The disgrace and disaster followed a 
 little later on. Remembering this, it may be as well to defer 
 Lord Lytton's advance in the Peerage till we can see the end 
 of the second war, because history, which has repeated itself 
 more than once before now, may yet do so again.''"' Of this 
 wretched war. Miss Martineau well says that " it does not 
 become those at home, who were misled, to forget this great 
 folly and crime, or to attempt to cover it with cant about the 
 glor}- of our arms." As to Lord Auckland's responsibility, I 
 again quote the same historian : — " It has often been said 
 that the way to have peace in India is to send out soldiers 
 rather than civilians as Governors-General, and certainly this 
 declaration of war goes far to confirm the saying. It is 
 scarcely conceivable that a great military ruler could have 
 done an act so rash as Lord Auckland did." The second 
 Lord Auckland, who, besides the above-named offices, was at 
 one time Auditor of the Exchequer and Eirst Lord of the 
 Admiralty, died in 1849, without issue, when the Earldom 
 expired, but the Barony was inherited by his next brother. 
 
 The third Lord Auckland had gone into the Church, and, 
 after holding minor appointments, was elevated to the 
 Bishopric of Sodor and Man in 1847. Less than two years 
 
 * This chapter was printed long before the recent Cabul Massacre 
 occurred.
 
 138 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 after he succeeded to the barony, but he still continued to 
 hold his Bishopric. In 1854 he was translated to the richer 
 See of Bath and Wells, which he continued to hold till 1869, 
 when, being seventy years of age, he retired. He died the 
 following year, and was succeeded by his eldest son. Of his 
 other sons, one went into the Navy, and another into the 
 Indian Civil Service. 
 
 The first Lord Auckland's youngest brother. Clerk to the 
 Auditor of Greenwich Hospital, went into the Diplomatic 
 Ser\'ice, and acted as British Ambassador at various Courts. 
 He married the sister and co-heir of Henley, Earl of North- 
 ington, and ultimately was created an Irish Peer, with the title 
 of Baron Henley. The second Lord Henley (who dropped 
 the family name of Eden for that of Henley) married a sister 
 of the late Sir Robert Peel, and obtained a Mastership in 
 Chancery, value about /"4,6oo per annum, which he continued 
 to hold after succeeding to the title. His brother, who went 
 into the Church, obtained the living of Beaksbourne (^247) 
 and Harbledown {£ '^'i'^ and a house), and subsequently of 
 Bishopsbourne {£ S'^l 3-i^d ^ house). 
 
 It is worth while to glance at the Edens who are now in 
 the Church ; they will serve to show what " a feast of fat 
 things " the Church of the Poor provides for the cadets of 
 aristocratic houses who go into her service. There is one 
 who is Vicar of Ticehurst (^820 and a house) ; another is 
 Prebendary of York, also Vicar of Aberford (^364 and a 
 house) ; another is Vicar of Sedgeficld (^1,800 and a house) ; 
 another is Vicar of Wymondham (/ 761 and a house). 
 
 Even at the present day we have not done with the Edens 
 as pensioners. A Mr. Frederick Eden, who was in the Civil 
 Service, retired in 1867, his salary then being ^866 per 
 annum, and his retiring pension is /"317. The late Sir Wil- 
 liam Eden, Bart., was also Custos Brevium of the Court of 
 Common Pleas, and received for forty years in that capacity 
 the sum of/^786 i8s. 8d. annually — in all /"31, 457. He died 
 in 1873, but the annual ^'786 i8s. 8d. is still paid to his 
 son. Have we not already paid the Edens enough, and more 
 than enough, for their brilliant services ? So long as the 
 Eden Baronetcy does not want an heir is the British nation 
 compelled to keep on paying them nearly ^800 per annum 
 for doing nothing ? 
 
 My almost interminable list of Eden places and pensions is
 
 TJic Edcns. i3g 
 
 not quite exhaustive. I have come across two or three other 
 Edens who, I am sure, held offices at some time or other, of 
 whom I could not obtain particulars. I have, however, stated 
 quite enough to show that they have uniformly acted up to the 
 family motto, Si sit prudentia — " If there be but prudence." 
 Thank Heaven we live in an enlightened country, where the 
 members of aristocratic houses serve the State purely from 
 patriotism and public spirit. We have not among us place- 
 men, adventurers, and office-seekers, even as those Ameri- 
 cans ! We make our Parliament the close preserve of wealthy 
 men, and carefully keep out those whose moderate means 
 might tempt them to turn politics into a trade. What need of 
 more Burts, so long as we have plenty of Edens }
 
 LXXXII. 
 
 %lp Sil/gimxj?. 
 
 
 SE 
 
 1 
 
 HE history of the Thynnes is singularly uneventful ; 
 except the murder of one member of the house it 
 presents hardly any feature of interest, save in the 
 acquirement of the property which the Thynnes 
 possess. The Marquis of Bath, however, is fully entitled to 
 a place in " Our Old Nobility," though his superior title is 
 not a hundred years old, and his second title a little less than 
 two hundred. He is the owner of Longleat, one of the most 
 magnificent mansions in the country, which is surrounded by 
 a park of 4,500 acres, and his landed possessions amount to 
 55,425 acres, with a rent-roll of ^^67,002, situated as fol- 
 lows : — 
 
 Wilts ..... 19.977 acres 
 
 Somerset ..... 8,214 
 
 Salop ..... 3,508 
 
 Hereford ..... 699 
 
 Monaghan . . . . 23,027 
 
 Lord John Thynne has also 14,981 acres in Cornwall, Bed- 
 ford, and Devon, with a rent-roll of/"i3,46i. 
 
 The Thynnes were Poitevins, who came over to England in 
 the reign of John, to assist that tyrant in fighting his rebel- 
 lious barons. For some time they were known by the name 
 of De Boteville. Geoffry de Boteville, one of the Poitevin 
 adventurers who came over to assist John, subsequently held 
 certain lands at Stretton and Boteville in Shropshire, under 
 the great Earl of Arundel. Twice they lost a part of these 
 lands, but some portion of them was held by William Thynne, 
 Master of the Household to Henry VH. Either William 
 Thynne or his brother was Chief Clerk of the Kitchen to 
 Henry VHI. Sir John Thynne, the son or nephew of Henry 
 VIH.'s Clerk of the Kitchen, died, in the reign of Elizabeth, 
 one of the richest landowners in the South of England. At 
 the time of the Reformation the Thynnes certainly held no 
 lands at all, save a small estate in Shropshire ; in the reign of
 
 TJic Thy lines. 141 
 
 Elizabeth they were in possession of most of the great estates 
 in '.Wilts and Somerset now held by the ^Marquis of Bath. 
 Their rise as a great territorial house was prodigiously rapid ; 
 and yet, save as regards Hornsingham, a manor of 2,000 
 acres, held by Lord Hungerford, who was attainted, and whose 
 property in this place was granted to John Thynne, they do 
 not appear to have acquired much by any direct grants from 
 the Crown. How are we to account for their great landed 
 acquisitions in such a short space of time ? 
 
 Sir John Thynne (who was knighted at the Battle of INIussel- 
 burgh) was the favourite and secretary of the Protector 
 Somerset. I have already alluded to the frightful rapacity of 
 the statesmen of the days of Edward VL, and need not dwell 
 upon it further now. It is stated in the records of the 
 Thynne family that Sir John was twice imprisoned in the 
 Tower along with his master, and that the second time he 
 only escaped with a fine of /'G.ooo and the loss of several 
 great offices and good leases. He seems to have played a 
 very safe and clever game. He did not obtain direct grants 
 from the spoil of the monastic houses, but he made extensive 
 and advantageous purchases from those who did. When such 
 vast estates were being flung away right and left by those 
 whose duty it was to conserve the property of the Crown, 
 there must have been plenty of good bargains in land, and 
 Thynne, as the Secretary of the Protector Somerset, must 
 have had choice opportunities of making them. But whence 
 had he the means .? He seems to have had some connection 
 with the City of London, for in the Thynne records there is 
 an agreement between himself and the Corporation, that he 
 should hold the office of Packer of the City of London, on 
 payment of a sum of /^66 13s. \A. annually to the Corpora- 
 tion. But, beyond this, he had the good fortune to marry 
 the daughter of Sir Richard, and the sister and eventually 
 co-heir of Sir Thomas Gresham, the great London merchants. 
 With this lady he had as a dowry the manors of Buckland 
 and Laverton, in Wilts, the manor of Foston, in Leicester- 
 shire, and lands in half-a-dozen parishes in Yorkshire. In 
 the course of his life he was purchaser of lands in about 40 
 different parishes, the vendors being Somerset himself, the 
 Earl of Oxford, Lord Stourton, Lord Seymour of Sudeley, and 
 a number of others. The site of the mansion of Longleat, 
 where was formerlv a small monastic house, was purchased of
 
 142 Our Old N'obility. 
 
 Sir John Horsey. IMost of the extensive park and surrounding 
 lands were purchased of the Court of Augmentations, 
 and before the Reformation had been parcel of 
 the extensive possessions of the rich Abbey of Glas- 
 tonbury, which had been given as a dowry to Queen Katha- 
 rine Parr. I note that in the time of the Commonwealth 
 another Wiltshire manor was purchased by Sir James Thynne ; 
 but, for the most part, the extensive estates of the Marquis of 
 Bath in Wilts and Somerset are the same as were acquired by 
 his prudent ancestor, whose lucky marriage provided the 
 ready cash, and whose Court connections provided the ready 
 opportunity. Sir John Thynne was Comptroller of the House- 
 hold to the Princess Elizabeth, but he appears to have been 
 too timid to attend upon her in the hour of danger, and to 
 have been deservedly neglected by her in the time of her 
 prosperity. Her accession to the Throne brought him no 
 honours nor rewards, and he appears to have occupied him- 
 self with the building of Longleat, which it took him twelve 
 years to erect in its original form. 
 
 Sir John Thynne, eldest son of Sir John, followed his 
 father's example in going to the City for a wealthy bride. He 
 married the daughter and heir of Sir Rowland Hayward, twice 
 Lord Mayor of London, who brought him on her marriage a 
 considerable estate in Shropshire. His great-grandson, 
 Thomas Thynne (popularly known as " Tom of Ten Thou- 
 sand," because of his great wealth) was murdered by some 
 ruffians hired by Count Konigsmark, the disappointed lover 
 of Lady Elizabeth Ogle, a great heiress, of whom Thynne 
 was the accepted suitor. The story, illustrated in stone upon 
 the tomb of Thomas Thynne in Westminster Abbey, is too 
 well known to need detailed recapitulation here. On the 
 death of Thomas Thynne the estates passed to a younger 
 descendant of Sir John Thynne, who was almost immediately 
 afterwards created Viscount Weymouth, with remainder to his 
 younger brother. He died without male heirs, and was suc- 
 ceeded by his nephew, with whom the title nearly expired ; 
 but he left a posthumous son, who subsequently married Lady 
 Louisa Carteret, granddaughter of Granville, Earl of Bath, 
 and daughter of John Carteret, Earl Granville. The pos- 
 sessions of the Carterets and Granvilles subsequently passed, 
 through this marriage and the marriage of one of the Leveson- 
 Gowers, to the Thvnnes and the Leveson-Gowers. The title
 
 TJie TJiynnes. 143 
 
 of Earl Granville has recently been revived in an offshoot 
 of the latter house. Younger sons of the first Marquis of 
 Bath held the title of Baron Carteret, which is now extinct ; 
 but I presume that the estates are those now held by Lord 
 John Thynne, a younger son of the second Marquis. 
 
 The first Marquis of Bath, the title being evidently selected 
 from the connection of the family with the Granvilles, who 
 had held the Earldom of that place, was created Marquis in 
 1789. For a period of about thirty years he held various 
 offices, being successively Lord of the Bedchamber, Groom 
 of the Stole, Master of the Horse, and Secretary of State. 
 Of the succeeding holders of the title there is nothing note- 
 worthy to record. They were consistent Conservatives in the 
 time of the signing of Magna Charta — they have been con- 
 sistent Conservatives almost ever since. Before the passing 
 of the first Reform Bill, the Thynnes had possession of the 
 rotten borough of Weobly, and of one of the close Corpora- 
 tion seats for Bath itself. 
 
 As a rule, the Thynnes seem to have been moderate in their 
 demands upon the national purse ; but then it must be re- 
 membered that their wealth is great, and that they are not so 
 numerous a clan as the Edens or the Beresfords. There is 
 one exception, the Rev. Lord John Thynne, who, as a land- 
 owner with a rental of 2^13,461, might be reasonably expected 
 to leave to less favoured men the rewards of the Church, even 
 if he were anxious to take part in its sacred work. Yet I find 
 that this nobleman has been Canon of Westminster for the 
 last forty-eight years, with ^2,500 a year and a residence ; and, 
 further, that he had a sinecure rectory in Somerset, given to 
 him by his father or brother, value /"168 and a house, from 
 1832 to 1872. What with incomes and residences, he must 
 have had from the Church in the course of his life over 
 /"i 30,000. Lord John had a brother, Charles, who was 
 formerly a Prebend of Canterbury, and Rector of Longbridge 
 (another family living), but he went over to Rome. There is 
 another Thynne in the Church, a son of the Rev. Lord John 
 Thynne, who is Rector of Kilkhampton (/'712 and a house), 
 one of his father's livings, and also Prebendary of Exeter. 
 
 The present Marquis of Bath, though nominally a Con- 
 servative, has manifested an independence which entitles him 
 to considerable respect. Throughout the discussions arising 
 out of the Eastern Question he has been a warm supporter of
 
 144 - Otir Old Nobility. 
 
 the enlightened policy which would fain have combined 
 Europe in an endeavour for the peaceful and gradual deliver- 
 ance of South-Eastern Europe from the Ottoman yoke. The 
 Marquis repeatedly contributed to the funds of the Eastern 
 Question Association ; and he has still more recently shown 
 his warm interest in the cause of the Bulgarians by proceed- 
 ing on a visit to Eastern Roumelia.
 
 LXXXIII. 
 
 |S the present Duke of Cleveland calls himself 
 Powlett, I suppose I ought to use that name ; but, 
 seeing that the family patronymic has been 
 changed from Vane to Powlett, and from Powlett 
 back to Vane, and from Vane back to Powlett again, perhaps 
 some succeeding Duke may choose to resort once more to the 
 illustrious name which his ancestors bore, and by which the 
 family is best known. I may also explain at once that the 
 present Dukedom of Cleveland is not the bastard Dukedom 
 that o\Yed its origin to the adulterous connection of Charles 
 II. with Barbara Villiers, wife of the Earl of Castlemaine, 
 who was created Duchess of Cleveland by her Royal para- 
 mour. That title descended to her eldest son by Charles II., 
 but subsequently expired. One of the Vanes, however, mar- 
 ried a female descendant of Barbara Duchess of Cleveland. 
 
 The Duke of Cleveland owns land in nine counties, as 
 follows : — 
 
 Durham . . . . . 
 
 55,837 acres 
 
 Salop .... 
 
 25,604 „ 
 
 Sussex .... 
 
 6,025 „ 
 
 Somerset .... 
 
 4,784 ,. 
 
 Northampton 
 
 3,482 „ 
 
 Kent .... 
 
 2,440 ,, 
 
 Cornwall .... 
 
 1,997 ,, 
 
 Wilts .... 
 
 1,5" ,» 
 
 Devon .... 
 
 1,085 ,> 
 
 Total 102,774 ,, 
 With a rent-roll of ;/^9i,784. 
 
 To him belongs Raby Castle, Durham, one of the most 
 stately ancient mansions in the North of England, and the 
 hoary ruin of Barnard Castle, that frowns from its precipitous 
 cliff over Teesdale ; and yet it is only from the days of the 
 Stuarts that the Vanes could be reckoned among our great 
 
 10
 
 146 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 houses. They have accumulated about 100,000 acres in less 
 than 300 years. 
 
 The pedigree of the Vanes claims that they originally came 
 from the borders of Wales ; but at the earliest time of which 
 anything definite is known of them (Henry VI.), Henry Vane 
 held the Manor of Hilden, in Kent. How it was acquired I 
 know not, and it does not much matter, as it was sold not 
 long after. At the beginning of the Reformation, then, the 
 Vanes were plain Kentish squires, and they appear "to have 
 been zealous supporters of the Reformed Faith. Sir Ralph, 
 the son of Henry Vane, obtained a considerable grant of 
 lands at Shipbourne, in Kent, formerly belonging to the 
 monasteries of Tunbridge and Dartford, which are, or at any 
 rate were till recently, in the possession of his descendants. 
 Sir Ralph was one of the entourage of the Protector Somerset. 
 Sharing in his prosperity, he shared likewise in his fall, and 
 was finally hanged upon Tower Hill. If Burnet is to be 
 believed, he was a man who merited a better fate. Though 
 Sir Ralph died an ignominious death, his lands passed to a 
 kinsman who narrowly escaped a similar fate for his share 
 in Wyatt's rebellion. 
 
 The next heir of the property was the real builder of the 
 fortunes, if not of the greatness, of the house. Throughout 
 the history of James I. and Charles I. the name of Sir Henr}' 
 Vane often occurs, though his fame has been altogether ob- 
 scured by that of his illustrious son. Clarendon speaks dis- 
 paragingly of him ; and, indeed, he does not appear to have 
 been anything more than a successful courtier. It was as a 
 courtier that he rose to be a great- landowner. Clarendon 
 says that " his fortune was not great, but he found many ways 
 to improve it," which is quite true, as we shall see. In the 
 reign of James I. Vane was appointed Cofferer to the Prince 
 of Wales ; after the accession of Charles he was Comptroller 
 of the Household, and subsequently Secretary of State. 
 
 We must now go back a little. In the reign of Elizabeth, 
 Charles Neville, Earl of Westmoreland, was engaged in an 
 abortive rebellion to release Mary Queen of Scots and restore 
 the old Catholic faith. Mr. Froude represents him as rather 
 driven into rebellion by fear than any other cause. He 
 escaped, and took refuge in the Low Countries ; but all his 
 vast possessions were confiscated. After the accession of 
 James, he pleaded hard to be restored to his lands, inasmuch
 
 TJie Vanes. 147 
 
 as he had espoused the cause of James's own mother ; but 
 the King, who had plenty of favourites to provide for, turned 
 a deaf ear to the unfortunate Earl. I believe some of the 
 Neville estates were in Shropshire — at Wem, for instance, 
 where the Duke of Cleveland now holds property ; but the 
 greater part of the property was in Durham. Raby Castle 
 had been in their possession for centuries ; so also had Bar- 
 nard Castle, which, on the confiscation of John Balliol's 
 English estates, had been granted by the King to the Beau- 
 champs, from whom it passed by marriage to the Nevilles. 
 The Bishop of Durham, who was almost a King in the county, 
 had a legal right to such forfeitures ; but, in spite of adverse 
 legal decisions, the Nevilles held fast to their grant. 
 
 After the flight of the last Neville, Earl of Westmoreland, 
 the estates remained for a time in the possession of the Crown, 
 but in 1 61 3 they were granted to Carr, the King's favourite. 
 A year or two after, on Carr's disgrace and forfeiture, Raby, 
 Barnard Castle, and Brancepeth, were granted to trustees for 
 the augmentation and support of Prince Charles for ninety- 
 nine years. Almost immediately the trustees granted the 
 remainder of the term to Vane, the Prince's Coff"erer, and in 
 1626 he obtained the reversion in fee for ^1,500 fine, to be 
 held in socage under /^5i los. rent, the woods to be surveyed 
 and valued separately, and the fees of the several officers, 
 /"52 6s. per annum, to be discharged. Just the kind of bar- 
 gain which we might have expected to be driven by a courtier 
 of that period. Sir Henry appears to have done an extensive 
 business in land-jobbing. I find that he sold Had- 
 low, in Kent, which he had inherited, and bought Fairlawn 
 and Wrotham in that county. Doubtless he had other good 
 bargains which have escaped my notice. Considering the 
 advantages he had derived from his position at Court, his 
 conduct in supporting the Parliamentary party in the later 
 years of his life certainly savours of ingratitude. But as he 
 grew old he came under the influence of his son, the Vane — 
 
 "Young in years, but in sage counsel old," 
 
 of Milton's sonnet. 
 
 Of the younger Vane it is needless for me to speak at length 
 here. There is hardly one of the heroes of the Common- 
 wealth that has so stainless a record. The man whom Milton 
 praised, whom Cromwell feared, whom Charles II. dared not 
 
 10 — 2
 
 1 4 8 Ou r Old Nobility. 
 
 allow to live, needs no poor eulogy of mine. He had been 
 appointed Treasurer of the Navy, and is said to have relin- 
 quished profits of/^30,000 per annum for the benefit of the 
 Commonwealth. Of all the leading Republicans of that age 
 Vane was the most consistent, the most philosophic, the most 
 stat^manlike. Cromwell takes beyond question the first 
 place among the historic Independents, but the second place 
 among that noble band must be accorded to Sir Harry Vane. 
 His death was the best testimony of his greatness. He was 
 the only man who died upon the scaffold for his share in the 
 Great Rebellion who was not actually a regicide ; and he was 
 executed because, as Charles H. wrote, he was " too danger- 
 ous a man to let live if we can honestly put him out of the 
 way." He died on Tower Hill " like a prince," as a Cavalier 
 who was present testified — a patriot and a statesman well 
 worthy to be associated with Sydney and Russell. 
 
 Sir Christopher Vane, son of the great Sir Harry, Avas 
 knighted by Charles H., and created a peer by William HI., 
 with the title of Baron Barnard. He married the sister and 
 co-heir of John Holies, Duke of Newcastle. He appears to 
 have taken no active part in public life, but, like Mrs. Craik's 
 well-known hero of fiction, John Halifax, he aided in sup- 
 porting public credit at a critical moment by paying large 
 sums of money into the Bank. The third Lord Barnard, who 
 married the daughter of the Duke of Cleveland, son of 
 Charles II., held the lucrative office of Paymaster of the 
 Forces, and gained two steps in the peerage by his elevation 
 to the Earldom of Darlington in 1754. 
 
 The third Earl of Darlington, who was created Marquis of 
 Cleveland in 1827, was one of those wise and statesmanlike 
 nobles who 'so largely aided in saving the country from a 
 revolution half a century ago. We are accustomed to indulge 
 in sneers at "the Whigs" in these days, and the debt of 
 gratitude which the country owes the Whigs of 1832 is too 
 often forgotten. For my part I would rather prefer to remem- 
 ber their virtues than their failings. Let us take the Marquis 
 of Cleveland, for instance. He seems to have considerably 
 increased his landed property by purchase. I have stated 
 above that the Vanes have property in Somerset, Cornwall, 
 and Sussex. A portion of this seems to have been acquired for 
 political purposes, though, under the circumstances, with a 
 most laudable object. The Marquis commanded no less than
 
 TJie Vanes. 149 
 
 six borough seats, before the passing of the first Reform Bill, 
 viz., two each for Ilchester, Camelford, and Winchilsea. Of 
 that Bill he was an ardent supporter. Taunted with being a 
 borough-monger, the IMarquis frankly declared that he had 
 purposely, at great expense, obtained the control of his 
 boroughs because such property was so often used for im- 
 proper purposes, and there was no other mode of counteract- 
 ing those who thus used it. A nomination borough he 
 declared to be "a species of property, if such in any sense it 
 could be called, that could be desired only for the sake of two 
 objects — either for the sake of Parliamentary influence, or for 
 the pecuniary advantages to be derived from a sale of seats 
 in the House of Commons ; and if such property was bad in 
 one sense, it was bad in the other, and therefore it ought to 
 be put an end to both ways." It is said that the purchase of 
 the property that gave the Marquis of Cleveland the command 
 of these seats cost him something like a quarter of a million, 
 and, as the seats gave the property an artificial value, the 
 Marquis deserves as much credit for his patriotic conduct as 
 if he had directly subscribed a large sum to the Reform agi- 
 tation. The year after the Reform Bill passed his conduct 
 was appropriately recognised by the Reform Ministry by his 
 elevation to the Dukedom of Cleveland. He married the 
 daughter and co-heir of Powlett, the last Duke of Bolton. 
 The Powletts, of whom I have before spoken, were a family 
 who grew rich out of the spoils of the monastic houses. That 
 portion of the Bolton estates which came to the family was 
 inherited by a younger son, who ultimately succeeded to the 
 Dukedom of Cleveland, but he died shortly after, and the 
 dukedom and estates came into the possession of his younger 
 brother, who is the present duke.
 
 LXXXIV. 
 
 HAT a graceful and dignified speech was that 
 which Lord Elcho delivered in the British House 
 of Commons on the Zulu War. The modern 
 
 fashion is to scream at our enemies like fish-fags, 
 
 and blackguard them like costermongers. Poor Shere Ali was 
 the object of our abuse so long as he lived ; now it is Cete- 
 wayo's turn. We have it on the word of Lord Elcho that he 
 is a gorilla ; we have it also from Lord Elcho, on the eminent 
 authority of a German newspaper, that he caught his brother 
 alive and tortured him to death. True, that a better authority. 
 Bishop Colenso, declares that there is no foundation for the 
 story. No matter ; Cetewayo is our enemy ; and if the stories 
 about him are not true, they ought to be. 
 
 Impelled, I suppose by the " gorilla" speech, a correspond- 
 ent asks me — Who is Lord Elcho, and how comes it that he 
 represents a Scottish constituency ? He is the eldest son of 
 the Earl of Wemyss and March, and has been for many years 
 member for Haddingtonshire — formerly as a Liberal, and 
 latterly as a Conservative ; and he showed his appreciation 
 of his constituents by flinging the contents of his cigar-case 
 among them on the hustings, when the seat was contested by 
 that renowned Scottish farmer, the late Mr. Hope, of Fenton 
 Barns. He sits for the county, not because the Haddington- 
 shire farmers are less Liberal than those of most other Scotch 
 constituencies, but because his father owns 10,136 acres of 
 land in that county. For a similar reason, doubtless. Sir G. 
 IMontgomery sits for the counties of Selkirk and Peebles, in the 
 latter of which the Earl of Wemyss and INIarch owns 41,247 
 acres. Besides these estates, the Earl has 4,789 acres at 
 Stanway, in Gloucestershire, obtained either by purchase or 
 marriage. A century and a half ago Stanway was held by 
 the Tracy family, who had a grant of the same at the dis- 
 solution of the monasteries. The Earl also has 3,010 acres in 
 the neighbourhood of Elcho, Perthshire, where the family
 
 The Weymss- Chartcris- Douglases. 1 5 i 
 
 once had a castle; 1,261 acres in Berwick, and 1,504 in 
 Midlothian — 61,947 acres in all; with a gross rent-roll of 
 
 /'56,742. ^ ^ , 
 
 The Wemyss family claim to be descended from that 
 
 Macduff, Thane of Fife, who slew the murderer and 
 usurper, Macbeth. It must be remembered, however, that 
 it is only in tragedy that Macbeth was a murderer and 
 usurper. Duncan was killed at Bothgowan, near Elgin, 
 which, as Mr. Burton, remarks, was near, if not actually 
 within the territory ruled by Macbeda ; Duncan being there 
 with aggressive designs. How the Wemyss family first ob- 
 tained lands in Fife I know not, but in the fourteenth century 
 they had two additional grants from the King, and another 
 in the sixteenth. Their connection with Fife appears now 
 to be merely titular, as they have sloughed off the old skin ; 
 and, while the name of Wemyss represents their ancient 
 origin, those of Charteris and Douglas indicate the manner 
 in which they have acquired most of their present posses- 
 sions. 
 
 Until the reign of Charles I. they were commoners ; but 
 that monarch created the head of the house Lord Elcho, and 
 subsequently Earl of Wemyss. These favours did not hinder 
 him from manifesting his Covenanting sympathies during 
 the Civil War, and his son. Lord Elcho, who married a 
 daughter of Balfour of Burleigh, followed his example, and 
 vv-as defeated at a battle in Perthshire by Montrose. By a sub- 
 sequent marriage, this last had an only daughter, in whose favour 
 a new patent of peerage was obtained. Her son, who was 
 Lord High Admiral of Scotland, and a Commissioner of the 
 Treaty of Union, married the daughter of the first Duke of 
 Queensberry. It is through this alliance that the Wemyss 
 family derive a very large portion of their property. 
 
 The first Douglas, Duke of Queensberry, who died at the 
 age of forty-eight, according to Burnet, who describes him as 
 " very covetous," came into a much impaired fortune, but he 
 greatly increased it. For a long time he was Lord High 
 Treasurer of Scotland, and rendered himself odious by exact- 
 ing ruinous fines from the Presbyterian gentry, who obeyed 
 the law by going to church, but left their wives at home. He 
 increased his fortune so much that he purchased for his second 
 son, who was created Earl of March, the lands and lordship 
 of Neidpath, in Peebles, from the Hays, ancestors of the
 
 152 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 Marquis of Tweeddale. It was not all of the Earl of March's 
 lands that were obtained by purchase. The Duke of Queens- 
 berry in 1688 obtained a grant of the principal part of the 
 revenue of the Cross Church, Peebles, consisting of sundry 
 houses in the West Port, Edinburgh, of lands in the parish 
 of Cramond, and fifty acres of rich glebe lands — only four 
 acres being left for the minister. This property he gave to 
 the Earl of March. In 1707 there was an additional grant. 
 "Among other favours," says the "Statistical Account of 
 Scotland," he obtained the grant of Forton, and that donative 
 had been deemed of so much value that it was named in the 
 deed of entail of the March estates." The issue of the Earl 
 of March subsequently succeeded to the Queensberry title 
 and estates, but at the death of the fourth Duke without issue 
 the' Dukedom passed to the Duke of Buccleuch, the Mar- 
 quisate to another kinsman, and the Earldom of. March, 
 with the estates held by the first Earl, to the seventh Earl of 
 Wemyss. 
 
 But in the mean time the fourth Earl had contracted a 
 splendid marriage with the daughter and heiress of Colonel 
 Francis Charteris, of Amisfield, Haddingtonshire. Of this 
 personage I have had some difficulty in gaining information, 
 except that in his own day he is described as " notorious," 
 and a " gambler," and that he was tried and condemned for 
 a heinous crime, with difficulty obtaining a pardon. Looking 
 over the works of Swift, edited by Sir Walter Scott, I came 
 across the following remarkable epitaph, with the following 
 foot-note by the editor — " This epitaph on a man infamous 
 for all manner of vices was written by Dr. Arbuthnot." It 
 runs as follows : — " Here continueth to rot the body of 
 Francis Chartres, who, with an inflexible constancy and in- 
 imitable uniformity of life, persisted, in spite of age and 
 infirmities, in the practice of every human vice excepting pro- 
 digality and hypocrisy ; his insatiable avarice exempted him 
 from the first, his matchless impudence from the second. 
 Nor was he more singular in the undeviating suavity of his 
 manners than successful in accumulating wealth ; for, with- 
 out trade or profession, without trust of public money, and 
 without bribe-worthy service, he acquired — or, more properly, 
 created — a ministerial estate. He was the only person of his 
 time who could cheat without the mask of honesty ; retain his 
 primeval manners when possessed of ^10,000 a year; and,
 
 The Wcviyss-Charteris-Douglases. 153 
 
 having daily deserved the gibbet for what he did, was at last 
 condemned for what he could not do. O, indignant reader, 
 think not his life useless to mankind ! Providence connived 
 at his execrable designs to give to after ages conspicuous 
 proof and example of how small estimation is exorbitant 
 wealth in the sight of God, by his bestowing it on the most 
 unworthy of all mortals." I think that this will do as a com- 
 panion picture to Lord Elcho's gorilla. If Dr. Arbuthnot had 
 lived till now, he might have found another respect in which 
 the life of Colonel Charteris was not useless to mankind, in- 
 asmuch as we owe it to his acquisition of property that Lord 
 Elcho sits for Haddingtonshire. 
 
 The eldest son of the fourth Earl of Wemyss was engaged 
 in the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, and was attainted in con- 
 sequence. The father died in 1756, but the son lived on an 
 exile till 1787. At that time the Wemyss family had a narrow 
 escape of being snuffed out, but as the next brother had not 
 been implicated in the rebellion he was mercifully allowed to 
 succeed to the family title and estates. 
 
 It only remains to be said that the Wemyss family, unlike 
 most of the great Scotch houses, have never shown voracious 
 tax-eating propensities. They have furnished at various 
 times not a few gallant soldiers to the British Army and 
 officers in the Navy. If they are too belligerent in their pro- 
 pensities, at any rate, unlike the Jingo mob who howl for 
 war without the least intention of fighting themselves, the 
 family of Wemyss are always ready to take a fair share of the 
 risks. A younger brother of Lord Elcho was killed at Bala- 
 clava, and more recently his lordship's second and eldest sur- 
 viving son died at sea of fever and dysentery, brought on by 
 the hardships of the campaign in Ashantee. Charteris- 
 Douglas-Wemyss ; it seems a strange combination — the suc- 
 cessful gambler, the oppressor of the Presbyterians, and the 
 soldier of the Covenant. Were I a Scotchman, I should regard 
 the worldly successes of the first and second as far less 
 glorious than the defeat of the third.
 
 LXXXV. 
 
 I HE County of Norfolk has furnished to the country 
 an unusually large proportion of able and success- 
 ful public men — the Townshends, Nelsons, Cokes, 
 
 De Greys, and many others. Among them the 
 
 name of Walpole will take no mean place. The Earl of Or- 
 ford, the present head of the house, owns 12,341 acres of 
 land in Norfolk, with a rent-roll of /'i5,3i3. The Walpoles 
 claim to have been settled in the county prior to the Norman 
 Conquest ; and it is certain that, not long after that event, 
 they held lands of the Bishopric of Ely, at the place 
 from whence they derive their surname. Somewhat later 
 they acquired the manor of Houghton, which was for a 
 lengthened period the seat of the family, and at which place 
 Sir Robert Walpole erected a magnificent mansion. In the 
 reign of Elizabeth the heir of the Walpoles was indicted for 
 treason ; but his forfeited lands were granted to his next 
 brother, to whom his father also bequeathed his own lands at 
 his death. The grandfather of Sir Robert sat in the Restora- 
 tion Parliament, and his father was also at one time a member 
 of the House of Commons. 
 
 It is not my province here to deal at length with Sir Robert 
 Walpole's conduct of public affairs. Suffice it to say that, 
 with all his faults, he was a wise and able statesman, who 
 rendered inestimable services to his country. It cannot be 
 denied that, if he used his opportunities to enrich himself 
 and his family, his personal gains were but small when com- 
 pared with the great increment of national prosperity which 
 resulted from the policy which he steadfastly pursued. His 
 memory need shrink from no comparison with his immediate 
 predecessors or successors. I have only to do with him as 
 an example of the fact that several of our great families have 
 been built up by pursuing the profession of politics. 
 
 Sir Robert's father was a simple country squire of moderate
 
 The Walpolcs. 155 
 
 fortune — between /'z.ooo and /^3,ooo a year. Robert, who 
 was a younger son, was originally intended for the Church ; 
 but, on the death of his elder brother, he was called home to 
 assist his father in the management of the estate, and at that 
 time not unfrequently sold beasts at market. Early in life 
 he entered Parliament as a member of the Whig Party. In 
 1708 he was appointed Secretary at War, and in the follow- 
 ing year Treasurer of the Navy. Two years after he was 
 accused of corruption in regard to a Forage Contract in 
 Scotland, was expelled the House of Commons, and im- 
 prisoned in the Tower — punishments which were more the 
 result of party malignity than of the gravity of his offence. 
 At the accession of George I. Walpole obtained the lucrative 
 posts of Paymaster of the Forces, and Treasurer of Chelsea 
 Hospital ; and shortly after he became First Lord of the 
 Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. In 171 7 he 
 Avent into opposition, but two years after he was conciliated 
 by the offer of the Paymastership, and in 1721 he again 
 became First Lord of the Treasury. Declining a peerage at 
 the time (which, however, he accepted for his son), he con- 
 tinued to hold office till 1742, when he retired, and was 
 created Earl of Orford, with a pension of /'4,ooo a year. 
 George I. gave to Sir Robert Walpole the patent place of 
 Collector of Customs for his own life and that of his two 
 elder sons ; but afterwards. Sir Robert having obtained for 
 his eldest son the great place of Auditor of the Exchequer, 
 and for his second son that of Clerk of the Pells, bequeathed 
 ^'1,400 a year out of the first-named place to his third son, 
 Horace, and £ \oo to his second son, Edward. In regard to 
 the personal and family gains of Sir Robert Walpole I may 
 quote ]\Ir. Abraham Hayward, who says in his Essays : — 
 "When Sir Robert Walpole became Prime Minister, his 
 paternal estate was computed at less than £ i,ooq a year. 
 During his tenure of office, he lived magnificently ; he laid 
 out enormous sums (popularly computed at / 150,000) on 
 buildings and pictures ; and he more than quadrupled his 
 private income, besides providing for his sons by patent 
 places to the tune oi £\\,ooo a year between them. We shall 
 not much mend the matter by accepting Archdeacon Coxe's 
 palliation that ' Sir Robert had been a large gainer by the 
 South Sea Bubble.'" At the first Earl of Orford's death, he 
 was succeeded by his eldest son, who, in addition to the rich
 
 156 OiLV Old Nobility. 
 
 sinecure above mentioned, was a Lord of the Bedchamber 
 and Ranger of St. James's and Hyde Parks. 
 
 A yomiger son of the first Earl was Horace Walpole, whose 
 letters are almost worth all the money he ever obtained from 
 the public revenue. Horace, who was born in 1717, writing 
 in 1782, gives the following account of his patent places: — 
 " I\Iy father," he says, " in my youth gave me the two little 
 patent places I still hold — Clerk of the Estreats and Comp- 
 troller of the Pipe — which together produce about ^300 per 
 annum. When I was about eighteen or nineteen he gave me 
 the place of Inspector of the Imports and Exports in the 
 Custom House, which I resigned in about a year on his 
 giving me the patent place of Usher of the Exchequer, then 
 reckoned worth ^900 a-year. ... I was content with 
 what he had given me, and, from the age of twenty, I was no 
 charge to my family." I presume^ that most men, under 
 similar circumstances, would be quite contented with what 
 their fathers had given, and would be satisfied to be at no 
 charge to their families so long as they could draw £\,zoo 
 a-year from the nation for doing nothing. . In these cases we 
 must always bear in mind that the duties of the offices were 
 always discharged by a deputy. The best of it for the office- 
 holder was that the emoluments of these places usually tended 
 to increase rather than to diminish. Horace Walpole's was 
 a case in point. In 1744 he estimates his sinecures at a 
 value of /'2, 000 a-year, and in 1780 he declares the net value 
 of the chief of them to be worth £\,%oo, taking an average 
 of the previous twelve years. The Commissioners of Accounts, 
 who had taken the emoluments for that year alone, had put 
 down the value of the place at ^'4,200 per annum, but as 
 Horace Walpole furnished a plausible explanation, showing 
 that the profits greatly fluctuated, we miist be content to take 
 his own estimate of the average value on a series of years. 
 At the death of the third Earl without issue, who sold the 
 celebrated Walpole collection of pictures to the Emperor of 
 Russia for the comparatively small sum of /^45, 000, Horace 
 Walpole came into the title. With him the male issue of Sir 
 Robert died out. The great statesman, however, had a 
 daughter, who was married to the Earl of Cholmondeley, and 
 the splendid mansion which he built at Houghton is now 
 the property of the Marquis of Cholmondeley, her descendant. 
 
 Sir Robert, however, had a younger brother, whom he pro-
 
 The Walpolcs. 157 
 
 moted in the diplomatic service, and who, having purchased 
 the Manor of Wolterton, near Aylsham, in Norfolk, was 
 elevated to the peerage, with the title of Baron Walpole of 
 Wolterton. The eldest of his sons, at the death of Horace 
 Walpole, inherited the Walpole barony, which had been con- 
 ferred upon Sir Robert's heir in his father's lifetime, but the 
 other honours expired. A few years afterwards the title of 
 the Earl of Orford was revived in his person, and is still held 
 by his great-grandson. 
 
 The Walpoles have since continued to dip into the Exche- 
 quer now and then. In 1830 there was an Edward Walpole, 
 who was a clerk in the Treasury and private secretary to the 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer, with a salary of /^Qoo a year ; 
 also an F. Walpole in the Home Office, with salary and allow- 
 ances of /^682. A little later I find the Earl of Orford in the 
 enjoyment of a pension of £']o6, and his brother, a colonel 
 in the Army, with an appointment in the Foreign Office. 
 There was also a Rev. R. Walpole in the possession of the 
 family livings of Itteringham, /'syS, and Tivetshall, £1,026, 
 with a house to each. The latter is held by a Walpole now. 
 
 There is yet another branch of the family of whom I must 
 say a word. The first Lord Walpole of Wolterton had a 
 younger son, whose son for many years had a lucrative 
 diplomatic post at one of the minor German Courts. 
 All this gentleman's sons have been well provided for. The 
 eldest, the Rev. Thomas Walpole, has for thirty-four years 
 been Rector of Alverstoke, Hants, with /^ 1,345 and a resi- 
 dence. Sir Robert is a Lieutenant-General in the Army, and 
 since 1869 has had the colonelcy of the 65th Foot. John, 
 who for thirty-three years was in the Civil Service, and was 
 Assistant-Secretary to the Emigration Board (salary £660), 
 retired in 1864 on a pension of /^330. Charles, after forty 
 years in the Inland Revenue Department, retired when he was 
 receiving £1,000 per year, with a pension of £b(>T,. The 
 most fortunate of all is the Right Hon. Spencer Walpole, 
 M.P. for Cambridge University, who, beside being for six 
 years a Commissioner of Church Estates, was Home Secretary 
 in three short-lived Conservative Ministries — four or five 
 years in all — and who for his eminent services has received 
 for seventeen or eighteen years a pension of /'2,ooo per 
 annum.
 
 LXXXVI. 
 
 HE family of Erskine is poor in possessions, but 
 rich in titles, and richer still in honours — in 
 honours chiefly won by one of its cadets, who 
 rose by sheer force of ability from penury to the 
 Woolsack, and who wrote upon his escutcheon the proud 
 motto, " Trial by Jury." The name of Erskine is born by the 
 Earl of Buchan, the Earl of Kellie, and Lord Erskine. 
 Besides these, there is Goodeve-Erskine, Earl of Mar, and 
 St. Clair Erskine, Earl of Rosslyn. Not one of these appears 
 to possess an estate of 10,000 acres. This relieves me for 
 once from the tedious task of tracing out the sinister and tor- 
 tuous ways by which wealth has been derived, and affords me 
 an ample opportunity of dwelling upon the brilliant career of 
 one whose eloquence was only equalled by his lofty patriotism, 
 and whose services to his country deserve to be held in im- 
 perishable remembrance. To me this is a congenial task. 
 I am jealous of the historic continuity of English Liberalism. 
 I can understand and pity a Russian Nihilist to whom yesterday 
 is as great a blank as to-morrow ; for an English Nihilist I 
 cannot but feel contempt. 
 
 The Earldom of IMar was in existence at the period of the 
 Norman Conquest, and its origin is lost in antiquity. At 
 various times its possessors have played an important part in 
 Scottish history. In the fourteenth century a grand-daughter 
 of one of the Earls of Mar married Sir Thomas Erskine, and 
 one of their descendants was elevated to the peerage with the 
 title of Lord Erskine. The direct male line of the old Earls 
 of I\Iar having died out. Queen Mary, in 1565, restored the 
 title to the fifth Lord Erskine. In the Civil War the family 
 suffered greatly, and, although the estates were restored on 
 the accession of Charles II., a great part of them had to be 
 sold. The Earl of Mar took an active part in the Jacobite 
 Rebellion of 1 7 1 5, and was attainted in consequence. In 1 824 
 the title was revived in favour of one of his descendants, who
 
 The Erskines. 159 
 
 was succeeded by his son ; but, he dying without issue, the 
 Earldom passed to the son of his eldest sister who had married 
 Mr. William James Goodeve. The Earldom of Kellie was 
 obtained through the marriage of one of the Erskines into the 
 family which held that ancient Earldom. The Earldom of 
 Rosslyn is a modern creation, obtained by Alexander Wedder- 
 burn. Lord Loughborough, who was Lord Chancellor in 1793. 
 At his death the title passed to his nephew, an Erskine, who 
 was descended from the seventh Earl of Mar. 
 
 This seventh Earl of Mar was the favourite of James L, from 
 whom he received large grants of confiscated Church lands, 
 formerly belonging to Dryburgh and other monastic houses, 
 which were erected into the Barony of Cardross, and passed 
 to the issue of his second son, who married the Countess of 
 Buchan. By the middle of last century the Buchan branch of 
 the family was almost in as unfortunate a condition as the 
 heirs of the attainted Earl of Mar. Possibly they had suffered 
 in political troubles, for some of them were staunch Cove- 
 nanters ; certainly, one of them had squandered a large portion 
 of his inheritance. The fifth Earl was reduced to a miserable 
 income of / 200 a year, lived in a flat at Edinburgh, and was 
 compelled to move to cheaper lodgings at St. Andrews. He 
 had three sons ; the eldest, his heir, succeeded him, and con- 
 trived in half a century to increase his income from £zoo to 
 ^2,000. The second became an able and successful prac- 
 titioner at the Scotch Bar. Of the third, who afterwards 
 became Lord Erskine, I am about to speak more par- 
 ticularly. 
 
 Thomas Erskine, as a lad, was anxious to be educated for 
 a learned profession ; but what could a poor lord, with but 
 ^200 a-year, do for a third son, save provide him with 
 porridge and kail, which seems to have been the lad's ordinary 
 fare .^ He could not even buy him a commission in the Army, 
 so the boy was sent to sea as a midshipman. Four years 
 passed, and young Erskine returned home, soon after, attend- 
 ing the funeral of his father, which was conducted at Bath by 
 Whitfield, of whom the Earl was an adherent. With the 
 small legacy bequeathed him, Erskine purchased an ensigncy, 
 and, with only his pay to support him, he was rash enough at 
 the age of twenty to rush into matrimony with an amiable young 
 ladyof no fortune. After enduringtwoorthreeyears of poverty as 
 a subaltern in a marching regiment, Erskine's casual attend-
 
 i6o Our Old Nobility. 
 
 ance at the Assizes fired him with the resolve to make a de- 
 termined effort to forsake the Army for the Law. He entered 
 himself as a student at Lincoln's Inn, and also as a student at 
 Cambridge — he, as the son of a nobleman, having the right 
 to take a degree without examination, which degree, once 
 obtained, shortened his legal probation by two years. It 
 was a hard struggle. He took lodgings for his young wife 
 in Kentish Town, and had to be content with mean fare and 
 shabby clothes. He had no legal connections to push him 
 forward ; and, as he himself said, when he obtained his first 
 brief he had barely a shilling in his pocket. But he had 
 only been at the Bar a few months when a happy accident 
 brought him fame and fortune at a single bound. Some men 
 equally worthy of success have to fight their way inch by inch 
 for half a lifetime. Fortunately for Erskine and for England 
 it was otherwise with him. 
 
 An action for libel had been brought against Captain 
 Baillie, lieutenant-governor of Greenwich Hospital, because, 
 after vainly appealing to the Government to redress the 
 flagrant abuses in that institution, he had published the facts 
 of the case. Shortly before the trial, Erskine, who was quite 
 unknown to Baillie, was present at a dinner at which Baillie 
 attended, and happened to express himself strongly in con- 
 versation on the case. Baillie asked his attorney to retain 
 Erskine as junior counsel for his defence. The fee was but 
 one poor guinea, and four senior counsel had to appear before 
 him. After the others had spoken the case was adjourned 
 till the next morning, and then Erskine rose and electrified 
 the Court with a speech which was a masterpiece of invective, 
 in which he attacked the prime author of the abuses, Lord 
 Sandwich, with withering scorn. Captain Baillie won his 
 case, with costs, and Erskine's fame at the Bar was at once 
 secured. 
 
 A few months after, Erskine acted as legal adviser to 
 Admiral Keppel, who was tried by court-martial on a ground- 
 less charge of incapacity, and the Admiral, on his acquittal, 
 presented him with /^i,ooo. In four years and a half Erskine 
 was computed to have not only paid his debts, but to have 
 made ^9,000, and to have acquired a practice of ^3,000 per 
 annum. From 1783 to 1806 he is said to have had, on the 
 average, a dozen special retainers a-year, with a minimum fee 
 of 300 guineas each. In all he is said to have made ^£"2 00, 000 ;
 
 TJie Ersklncs. 1 6 1 
 
 he appears to have invested his money unwisely, and to have 
 died comparatively poor. 
 
 For many years Erskine was the chief legal advocate of 
 English liberty against the infamous attacks of tyrannical 
 Tory Governments. In defending Lord George Gordon he 
 made a successful stand against the attempt to bring a man 
 to the scaifold on a charge of constructive treason. In the 
 case of Stockdale, the publisher, he made an equally success- 
 ful stand against libel prosecutions by vote of the House of 
 Commons. In the case of Thomas Paine, for publishing 
 " The Rights of Man," he vindicated the independence of 
 the Bar by accepting a retainer for Paine, though warned that 
 if he did so he would lose his office as Attorney-General of 
 the Prince of Wales. But his crowning triumph was his suc- 
 cessful defence of Hardy, Home Tooke, and Thelwall, who, 
 as members of the London Corresponding Society, were 
 tried for high treason. Hardy, the brave shoemaker, whose 
 tombstone any one may see against the railing of Bunhill 
 Fields when passing up the City Road, was tried first. Scott, 
 afterwards Lord Eldon, spoke for nine hours for the prosecu- 
 tion, and a whole week passed before the prosecution closed. 
 For seven hours Erskine spoke in Hardy's defence, till his 
 voice failed, and hardly rose above a whisper amid the hushed 
 stillness of the court. At the close of the trial his exertions 
 were rewarded with a verdict of Not Guilty. The trials of 
 Home Tooke and Thelwall followed, and in each case Erskine 
 was equally triumphant. In another trial Erskine earnestly 
 contended that in libel cases juries should be judges, not 
 merely as regards the publication of the libel, but as to the 
 libel itself — a principle afterwards embodied in Fox's Libel 
 Bill. Once he appeared to prosecute in a case affecting the 
 liberty of the Press, at the instance of the Society for the 
 Suppression of Vice, who proceeded against the publisher of 
 Paine's "Age of Reason;" but on it appearing that the 
 Society pressed for a vindictive punishment he repudiated its 
 action, and refused to appear in its behalf again. 
 
 As a debater in Parliament, and as Lord Chancellor, Lord 
 Erskine did not achieve remarkable success, and he was 
 severely blamed for appointing his son-in-law a INIaster in 
 Chancery just before his retirement. That solitary act of 
 nepotism, however, is venial indeed when we compare him 
 with those who came before and those who followed after.
 
 i62 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 Almost the last public act of his life was to write a pamphlet 
 in which he earnestly pleaded the cause of the oppressed 
 Greeks. Well might Lord Brougham Avrite of this true noble- 
 man — " He resisted the combination of statesmen, and 
 princes, and lawyers — the league of craft and cruelty formed 
 to destroy our liberties — and triumphantly scattered to. the 
 winds the half-accomplished scheme of an unsparing pro- 
 scription. Before such a precious service as this, well may 
 the lustre of statesmen and of orators grow pale ; and yet this 
 was the achievement of one not only the first orator of his 
 age, and not among its foremost statesmen, because he was 
 beyond all comparison the most accomplished advocate, and 
 the most eloquent that modern times have produced."
 
 LXXXVII. 
 
 T the time of the marriage of the Princess Louise 
 Sir WiUiam Vernon Harcourt excited some ridi- 
 cule by aHuding to his distant connection with 
 
 royalty. I do not kno\v why he should have been 
 
 laughed at ; he might, had he chosen, have claimed some con- 
 nection more or less remote with almost half the great 
 families of England, and with a few in France beside. The 
 very names are indicative of Norman descent. Both Harcourt 
 and Vernon are in Normandy, the latter on the direct line 
 from Dieppe to Paris. 
 
 We will take the Vernons first, Harcourt being but a name 
 assumed by a younger son of the house on coming into 
 possession of the Harcourt estates, which descended through 
 his mother, a Harcourt heiress. The Vernons came into 
 England with the Conqueror, and acquired great estates in 
 Derbyshire. Sir George Vernon of Haddon Hall died leaving 
 two daughters, one married to a Stanley, the other to a 
 Manners, by whom the extensive Vernon property was in- 
 inherited. But the house had already thrown off several 
 branches. One of the Vernons married a Staifordshire 
 heiress ; later on another Vernon married the heiress of that 
 property ; later still another Vernon married another Vernon 
 heiress of Haslington, in Cheshire. Yet another married the 
 sister of Sir Peter Venables, also a Cheshire heiress ; and he, 
 in 1762, was created Lord Vernon. The second wife of this 
 nobleman was the sister of the first Earl Harcourt ; by her he 
 had a numerous family, of whom more hereafter. JMore 
 recently a Lord Vernon married into the Warren family, an 
 ancient Cheshire house which had, since the days of the Plan- 
 tagenets, been seated in that county, on lands which are rich 
 in coal. Thus by successive marriages the Vernons have 
 been able to acquire a moderate estate of 9,801 acres in all, 
 in Derbyshire, Cheshire, and Staffordshire ; I am only sur- 
 prised that it is not larger. There is little notable in their 
 
 II — 2
 
 164 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 history beyond mere marrying and giving in marriage. I turn 
 now to the Harcourts, whose story is of far greater interest. 
 
 The Harcourts are said to have been descended from a 
 Saxon Prince, who lived in Denmark, and accompanied 
 Rollo on his piratical expedition to Normandy. There were 
 two branches of the family who came over with the Conqueror 
 to England. In the reign of Henry I. the representative of 
 the elder line was Earl of Leicester, but his posterity died 
 out. The head of the younger branch commanded the Nor- 
 man archers at Hastings. From him, according to one anti- 
 quary, the Scotch Hamiltons and the French Montmorencies 
 are descended. His grandson had considerable grants of 
 English land from the Crown. In the reign of Richard I. a 
 Harcourt became possessed, in right of his wife, a Norman 
 heiress, of Stanton Harcourt, in Oxfordshire, which for cen- 
 turies was the seat of the family. Henceforth the Harcourts 
 played a not inglorious part in English history. One of them 
 fought with Simon, the patriot Earl of Leicester, at Evesham ; 
 another, a Yorkist, was slain in the Wars of the Roses ; 
 another, a Lancastrian, bore the standard 'of Henry VII. at 
 Bosworth ; another fought at the Battle of the Spurs ; another 
 was associated with Raleigh in his efforts to colonise America; 
 another was in Sir Horace Vere's campaigns in the Low 
 Countries, and Avas killed in the Irish War in 1643. The 
 son of this last suffered much in estate by his steady Royalism 
 during the Civil War, for which he obtained no compensation 
 from Charles II. beyond the barren honour of a knighthood. 
 His son was destined to play a prominent, but yet a somewhat 
 timid and inglorious part in the reigns of William HI., Anne, 
 and George I. 
 
 Simon Harcourt was by education and conviction not only 
 a Tory but a Jacobite. Onslow describes him as " a man very 
 able, but without shame." He conducted the impeachment 
 of the illustrious Lord Somers, and defended the worthless 
 Sacheverel, but his greatest dishonour was his conduct of the 
 prosecution of Defoe for writing " The Shortest Way with 
 Dissenters," in which he displayed a savage vindictiveness, 
 and, in Defoe's belief, a bad faith, which will be remembered 
 as long as the name of the man whom he persecuted. In 
 the reign of Anne, Harcourt became successively Solicitor and 
 Attoncy-General, Lord Keeper and Lord Chancellor. He 
 was leagued with Bolingbroke in the plot to procure the
 
 TJie Vernons. 165 
 
 restoration of James at the Queen's death ; but the prompt 
 and decisive action of the Whig nobles disconcerted the con- 
 spirators, and, finding himself overmatched, Lord Harcourt 
 not only took the oath to George I., but himself administered 
 them to the Council. He was, however, dismissed from 
 office ; but, though his Jacobite opinions were well known, 
 he had been too prudent to compromise himself as Boling- 
 broke had done, and so escaped a prosecution. During the 
 Jacobite Rebellion of 171 5 he cautiously sat on the fence, 
 waiting to jump till it was quite safe, and so escaped once 
 more. In his later years he contracted a friendship with Sir 
 Robert Walpole, who induced him at length to accept the 
 Hanoverian Succession as -a. fait accompli. Out of his official 
 emoluments he saved sufficient to purchase considerable 
 additions to his ancestral estates, particularly Nuneham 
 Courtenay where his grandson and successor, who was 
 created Earl Harcourt, built a mansion, and laid out an 
 extensive park. This Harcourt line died out in 1830. The 
 last Lord Harcourt having left his property to his wife's 
 family on condition that they should assume his name. The 
 present head of the Harcourt family is jMr. J. S. Chandos 
 Harcourt, of Ankerwycke Priory. 
 
 We must return now to the first Lord Vernon, who, as I 
 said, married as his second wife the sister of the first Earl 
 Harcourt. His eldest son by this marriage ultimately inherited 
 the Vernon title and estates. The next son, Edward, who 
 married a daughter of the first Marquis of Stafford in 1830, 
 inherited the Harcourt estates, consisting of 5,720 acres in 
 Oxfordshire. He went into Holy Orders, and when quite a 
 young man was made a Canon of Christchurch ; at the age of 
 thirty-four he obtained the Bishopric of Carlisle ; not long 
 after he was translated to the richer see of Salisbury ; and a 
 few years after he became Archbishop of York. This was in 
 1807, and he lived on till 1847. ^^ t^^*^ course of his lifetime 
 Archbishop Harcourt must have received from the Church 
 considerably over half a million of money — three-quarters, I 
 think, would be nearer the mark — and taking residences and 
 offices into account, he and his reverend sons must have had 
 altogether about a million from that source. The Archbishop 
 had quite a patriarchal family, no less than ten sons and four 
 daughters. The family motto is Ver non semper viret — The 
 spring does not always flourish — which he inferentially tran-
 
 1 66 02ir Old Nobility. 
 
 slated into " IMake hay while the sun shines." With a princely 
 revenue, to say nothing of the Harcourt estates, he might 
 have provided for his family himself; but what need was 
 there to do so when the rich milch cows of Church and State 
 were ready to hand ? Of his ten sons no less than eight 
 were provided for in the Church, the Army, and the Navy. The 
 eldest son, being heir to the Harcourt estates, of course had 
 no need to choose a profession. The second son was Rector 
 of Rothbury (^'i,io6 and a house), and Rector of Kirkby-in- 
 Cleveland (^600 and a house), a sinecure ; likewise Chan- 
 cellor and Commissary ; also Prebendary of York. He after- 
 wards became Canon of Carlisle {^£1,000 and house). The 
 third son was Vicar of Bishopsthorp {£ z^o and a house) and 
 Rector of Etton (/'joo and a house) ; also Canon of York. 
 By the way, nearly all the preferments of the clerical Vernon- 
 Harcourts were given them by their father, or obtained 
 through his influence. The eldest son of Canon Vernon- 
 Harcourt has succeeded to the Harcourt estates, and is a 
 member for Oxfordshire ; his brother is Sir William, the 
 Liberal member for Oxford, who not long ago reminded his 
 Sheffield audience that he was a Yorkshireman. The fourth 
 son of the Archbishop was an Admiral in the Navy. The 
 fifth was a Colonel in the Army. The sixth became Chan- 
 cellor of the Diocese of York, and married an heiress who 
 brought him the mansion of Grove Hall, in Nottinghamshire. 
 The seventh, an Admiral in the Navy, married the widow of 
 IVIr. W. Danby, of Swinton Park, who had bequeathed her 
 for life 11,441 acres in Yorkshire. The eighth went into 
 Hoi}- Orders, and became a Prebendary of Carlisle. The 
 ninth became a Colonel in the Army, and Equerry to the late 
 Duchess of Kent. 
 
 If we put aside the Sparkes and Norths and Pretymans, it 
 Avould perhaps be difficult to find a more striking instance of 
 the abuse of Church patronage than this. Yet' by some no 
 doubt I shall be accused of holding up the Church itself to 
 contempt, even as Milton was when he denounced "the hire- 
 ling wolves whose gospel is their maw." But it was only a 
 few days ago that I read in the columns of a leading Conser- 
 vative journal a pitiful complaint from one who gave the 
 clerical history of several fellow students of high attainments 
 for whom the richest Church in Christendom had barely pro- 
 vided a piece of bread. It is true that the worst scandals of
 
 The Vcrnons. 167 
 
 Pluralism belong to a past generation, but it is equally true 
 that the Church of England is still largely degraded into a 
 system of outdoor relief for the younger sons of the terri- 
 torial aristocracy. It is commonly reported that there is a 
 strong disposition on the part of some members of the Royal 
 Commission to palter with the great evils of patronage ; it is 
 all the more necessary, therefore, that they should be con- 
 stantly kept before public notice.
 
 LXXXVIII. 
 
 (STAMFORD AND WARRINGTON BRANCH). 
 
 HERE are so many of this fortunate family in the 
 English Peerage that I cannot glance at them all, 
 but the Stamford and Warrington branch is of so 
 much importance, both in a territorial and his- 
 torical point of view, that I cannot pass them by unnoticed. 
 Twice at least has this house played an important part in our 
 history, and, owing in great part to fortunate marriages, its 
 estates are both large and valuable. The Earl of Stamford 
 and Warrington owns in — 
 
 Cheshire . 
 
 
 8,612 acres 
 
 Lancashire 
 
 
 5.231 .. 
 
 Leicestershire 
 
 
 9,012 „ 
 
 Stafford . 
 
 
 7>339 ,, 
 
 Salop 
 
 
 6q6 ,, 
 
 York and AVor 
 
 cester 
 
 161 „ 
 
 
 Total 30,961 ,, 
 
 
 With 
 
 a rent-roll of ^58,395. 
 
 The late ]Mr. Joseph Kay, in his excellent work on the 
 Land Question, says : — " It would be a most interesting sub- 
 ject of inquiry, had we only the means of following it out, to 
 ascertain how each of the great estates came to be formed. 
 How many were created by the industry and personal efforts 
 of some ancestor ; how many were the grants of Sovereigns 
 to their favourites ; how many were gradually amassed by 
 successive marriages of convenience ; how many were ob- 
 tained by ambitious statesmen, in the troublous times of our 
 rough island story, by the attainder and death of rivals ; how 
 manv were either created or immensely increased by grants 
 of the vast possessions of the religious houses and of the
 
 The Greys. 169 
 
 Roman Church ; how many were the results of our fierce and 
 bloody civil wars and struggles. It would, indeed, be a 
 curious and instructive study." At the time when these 
 words were written I had already commenced my task, and, 
 indeed, they had not fallen under my notice till very recently ; 
 but no words could have more accurately laid down the plan 
 which I have endeavoured to follow. The space and time at 
 my disposal have necessarily left these sketches far from 
 complete ; but had I not imposed upon myself the most severe 
 condensation, my work would have been obviously unfitted 
 for the columns of a newspaper, and I trust that as it is I 
 have placed in the hands of the general reader the most 
 important facts in regard to the agrarian history of each of 
 the houses with which I have dealt. If a more detailed 
 inquiry is desirable, I have made the way easier for those 
 who shall come after me. After this brief digression, I 
 return to the family whose name stands at the head of this 
 article. 
 
 The Greys of Stamford and Warrington owe their estates 
 to several of the circumstances mentioned by Mr. Kay, but 
 chiefly to successive marriages of convenience. The Greys 
 were a Norman family, who rose into prominence in the 
 times of the early Plantagenet Kings. The founder of this 
 branch of the house was a younger son of Lord Grey de 
 Ruthin, who, in the reign of Henry VI., married the grand- 
 daughter and heiress of the last Lord Ferrers of Groby. 
 Bradgate and Groby, in Leicestershire, had been acquired by 
 a Norman house at the Conquest, and had passed by suc- 
 cessive marriages to the Ferrers family. Since the marriage 
 of Edward de Grey into the Ferrers family these Leicester- 
 shire estates have been in the possession of his descendants. 
 The eldest son of this marriage fell in the Lancastrian cause 
 at St. Albans, and Edward IV. married his widow, through 
 whose influence her son. Sir Thomas Grey, was created 
 Marquis of Dorset. His grandson, the third IMarquis of 
 Dorset, married the daughter and heiress of Charles Brandon, 
 Duke of Suffolk, whose Duchess was the sister of Henry VIII. 
 The INIarquis was elevated to the dukedom of Suffolk in the 
 reign of Edward VI. His three daughters, the eldest of 
 whom was the unfortunate Lady Jane Grey, died without 
 issue. The Duke himself was beheaded for his share in 
 Wyatt's rebellion. Thus the sudden greatness of the house
 
 1 70 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 for a time was eclipsed, but in the reign of James I. it 
 partially regained its prosperity. 
 
 Lord John Grey, a younger brother of the unhappy Duke 
 of Suftblk, obtained a grant- of Pergoc, in Essex, which was 
 part of the Royal manor of Havering-atte-Bower. His son 
 Henr)- sold the Essex property, but acquired a considerable 
 estate in Staffordshire. Enville had been acquired by the 
 marriage of another offshoot of the Greys with a Staff"ordshire 
 heiress, and the last heir of that branch, who was childless, 
 sold the property to Elenry Grey, who was created Lord Grey 
 of Groby by James L His grandson married the daughter 
 and co-heiress of William Cecil, Earl of Exeter, through whom 
 he became possessed of the castle, manor, and borough of 
 Stamford. I have already shown in a previous article that 
 the Cecils derived their property almost exclusively from royal 
 grants. Early fn the reign of Charles L Lord Grey of Groby 
 was created Earl of Stamford ; from the same monarch he 
 received a grant of lands in Charnwood Forest. The Earl 
 and his eldest son, Lord Grey of Groby, were ardent sup- 
 porters of the Parliament during the 'jCivil War, and both 
 of them had military commands. Lord Grey of Groby 
 was especially active, and after the relief of Gloucester and 
 the Battle of Newbury he received the special thanks of the 
 House of Commons. He is said to have had more to do 
 with Pride's Purge of the Long Parliament than Colonel 
 Pride himself; and his signature appears second, between 
 those of Bradshaw and Cromwell, on the death-warrant of 
 the King. During the Civil War he made great sacrifices in 
 the cause, but he subsequently received large grants from the 
 Parliament, both in land and money. It was voted that lands 
 in Leicestershire, to the value of 2"i,ooo per annum, should 
 be settled upon him, and with his pecuniary rewards he made 
 extensive purchases. Somewhat later he quarrelled with 
 Cromwell, and engaged himself in plots, for which he was 
 imprisoned. Fortunately, perhaps, for his family, he died 
 just before the Restoration, but his father lived on till 1673. 
 The elder grandson of the first Earl, dying without issue, was 
 succeeded by his son, and he by his son, who contracted 
 another advantageous marriage with the daughter and heiress 
 of Booth, the last Earl of Warrington. 
 
 The Booths had acquired fortune very much in the same 
 way as the Greys. They were an old Lancashire famil}'. one
 
 The Gi'cys. 171 
 
 of whose younger sons had married a Cheshire heiress 
 named Venables. Dunham IMassey and other lands in Ches- 
 hire, spoils of the Norman Conquest, had passed by successive 
 marriages to the family of Venables, and thence in the same 
 manner to the Booths. In the reign of Henry VIII. Sir 
 William Booth married the heiress of the Asshetons, the 
 ancient possessors of the valuable manor of Ashton-under- 
 Lyne, which is still held by his descendants. During the 
 Civil War Sir George Booth was a leading member of the 
 Presbyterian part}-, and gave his support to the Parliament. 
 Towards the close of the Commonwealth period he appeared 
 in arms for Charles II., but was defeated after a sharp 
 encounter by Lambert, and made his escape disguised as a 
 woman. The following year he acted as one of the deputa- 
 tion to invite Charles back, and received as his reward from 
 the King the title of Lord Delamere, and from the Parliament 
 £ 10,000. L'ord Delamere was accused in the reign of 
 James II. of treasonable correspondence with IMonmouth, but 
 was acquitted. At the coming of the Prince of Orange he 
 raised Cheshire for William, and gained two steps in the peer- 
 age, being created Earl of Warrington. He was also awarded 
 a pension of /^2,ooo a-year, which, strange to say, was not 
 paid. At the death of George Booth, second Earl of War- 
 rington, the estates passed to the Earl of Stamford, who had 
 married his daughter, and their son and his descendants have 
 since held both titles. 
 
 It will be seen that though the Greys are an old family, the 
 greater part of their estates are still older, that is, that they 
 have descended by inheritance in unbroken succession from 
 Norman times. The Asshetons, of Ashton-under-Lyne, the 
 Venables and Fittons of Dunham INIassey, the Ferrers o 
 Groby, the Lowes of Enville, all of whom were ancient houses, 
 have one by one been merged into the house of Grey. What 
 has not been acquired in this manner has been acquired 
 almost entirely by Royal or Parliamentary grants. Necessarily 
 the wealth of this house has been immensely increased by the 
 industry and enterprise of the people of Cheshire and Lan- 
 cashire. I have given the gross rental of the estates of the 
 Earl of Stamford and Warrington, but I have little doubt that 
 it conveys but an inadequate idea of his wealth. Certainly it 
 gives us no information as to his prospective wealth, seeing 
 that our system of leases in the manufacturing towns secures
 
 1 7 2 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 not only to the landlord a considerable share of the present 
 profits of industry, but in the future an exaction of yet larger 
 sums from those whose capital and labour have, without 
 exertion on his part, given to his lands a value of which his 
 ancestors never dreamed.
 
 LXXXIX. 
 
 HE Braces are a Norman family, who came over 
 with the Conqueror, and obtained large grants 
 of land in the North of England. In the reign 
 of Henry I. one of them, having ingratiated him- 
 self with the Kingof Scotland, obtained from that Monarch large 
 grants of land in Annandale; and, not long after, the Bruces be- 
 came allied by marriage with the Scottish Royal House. For 
 some time the Bruces were half English, half Scotch. Robert 
 Bruce's father had a house near London, at Tottenham, Mid- 
 dlesex, the name of which is still preserved in Bruce Castle 
 School, which was opened as a branch of the Birmingham 
 establishment kept by the Messrs. Hill more than a generation 
 ago. The English estates of the Bruces were confiscated 
 in the time of the Plantagenets ; and England knew them 
 not again as landowners till the beginning of the seventeenth 
 century. 
 
 From one of the younger branches of the Bruce family 
 was descended Sir Edward Bruce, of Kinloss, who was em- 
 ployed by King James in several embassies to the Court of 
 Elizabeth, and who became the intermediary of that ]\Ionarch's 
 confidential correspondence with the younger Cecil before 
 his accession to the English Crown. Like the rest of the 
 needy Scottish courtiers, Bruce accompanied his master to 
 England ; and, in the very first year of James's reign, ob- 
 tained for life the great place of IMaster of the Rolls. The 
 following year he was created Earl of Elgin. His son, early 
 in the reign of Charles L, was created Baron Bruce of 
 Whorlton, in the English Peerage. Whorlton, in the North 
 Riding, and the dissolved Cistercian Abbey of Jerveaux 
 (Urevale), had been granted by Henry VHL to the Earl of 
 Lennox, but subsequently reverted to the Crown, and is said 
 to have been regranted by James I. to Edward Bruce of
 
 174 Ottr Old Nobility. 
 
 Kinloss. The second wife of the second Earl of Elgin was 
 the widow of the Earl of Oxford, and the daughter of the 
 elder Cecil. According to one account, the Bruces had large 
 grants from King James of lands at Tanfield and elsewhere 
 in Yorkshire, at one time in the possession of the ]Marmions ; 
 but there is evidence to show that the elder Cecil had pre- 
 viously received a grant of these lands from Elizabeth ; con- 
 sequently, they must have been brought into the family by the 
 marriage with Cecil's daughter. Whichever account be true, 
 they were derived by the direct favour of the Crown, whether 
 of Elizabeth or James matters little. The eldest son of this 
 marriage was created Earl of Ailesbury. The next heir made 
 a most fortunate matrimonial alliance, his wife being the 
 sister and sole heiress of William Seymour, Duke of Somer- 
 set, one of the wealthiest nobles in the kingdom. 
 
 It is unnecessary here to recapitulate the history of the 
 Seymours. Suffice it to say that one of them had married 
 the daughter and co-heiress of Sir William Sturmy, of Chad- 
 ham and Wolf Hall, in Wiltshire. The Sturmys, from the 
 days of Henry H., had been hereditar}' Bailiffs of the Royal 
 Forest of Savernake, where is now situated Tottenham Park, 
 the chief seat of the INIarquis of Ailesbury. This is only 
 another instance of the tendency of hereditary guardianship 
 to develop into ownership. The Protector Somerset in the 
 reign of Edward VI. obtained — or, rather, appropriated to 
 himself — immense grants of land belonging to the Crown, 
 which, however, he was ultimately compelled to disgorge. 
 Marlborough Castle, Bradon, and Savernake Forests, and 
 other lands derived from his ancestors, were restored to him. 
 The present Marquis of Ailesbury owns in 
 
 Wiltshire . . . . 37;993 acres. 
 
 Yorkshire .... I5>502 ,, 
 
 Bucks ..... 1,566 ,, 
 
 Total 55,061 „ 
 AVith a rent-roll of ^59,716. 
 
 .It will be seen from the foreq-oina: account that nearly all 
 this has been derived at various times by grants from the 
 Crown. 
 
 The Earl of Ailesbury whose marriage resulted in the 
 acquisition of the Seymour estates played a half-hearted part 
 at the Revolution of 1688. He was one of the first to invite
 
 TJie Bruces. 175 
 
 the Prince of Orange over, but he resolutely refused to swear 
 allegiance to him as King. His son married Lady Anne 
 Saville, daughter and co-heiress of the Marquis of Halifax ; 
 but the Saville property passed to her daughter, and, as there 
 • were no male children, the Earl of Ailesbury obtained a new 
 patent of peerage as Baron Bruce of Tottenham, with re- 
 mainder to a nephew, to whom he bequeathed his estates. 
 
 The Earldom of Ailesbury then expired, and the Scottish 
 Earldom of Elgin passed to the Earl of Kincardine, who was 
 descended from a brother of Edward Bruce of Kinloss, the 
 courtier of James I. The two earldoms have been since held 
 by his descendants, some of whom have achieved distinction 
 in the public service. The seventh Earl, who was Ambassador 
 at Constantinople, brought home the "Elgin Marbles" from 
 Greece, and the eighth Earl was not many years ago Governor- 
 General of India. 
 
 The nephew, Thomas Brudenell, was a younger son of the 
 Earl of Cardigan. The Brudenells were small landowners in 
 Oxon and Northampton in the time of the Plantagenets. 
 One of them, who was Lord Chief Justice in the reigns of 
 Henry VH. and Henry VHL, made considerable purchases 
 of land at Staunton Wyvill in Leicestershire, and Deene in 
 Northamptonshire, the latter place being the chief seat of the 
 family. One of his descendants received a baronetcy from 
 James I., and had a peerage from Charles I. Lord Brudenell 
 was a staunch Royalist, and suffered a long imprisonment in 
 the Tower, for which he was compensated at the Restoration 
 by being created Earl of Cardigan. The eldest son of th% 
 second Earl of Cardigan, who died in the lifetime of his 
 father, married Lady Frances Saville, daughter of the Earl of 
 Sussex, who subsequently became heiress to her brother's 
 estates. These Savilles, according to Allen's History of 
 Yorkshire, were an illegitimate branch of the family, who, by 
 address and Court favour, had outstripped the legitimate line. 
 Their lands are situated in Yorkshire. The grandson of the 
 Saville marriage rose to a dukedom, for, having married the 
 co-heiress of the Duke of INIontagu, he was, after the death 
 of his father-in-law, created Duke of Montagu. He died 
 without issue, and his next brother succeeded to the Earldom 
 of Cardigan, which continued to be held by the Brudenells 
 till 1868, when the last Earl — he who led the Light Brigade 
 at the charge of Balaclava — died without issue, and the Earl-
 
 176 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 dom of Cardigan passed to the Marquis of Ailesbury. The 
 late Earl of Cardigan held in — 
 
 Northamptonshire .... 6,343 acres 
 
 York ..... 4.361 ,, 
 
 Leicester ..... 2,280 ,, 
 
 Total 12,984 „ 
 With a rent-roll oi £i(i,\T,o. 
 
 What will be the ultimate disposition of these lands I am 
 unable to say. In the new Domesday Book they are set down 
 as held by the trustees of the late Earl, whose widow resides 
 at Deene, the old seat of the Brudenell family. 
 
 In 1 82 1 the then Earl of Ailesbury, who had steadily used 
 the family electoral influence for the Government, was raised 
 a step in the Peerage, being created a Marquis. The first 
 Reform Bill swept away most of the Parliamentary influence 
 of the Brudenell Bruces, but they still have one representative 
 in the House of Commons, who nominally sits for the little 
 borough of ^Marlborough. The present iNlarquis, as Lord 
 Ernest Bruce, sat for that place from 1832 till his accession 
 to the peerage in 1878. Marlborough has barely 600 electors, 
 while several boroughs which also return only one member 
 have more than ten times that number. Among these are 
 Swansea, Bury, Burnley, Dewsbury, Dudley, Walsall, Gates- 
 head, South Shields, Stockton, Huddersfield, and Wednes- 
 bury. The last-named has more than thirty times the number 
 of electors possessed by Marlborough ; the contrast is a 
 beautiful example of our electoral anomalies. 
 • The present Lord Aberdare, Henry Austin Bmcc, belongs 
 to a Welsh family, he being the second son of ?ilr. J. Bruce- 
 Pryce, of Glamorganshire.
 
 xc. 
 
 %lu %swC'€ilktB. 
 
 HE rapid rise of prosperous houses in compara- 
 tively modern times is sometimes a perplexing- 
 enigma. Take, for instance, the Agar-Ellises, or 
 the Ellis-Agars. About a century ago, in the 
 short space of twenty years, three of them obtained peer- 
 ages ; and they own between them at the present time more 
 than 87,000 acres. The family motto is, TVon hccc sine 
 7mmine — "These things are not without the Deity;" and I 
 am almost inclined to add that He alone knows how they 
 obtained them. Viscount Clifden has an Irish seat, Gowran 
 Castle, anciently one of the strongholds of the Butlers ; he 
 has an English seat at Holdenby, in Northamptonshire — a 
 name for ever associated with that renowned Elizabethan 
 courtier. Sir Christopher Hatton. Evidently this is a case of 
 New ]Men and Old Acres. Viscount Clifden owns in 
 
 Northampton 
 Bucks 
 
 4,774 acres 
 2,976 ,, 
 
 Somerset . 
 
 ry r -1 - 
 
 Oxon 
 
 Middlesex . 
 Ireland 
 
 1,107 ,. 
 
 38464 „ 
 
 
 Total 49,594 „ 
 
 Almost all the Irish estates arc in Kilkenny. The rent-roll is 
 £ l>^yl'^l- Certainly this is a considerable accumulation in 
 two hundred years. 
 
 Gowran Castle, Kilkenny, was an ancient scat of the 
 Butlers, which was besieged in the Irish Wars of the Common- 
 wealth, and, with the surrounding lands, was granted to 
 Ireton, then Lord Deputy. It did not revert to Ormonde at 
 the Restoration, but was granted, with other forfeited estates 
 of the regicides, to James, Duke of York, from whose trustees 
 it was purchased by a certain Charles Agar. The Agars are 
 said to have been a Huguenot family, who escaped from 
 
 12
 
 178 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 France in time of persecution, and settled in Yorkshire. 
 How Charles Agar was able to buy this extensive estate I 
 know not, but it must be remembered that Irish lands were 
 very cheap in those days. Not very long after another York- 
 shire adventurer, a certain Sir William Ellis, went over to 
 Ireland, and became secretary to Tyrconnel. Sir William 
 had a brother, Welbore Ellis by name, who also went over to 
 Ireland, and, being in Holy Orders, obtained the Bishopric 
 of INIeath. The Bishop ultimately became the heir of his 
 brother, the Secretary, and the grandson of Charles Agar 
 married the only daughter of the Bishop. The eldest son of 
 this marriage, after having held lucrative offices in Ireland, 
 was created Viscount Clifden in 1781. The second son was 
 a Commissioner of Customs ; the third was created Earl of 
 Normanton, of whom I shall have more to say hereafter. 
 
 The Bishop of Meath had a son, also named Welbore Ellis. 
 The father, being only a poor Bishop, had his son educated 
 free of expense, first of all as a King's scholar at West- 
 minster, and afterwards at Christ Church, Oxford. Welbore 
 soon entered Parliament, and for many years held highly-paid 
 offices, as a Lord of the Admiralty, Vice-Treasurer of Ireland, 
 Secretary at War, Treasurer of the Navy, and Colonial Secre- 
 tary. The only distinguished services which I can discover 
 that he rendered to his country were that he strenuously 
 opposed any concessions to the American colonists, and that 
 he moved the committal of Lord I\Ia3-or Crosby to the Tower 
 for daring to maintain the freedom of the Press against a 
 tyrannical House of Commons. He was the "Grildrig"of 
 Junius, who describes him as a little mannikin and the most 
 contemptible creature in the world, who, whether he made or 
 suppressed a motion, was equally sure of disgrace. Even 
 Lord Stanhope speaks of him as " a man who was ridiculed 
 for his diminutive stature, not in him redeemed by any lofti- 
 ness of mind." Nevertheless, he appears during the many 
 vears in which he held office to have amassed a larq-e fortune. 
 Having gone over to Pitt in 1793, he was rewarded the 
 following year with an English peerage, under the title of 
 Baron Mendip. As he left no issue, his^ title and fortune 
 passed to his great-nephew, the second Viscount Clifden. 
 
 This nobleman, by the way, was one of those Irish borough- 
 mongers who received bribes at the passing of the Act of 
 Union in the shape of compensation for the loss of their
 
 The Agar-Elliscs. 1 79 
 
 patronage. Almost ever since the Agars obtained possession 
 of Gowran they had possessed two seats for the borough of that 
 name in the Irish Parliament. One of them usually occupied 
 one of the seats, and, judging by the number of otlices they 
 obtained, it must have been quite a mine of wealth to them. 
 When the Act of Union passed Viscount Clifden received 
 ^15,000 for the extinction of his pocket borough. With 
 this comfortable sum in hand, coupled with his placeman 
 great-uncle's fortune, it need not surprise us that soon after 
 he appears as a considerable purchaser of land in England. 
 About 1830 Viscount Clifden purchased the manor and estate 
 of Lenborough, in Buckinghamshire, and the still larger 
 estate of Holdenby, in Northamptonshire, came into his 
 hands in the same manner. Holdenby, the ancient seat of 
 the Hattons, was purchased by James I., who gave it to his 
 son Charles, with whose later history its name will always be 
 associated. It was confiscated and sold during the Common- 
 wealth, but at the Restoration Charles II. resumed possession 
 of it. He appears to have granted it to his brother James 
 Duke of York, who in turn gave it to a French officer, whom 
 he created Earl of Feversham. Feversham's representative 
 sold it to the Duke of Marlborough, in whose family it 
 remained till the third Duke sold it to Viscount Clifden, who 
 had married his eldest daughter. This nobleman held the 
 office of Clerk of the Privy Council in Ireland, a sinecure 
 with /"i,450 a-year. At this period the Agar-Ellises were 
 stead)^ and consistent Whigs, being staunch advocates of 
 Catholic Emancipation and Parliamentary Reform. The 
 eldest son of the second Viscount Clifden was created a peer 
 of the United Kingdom, with the title of Baron Dover, in 
 the lifetime of his father, whom he predeceased. His grand- 
 son, the present holder of the title, is a minor. 
 
 I have previously mentioned that a younger brother of the 
 first Viscount Clifden was created Earl of Normanton. Many 
 of my readers have unconsciously trodden upon his tomb- 
 stone on entering the door at the north transept of West- 
 minster Abbey, and in the fourth bay of the north aisle of 
 that Abbey they may see his monument. It is a somewhat 
 curious production. There is a representation in bas-relief 
 of the new Protestant Cathedral at Cashel, which his lordship 
 was instrumental in building. There is a figure, too, of the 
 Earl, in full canonicals, handing to another clergyman an 
 
 1 2 — 2
 
 1 80 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 open book, on which are the words, "Be not weary in well- 
 doino-" — a maxim which he certainly did not lose sisfht of, 
 especially when we remember the Apostolic dictum that " He 
 that desires the office of a Bishop desireth a good thing." 
 The sculptor has also introduced two or three forlorn Irish 
 beggars to indicate the prelate's kindly disposition. But the 
 most remarkable feature of the monument is a little cherub 
 putting a mitre upon his lordship's head. As the Yankee 
 editor said, when he received a poem describing how the 
 angels laid a new-born baby on the young mother's lap, 
 "That may be very good poetry ; but it's not the road such 
 things usually come in this world." Leaving the realms of 
 imagination, and coming down to plain facts, Charles Agar, 
 having taken Holy Orders, was so fortunate as to be appointed 
 Chaplain to the Lord-Lieutenant ; and soon after the first 
 piece of preferment fell to him, in the shape of the Deanery 
 of Kilmore. When about thirty years of age, he was elevated 
 to the Bishopric of Cloyne ; and, about ten years after, to 
 the Archbishopric of Cashel. In 1801 he was translated to 
 the Archbishopric of Dublin, and he lived on till i8og. He 
 had an eye to temporal as well as spiritual dignities, for he 
 was successively created a Baron, a Viscount, and an Earl. 
 I cannot discover that either he, or his son, or his grandson, 
 married rich heiresses ; so I must conclude that the greater 
 part of the landed possessions of the Earl of Normanton 
 were derived from the savings of the Archbishop and his 
 heir. As the first Lord Normanton was a Prelate of the Irish 
 Church for nearly forty years, he had ample opportunities of 
 saving a considerable sum ; and I believe his son achieved 
 yet greater things by studious fnigality. However that may 
 be, the present Earl of Normanton, whose grandfather was 
 only the younger son of an Irish commoner, now owns no 
 less than 37,336 acres of land in half-a-dozen English and 
 Irish counties, with a rent-roll oi £ \\,o\\.
 
 XCI. 
 
 a<^ 
 
 $. 
 
 [HE Hamiltons, like the Braces, are of Norman 
 extraction, and, like many great Scotch families, 
 they owe almost everything to the direct favour of 
 the Crown. The present Duke of Hamilton 
 figures in the new Domesday Book as the owner in 
 
 ante 
 
 102,210 acres 
 
 Lanark 
 
 45.731 „ 
 
 Sufiblk 
 
 4,939 „ 
 
 Linlithgow 
 
 3.694 „ 
 
 Stirling . 
 
 810 „ 
 
 Total 157,384 „ 
 
 The gross rental is /'i 40, 5 2 6. Heaven and I\Ir. Padwick 
 alone know what it is net. The estates are in the hands of 
 trustees, and the Duke has an allowance. As the Duke is 
 richer in titles than a Royal baby in Christian names, I will 
 not recount them all. Suffice it to say that he is not only 
 the Premier Peer of Scotland, but also Duke of Brandon in 
 the Peerage of England, and that his peerages are sixteen in 
 number. 
 
 Almost every acre of his vast domains in Scotland ai-e 
 derived directly by grants from the Crown. His proprietary 
 rights are of course no more affected by this fact than by his 
 unwise use of his enormous income. Bi:t Ave may well echo 
 Oxenstieru's exclamation as to the little wisdom Avith which 
 the world is governed, when Ave reflect that our ancestors 
 placed it Avithin the poAver of their monarchs to grant to their 
 favoured folloAvers the power for themselves and their 
 descendants through all time to take tithe and toll of the 
 produce of the soil of great tracts of land Avhich have con- 
 stantly grown in value OAving to the industry of the Avhole 
 population. The grantors, of course, could not foresee that the 
 posterity of the grantees Avould ultimately derive such immense 
 revenues for doing nothing at all ; but Avhen I hear people
 
 1 82 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 lamenting that rents over a large part of Scotland have gone 
 down about 25 per cent., I cannot greatly pity the people 
 whose ancestors obtained everjthing for nothing. 
 
 The chief seats of the Duke of Hamilton in Scotland are 
 Hamilton Palace, Lanarkshire ; Kinnell House, Linlithgow ; 
 Brodrick Castle, Isle of Arran, Buteshire. They form con- 
 venient landmarks in tracing the history of the family. The 
 Lanark and Linlithgow estates have been, with short inter- 
 ruptions, in the possession of the Hamiltons ever since the 
 days of King Robert Bruce. A certain Sir Walter Hamilton 
 having attached himself to that monarch, although he had 
 previously sworn fealty to Edward I., was rewarded with 
 extensive grants of lands, particularly of the barony of Cadzow 
 and the estate of Kinnell. On the former estate is now erected 
 Hamilton Palace (called a palace because ^lary, Queen of 
 Scots, once resided there), one of the most magnificent 
 mansions in the kingdom. The Kinnell estate has in modern 
 times acquired greatly increased value from its collieries. 
 Kinnell House was for a time the residence of Dugald 
 Stewart, at which place he died. 
 
 The greater part of the Hamilton estates are situated in 
 Arran, the larger of the two islands which form the county of 
 Bute. Arran was anciently a domain of the Scottish Crown, 
 but in the fifteenth century it was given as a dowry to the 
 Princess ^Mary on her marriage with Boyd, who was created Earl 
 of Arran. During one of the frequent domestic convulsions of the 
 time Boyd had to flee for his life, and his estates, as well 
 as those of his brother, were confiscated about 1468. Of the 
 lands in question JNIr. Burton says: — " These domains were 
 all forfeited to the Crown, but were not, in the usual manner, 
 put at the disposal of the Crown to give away at pleasure. 
 The Act of Forfeiture rendered it incompetent for the Crown 
 to alienate any of them without the consent of Parliament, 
 and assigned the greater portion of them as a principality for 
 the heir of the Crown." This Act, however, did not long 
 prevent the Hamiltons from obtaining possession of Arran. 
 Boyd soon died in exile, and the head of the house of 
 Hamilton married his widow, the Princess Mary. In 1503 — 
 less than forty years after the Act had been passed — the eldest 
 son of this marriage obtained a grant of the island from King 
 James IV., and since that time it has been held by his 
 descendants.
 
 The Hainiltons. 183 
 
 As if the Scottish Monarchs had not already done enough 
 for the Hamiltons, I find that James VI. of Scotland, in the 
 year 1606, granted to the head of the family the lands of the 
 rich Abbey of Aberbrothock, in Forfarshire, a proceeding 
 which moved Archbishop Abbot to an humble remonstrance, 
 in which, after expressing his disappointment that the pro- 
 perty had not been devoted to ecclesiastical uses, he ventured 
 to hope " that two out of the poor clergy would receive small 
 holdings out of this great domain." The lands in question, I 
 believe, are not now in . the possession of the Duke of 
 Hamilton. 
 
 The Suffolk estates are a modern acquisition. Easton in 
 Suffolk was purchased by a Dutch officer, who was illegiti- 
 mately descended from one of the Princes of Orange. He 
 appears to have been a great favourite with William HI., by 
 whom he was created Earl of Rochford. The last Earl of 
 of Rochford bequeathed these estates to a Duke of Hamilton, 
 who was his half-brother. 
 
 The history of the house of Hamilton is so constantly inter- 
 woven with the history of Scotland that it would be impos- 
 siblp for me to give even a brief epitome thereof. My business, 
 however, is with the lands rather than with the men. The 
 second Earl of Arran was created Duke of Chatelherault in 
 France, with a French pension, in order to induce him to 
 consent to the marriage of Queen Mary with the Dauphin. 
 At one time they seemed likely to lose possession altogether 
 in favour of a certain Captain Stewart, but the fourth Earl, 
 uniting with other nobles in a military demonstration, obtained 
 possession of the King, regained his lands, and was created 
 Marquis of Hamilton. The third Marquis, an ardent Royalist, 
 was created a Duke after the outbreak of the Civil War 
 between Charles I. and his Parliament, and was beheaded in 
 Old Palace Yard in 1749. His son, the second Duke, was 
 mortally wounded at the Battle of Worcester, and, leaving 
 only daughters, the estates fell to his sister. Lady Anne 
 Hamilton, who married Lord William Douglas. From that 
 time the Dukes of Hamilton have been Douglas-Hamiltons. 
 On the failure of the elder male line of the great house of 
 Douglas, the Douglas-Hamiltons laid claim to the great 
 Douglas estates, but after prolonged litigation they were 
 finally defeated. Since the death of the fourth Duke, who 
 was a leading statesman at the time of the Hanoverian settle-
 
 1 84 Om^ Old Nobility. 
 
 nient, the Hamiltons have not been distinguished except as 
 house builders, art collectors, and patrons of the turf. 
 
 The male line of the Hamilton family is represented by the 
 Duke of Abercorn, who was a few years ago created a Duke 
 by the grace of our Sovereign Lord, Benjamin I. This 
 branch of the Hamiltons, like the other, owes everything it 
 possesses to the direct favour of the Crown, or to what it has 
 saved out of its extensive grants. The Duke of Abercorn 
 
 owns m- 
 
 Tyrone ..... 51,91930165 
 
 Donegal ..... 15,860 ,, 
 
 Edinburgh .... 1,500 ,. 
 
 Renfrew ..... 662 ,, 
 
 Sussex ..... S ,, 
 
 Total 69,949 ,, 
 With a rent-roll of;,f45,954. 
 
 All this has been acquired within the last three hundred 
 years. 
 
 Claud, fourth son of the Hamilton who was created Duke 
 of Chatelherault, obtained from James VI. a grant of the 
 barony of Paisley. The Hamiltons, by the way, also obtained 
 possession of the rich Abbey of Paisley, which they subse- 
 quently sold. I presume that the lands they still hold in 
 Renfrew are a remnant of these grants. The eldest son of 
 Lord Paisley was created Earl of Abercorn — a place with 
 which, I believe, the Hamiltons have now no local connec- 
 tion — by the same monarch. But James had now come into 
 possession of the Crown of England and Ireland, and he 
 made to the Earl of Abercorn extensive grants of land in the 
 barony of Strabane. A younger brother of this Earl was 
 made Constable of Toome Castle, Antrim, for life, and had 
 a grant of 400 acres in Longford and 2,000 acres in the barony 
 of Strabane. Another younger son also had grants of lands 
 in Tyrone and Tipperary, and, after the Restoration, of other 
 lands in Cork, besides several lucrative offices. The eldest 
 son of this last, who was one of the favourite courtiers of 
 Charles 11. , obtained a grant of an estate in Meath, and/^900 
 per annum out of the firstfruits and tenths of the dioceses of 
 St. David's, Hereford, Oxford and Worcester. Plis eldest 
 son, who was one of the Privy Councillors of James II., went 
 over to the side of the Prince of Orange, and assisted in the
 
 TJic Haiiiiltoiis. 185 
 
 relief of Londonderry. By this time the eldest line had died 
 out, and the Earldom of Abercorn was held by a descendant 
 of the third son of the Duke of Chatelherault. He held fast 
 to James II., fought for him at the Boyne, and was soon after 
 killed. He was attainted, but his brother obtained a reversal 
 of the attainder. The latter leaving no issue, the lands and 
 titles passed to the Captain Hamilton who had assisted in 
 relieving Londonderry. I have not space to mention the 
 various civil, military, and ecclesiastical offices subsequently 
 held by this branch of the Hamilton family. One of them, 
 by the way, held no less than six rectories and vicarages in 
 the diocese of Armagh. About the year 1745 the Earl of 
 Abercorn purchased the estate of Duddingston, in the county 
 of Edinburgh, which had passed by marriage from the Lauder- 
 dale to the Argyll family, and erected a mansion thereon at a 
 cost of / 30,000. In 1790 the ninth Earl was created a Mar- 
 quis, and his grandson was in 1868 created a Duke. In addi- 
 tion to the above there are ten other Hamiltons, who own 
 between them about 140,000 acres more, chiefly in Ireland 
 and Scotland, and of most of whose acquisitions I have no 
 doubt an equally satisfactory account may be given. I shall 
 certainly be quite safe in affirming that nearly the whole of 
 the 367,000 acres possessed by this fortunate clan has been 
 at some time or other obtained by lavish grants from the 
 Crown.
 
 XCII. 
 
 (BRAYBROOKE BRANCH.) 
 
 :^N dealing with the Russell, Manners, Paulet, Cecil, 
 !j| and other families, 1 have shown how largely 
 their present prosperity is due to the confiscation 
 of ecclesiastical property, at, or subsequent to, 
 the Reformation ; but many of the chief spoliators have no 
 legitimate male descendants, and their shares of the plunder 
 are now inherited by their descendants in the female line, 
 who of course have other names, or have passed by bequest 
 or inheritance to other families. There is a Lord Audley 
 still, but he is not descended from the Chancellor of Henry 
 Vni. ; the inheritor of the greater part of Lord Chancellor 
 Audley's lands is Lord Braybrooke. The barony is not quite 
 100 years old, but its possessor is descended from the great 
 house of Neville. Lord Braybrooke owns in 
 
 Essex ..... 9,684 acres. 
 
 Berks ..... 3,590 „ 
 
 Total 13,274 „ 
 With a rentroll of /i 8,984. 
 
 His chief seat, at Audley End, near Saffron Walden, in 
 Essex, is one of the finest mansions in the country. We 
 have to consider how the land was obtained, and how the 
 mansion was built. 
 
 Lord Chancellor Audley is fitly described by Lord Camp- 
 bell as "a sordid slave," who further declares that "no 
 eunuch in a seraglio was ever a more submissive tool to the 
 caprice and vengeance of a passionate and remorseless 
 master." This judgment is not at all an exaggerated one ; his 
 whole ignoble career is unrelieved by any touch of upright- 
 ness or manliness. He was born to poverty, and he rose to 
 wealth and power by the basest means. His first places were 
 earned by defending, in the House of Commons, the worst
 
 The Nevilles. 187 
 
 abuses of the Royal Prerogative, and supporting Wolsey's 
 demand for extortionate subsidies. When Sir Thomas JMore 
 was disgraced Audley was appointed Lord Keeper, and sub- 
 sequently Lord Chancellor. This pliant, servile tool of 
 tyranny never shrank from the basest deeds in order to please 
 his master. It was he who presided at the shameful trial of 
 More, and at the still more shameful trial of Bishop Fisher, 
 in which his conduct as a judge was simply infamous. It was 
 he, too, who presided at the trials of Queen Anne Boleyn and 
 the Marquis of Exeter and Lord IMontagu. It was he, too, 
 who took an active part not only in the spoliation of the 
 ecclesiastical houses, but in " the division of the plunder 
 among those who planned the robbery." It was he, too, who 
 was one of Henry's chief instruments in raising money by 
 illegal expedients, the commissions being issued under the 
 Great Seal ; in short, he was a willing tool in executing all 
 the worst measures of that evil reign. And he had his 
 reward. His own repeated applications to Cromwell are still 
 extant, his chief desire being to secure for himself the lands 
 of the rich Abbey of Saffron Walden. He had sold himself 
 to the devil apparently without remorse, and he was not slow 
 in claiming whatever gain he could hope from the bargain. 
 " I have," he writes, " in this world sustained great damage 
 and infamy in serving the King's Highness, which this grant 
 (Walden Abbey) shall recompense." He obtained his desire, 
 and was also further rewarded with a priory at Aldgate, where 
 he built a mansion, and with four or five other confiscated 
 monastic houses. Thus the lands were gained. 
 
 Audley is mentioned by Sir Henry Spelman as one of the 
 persons who were punished for sacrilege by having no male 
 heirs. If the failure of male heirs is a mark of Divine dis- 
 pleasure, it is clear that not a few royal and noble houses 
 must have been exceedingly wicked. Be that as it may, 
 Audley left behind him only one daughter, who lived to 
 mature years ; and she married the unfortunate Duke of Nor- 
 folk who was beheaded for treason in the reign of Elizabeth. 
 One could almost wish that Audley had lived long enough 
 to see the daughter of the Queen upon whom he had pro- 
 nounced sentence of death sign the death-warrant of his own 
 daughter's husband. The eldest son of the marriage, Thomas 
 Howard, was subsequently restored in blood, and inherited 
 from his mother the Barony of Walden which had been
 
 1 88 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 obtained by Lord Chancellor Audley. One of his daughters 
 married William Cecil, the first Earl of Salisbury ; another 
 the Earl of Essex, and subsequently Carr, Earl of Somerset, 
 the favourite of James I. It is not at all surprising, then, to 
 find that, soon after the accession of James, he was created 
 Earl of Suffolk, and that he held for some years the lucrative 
 post of Lord High Treasurer. In the first years of that reign 
 he was Lord Chamberlain ; and, in company with Lord JMont- 
 eagle, who had received a warning of the Gunpowder Plot, 
 he inspected the cellars beneath the Houses of Parliament, 
 where he discovered Guy Eawkes, with his stores of gun- 
 powder. After the fall of the favourite Somerset, whose con- 
 nection with the Countess of Essex is known to every reader 
 of English history, the Earl of Suffolk fell into disgrace. 
 According to Rapin, his Countess " made no scruple of 
 taking bribes with both hands." According to the same 
 authority, " It was discovered that the Treasurer has con- 
 verted to his own uses part of the money received for the 
 cautionary towns from Holland." This was an old claim 
 which we had upon the Dutch, which was settled by the pay- 
 ment of 2,728,000 florins, and eighteen years' interest. The 
 Earl was fined ^30,000, and sentenced to be imprisoned in 
 the Tower during the King's pleasure. Whether the fine was 
 paid I know not ; but, after a short confinement, he was re- 
 leased. But, in the meantime, he had erected the magnificent 
 mansion of Audley End, which he named after the Lord 
 Chancellor, and which is said to have cost /^ 190, 000 — an 
 enormous sum in those days. Thus the house was built. 
 
 The third Earl of Suffolk sold the mansion and park to 
 Charles II. lor ^50,000, two-fifths of the purchase money 
 being allowed to stand over. After the Revolution of 1688 
 he was allowed to re-purchase it at the same price which 
 he had actually received from Charles. This nobleman 
 having no male heirs, the Earldom of Suffolk devolved upon 
 his next brother. The Barony of Walden, which for a time 
 fell into abeyance between his daughters and their heirs, is 
 now held by the present Lord Howard de Walden, who is 
 descended from his younger daughter. His elder daughter, 
 however, married Lord Griffin of Braybrooke, in Northampton- 
 sh re, and her descendant, John Griffin Whitwell, inherited 
 her share of the Saffron Walden estates, and for his lifetime 
 the Barony of Walden. He, having no issue, obtained during
 
 TJic Nevilles. 189 
 
 his lifetime a new patent of peerage as Lord Braybrooke, 
 with remainder to his relative, Richard Aldworth Neville, of 
 Billingberc, in Berkshire, who, after his death, became the 
 second Lord Braybrooke. 
 
 These Nevilles are an offshoot of the Abergavenny Nevilles. 
 I have been unable to discover how they obtained Billingbere, 
 in Berks, which is still held by Lord Braybrooke. The first 
 who is spoken of as possessed of it was Sir Henry Neville, 
 who is several times mentioned by Burnet as a courtier in the 
 latter part of the reign of Henry VUL, and, according to a 
 MS. written by the father of Sir Thomas Overbury, he was 
 a bastard son of that monarch. He married the daughter 
 and heiress of Sir John Gresham, by whom he had a son, Sir 
 Henry Neville, who narrowly escaped becoming a prominent 
 statesman. That Sir Henry was employed by Elizabeth as 
 Ambassador to France, but, being implicated in the con- 
 spiracy of Essex, he was fined ^5,000, the penalty being 
 rigorously exacted. Li the following reign he filled some 
 subordinate posts, and his further progress was retarded by 
 the hostility of the favourite Carr. 
 
 The Richard Aldworth Neville before spoken of was the 
 son of a ]Mr. Aldworth, by a Neville heiress, and assumed the 
 maternal name. Tt is worth notice that the Lords Braybrooke 
 are Hereditary Visitors of Magdalene College, Cambridge, 
 and that younger sons of the second and third lord both 
 became iiiasters of the College. The first of these, the Rev. 
 George Neville, was also Dean of Windsor and Chaplain in 
 Ordinary to the Queen. Of his sons, one became Preben- 
 dary of Wells and Vicar of Butleigh, another Vicar of 
 Wyrardisbury. The other, the Hon. and Rev. Latimer 
 Neville, J\L'ister of INIagdalene College, is also Vicar of 
 Haydon (^681 and a house), a family living, and a Bishop's 
 Chaplain. The third Lord Braybrooke is best knovrn as the 
 editor of "The Diary of Samuel Pepys."
 
 XCIIl. 
 
 jHE great House of Butler has for centuries played 
 an important part in Irish history. At the present 
 time there are no less than five Irish Peers who 
 
 bear the name, four of whom are descended from 
 
 one common Norman ancestor. These are the ^Marquis of 
 Ormonde, the Earl of Carrick, Viscount IMountgarret, and 
 Baron Dunboyne. The INIarquis of Ormonde owns 31,873 
 acres in Kilkenny and Tipperary, with a rent-roll of/" 17,457 ; 
 Viscount IMountgarret 14,823 acres, nearly all in Kilkenn)', 
 with a rent-roll of /"gjOgo. The landed possessions of the 
 other two appear to be but small. 
 
 The first of the family in Ireland was Theobald Walter, son 
 of one of the followers of William the Conqueror, who accom- 
 panied Henry II. in his expedition to Ireland, and, after the 
 partial conquest made by that monarch, became possessed of 
 the Baronies of Upper and Lower Ormond and other terri- 
 tories. Henry II. also conferred upon him the office of Chief 
 Butler of Ireland, on account of which the surname Butler 
 was assumed by his son. The son married the heiress of 
 another Norman Baron, John de Marisco, who brought him 
 considerable additions to his estates. The next heir followed 
 his father's example by marrying a De Burg heiress. From a 
 younger son of the next heir Lord Dunboyne is descended. 
 This heir, Theobald Butler, obtained from Edward I. a grant 
 of the prizage of wines in Ireland towards the close of the 
 thirteenth century. This grant was more or less in force down 
 to 1 810, or more than 500 years. How much the Butlers 
 obtained from it during that period it is, of course, impossible 
 to say; but in 1 810 it was repurchased by the Crown for the 
 sum of/"2i6,ooo. This is certainly one of the most remark- 
 able instances of the power of the dead hand on record in our 
 history, especially as the head of the house was attainted, and 
 his lands and dignities forfeited for treason, in 1715. But 
 towards the close of last century it was decided by the House
 
 TJic Butlers. I Q I 
 
 of Lords that no act of the English Legislature could affect 
 Irish dignities, and this ancient grant of the " prizage " of 
 wines was still held to stand. I suppose we must be thankful 
 that, with such enormous powers of taxing posterity to all 
 time, the kings of former centuries were considerate enough 
 not to dispose of the whole of the fruits of our industry. 
 
 The next heir but one of the Butlers obtained the' title of 
 Earl of Carrick. The second Earl of Carrick, who received 
 during his lifetime valuable grants from the Crown, was 
 created Earl of Ormonde. The third Earl of Ormonde pur- 
 chased of the Despencers the ancient castle of Kilkenny, 
 which has since been the chief seat of the family. The fourth 
 Earl, who, like several of the others, held the office of Lord 
 Justice of Ireland, was one of the first Irish nobles to enrich 
 himself from the Church, for he obtained a grant of lands of 
 the See of Cashel for ten years after the death of the Arch- 
 bishop. The next Earl, who was Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland 
 and Lord High Treasurer of England, was beheaded by the 
 victorious Yorkists after the Battle of Towton. His brother 
 was attainted, but Edward IV. regranted him the title and 
 estates. This nobleman had two daughters, one of whom 
 was the mother of Queen Anne Boleyn. At his death with- 
 out male issue, the next heir was compelled to forego the 
 title in favour of Anne Boleyn's father, and, as a compensa- 
 tion, was created Earl of Ossory, but after his death, the 
 rightful heir again resumed it. At the death of the tenth 
 Earl the title passed to a grandson of the ninth, but Lord 
 Dingwall, who had married the tenth Earl's daughter, con- 
 trived to secure the estates. The injustice was happily 
 rectified by the marriage of Lord Dingwall's heiress with the 
 twelfth Earl. 
 
 This nobleman, an ardent Royalist, was created Marquis of 
 Ormonde soon after the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642, 
 and at the Restoration he was elevated to a Dukedom. 
 Macaulay speaks of him as the most illustrious of all the 
 Cavaliers, who, though an ardent supporter of IMonarchy, 
 was no friend to Popery and arbitrary power. He was sup- 
 posed to be one of the richest subjects in the kingdom, his 
 income being /^22,ooo a-year, at a time when the average 
 income of noblemen was but /'3, 000. The eldest son of the 
 Duke, " the gallant Ossory," died in his father's lifetime, and 
 the grandson therefore succeeded to the Dukedom. This
 
 192 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 young' nobleman, who had fought at Sedgmoor, like Marl- 
 borough and others in high command, deserted James for 
 William. He fought at the battle of the Boyne, and in the 
 reign of Anne commanded the force which sank the Spanish 
 galleons in Vigo Bay. In the latter part of the reign of 
 Queen Anne it was proposed to bestow upon the Duke all 
 the forfeited estates in Tipperary, but, this being objected to, 
 another course was adopted. He happened to owe very 
 large sums of money to persons whose estates had been for- 
 feited, and the Crown had therefore become his creditor. The 
 House of Commons actually made him a present of the whole 
 of the debt, a proceeding which JMacaulay rightly denounces 
 as indefensible. In 171 5 there were not a few nobles tainted 
 with Jacobitism besides those actually engaged in the Rebel- 
 lion. Chief among them were Oxford, Bolingbroke, and 
 Ormonde. The impeachment of the latter was carried with 
 some difficulty ; but as, instead of standing his ground, he 
 fled to France, there was less difficulty in following it up with 
 an Act of Attainder. Soon after Ormonde made an unsuc- 
 cessful attempt at rebellion by landing on the coast of Devon. 
 He escaped once more, but, all his honours and estates being 
 forfeited, he not only had to eat the exile's bitter bread, but 
 to subsist on a pension from Spain, against whom he had 
 formerly successfully fought. He left no heir ; neither did 
 his brother, the Earl of Arran. In 1791 Mr. John Butler, 
 descendant from the eleventh Earl of Ormonde, was declared 
 to be heir to the titles, except the Dukedom and IMarquisate, 
 on the grounds before mentioned. This nobleman married 
 the heiress of the last Earl of Wandesford, who appears to 
 have had some property in Kilkenny. His son obtained the 
 title of ]\Iarquis, as did also his brother, who succeeded him. 
 There is another Butler in the Peerage of Ireland beside 
 the four above-mentioned, viz., Butler-Danvers, Earl of 
 Lanesborough, who owns in 
 
 Cavan . , . . , 7^526 acres. 
 
 Fermanagh . . . . 6, 119 ,, 
 
 Leicester ..... 1,854 >> 
 
 Total 15,499 
 "With a rentroll of _^i5,2g7. 
 
 He is descended from the younger son of a Huntingdonshire 
 squire, who settled in Ulster in the reign of James I. Sir
 
 The Butlers. 193 
 
 Stephen Butler was one of the "undertakers" ^vho received 
 from James a grant of a few thousand acres, to which he 
 afterwards added by purchases. The chief seat of the family 
 for a time was at Newtown Butler, afterwards at Belturbet, 
 which town, returning two members to the Irish Parliament, 
 gave to the Butlers a cheap, safe and regular seat. By the 
 way, they appear to have sold their Parliamentary influence, 
 shortly before the Act of Union, to the Earl of Belmore, who 
 obtained /" 15,000 for his bargain. The Parliamentary influ- 
 ence of the Butlers, of course, obtained for them a good share 
 of Irish offices ; and the grandson of Sir Stephen Butler, in 
 particular, held the Clerkship of the Pells and of the Court 
 of Exchequer. In 171 5 he was created Baron Newtown- 
 Butler, and in 1728 his son was advanced a step in the Peer- 
 age, with the title of Viscount Lanesborough. The second 
 Viscount was elevated to an Earldom. The second son of 
 the second Earl, whose descendant now inherits the Lanes- 
 borough title and estates, married the daughter and heiress 
 of Sir John Danvers, a Leicestershire baronet. The Danvers 
 family had played an active part in politics. By successive 
 marriages, Swithland, in Leicestershire, an estate valuable for 
 its slate-quarries (Swith is an old Northern word for slate), had 
 passed from its Norman possessors into the hands of the 
 Danvers family. One of this house, the Earl of Danby, was 
 an active Cavalier ; another, Sir John Danvers, an equally 
 active Parliamentarian. Fortunately for himself, Danvers the 
 Regicide died before the Restoration ; but, as it stands re- 
 corded on his tomb, his infant son was despoiled of estates in 
 Oxfordshire and elsewhere amounting to ^10,000 a year, and 
 only Swithland was left to him. Swithland being bequeathed 
 by the last Baronet to his daughter's husband. The Earls of 
 Lanesborough have since borne the name of Butler-Danvers. 
 
 13
 
 XCIV. 
 
 sire (!i;imij.rlrcnrj. 
 
 (BREAD ALBANE AND CAWDOR BRANCHES.) 
 
 N estate a hundred miles long cannot be passed 
 ])}' unnoticed. A man able to walk along a tract 
 of his own land as lengthy as the distance between 
 ^ London and Warwick must have enormous power 
 — power of depopulation and expatriation over a large number 
 of people. And in the case before us that power has been 
 exercised. 
 
 Although the Duke of Argyll is the head of the Campbells, 
 the Earl of Breadalbane has an equal income, and more than 
 double the number of acres. In Argyll alone he owns more 
 land than the Duke, no less than 179,225 acres, and in Perth 
 193,504 acres — total, 372,729, with a rental of/"49,g3i. The 
 trustees of the late Marquis of Breadalbane also hold 65,629 
 acres in these two counties, rental /^8,662. 
 
 These Campbells are descended from Colin, younger son 
 of Sir Duncan Campbell of Lochow, upon whom his father 
 settled the estate of Glenorchy, in Argyll. How Glenorchy 
 came to the Campbells I cannot say with certainty. Accord- 
 ing to one account it was acquired by a marriage, according 
 to another it was anciently held by the Chief of the McGregors, 
 and was acquired by the Campbells either through confisca- 
 tion or conquest. Somewhat later the King granted to Colin 
 the Barony of Lawers. His second wife was a kinswoman, 
 daughter and co-heir of Lord Lome, through whom he 
 acquired a third part of that lordship, which, as my readers 
 will remember, had been legitimately obtained by a previous 
 marriage. One of his descendants, who was created a baronet 
 by James VL, also was made by that monarch hereditary 
 keeper of the forests of IMamlorn, Bendaskerlie, (tc. The 
 third baronet. Laird of Glcnfalloch, married the daughter of 
 Sir Lachlan i\rackintosh, captain of the Clan Chattan. The
 
 TJie Campbells. 195 
 
 fifth baronet, being chief creditor of the Earl of Caithness, 
 obtained a disposition of his whole titles and estates, and at 
 his death was created Earl of Caithness ; but, it having been 
 decided that the dignity in question belonged to the rightful 
 heir, he obtained, in 1681, the title of Earl of Breadalbane. 
 At the death of the third Earl in 1782 the title and estates 
 passed to a distant kinsman, who was subsequently created 
 Marquis of Breadalbane. At the death of his son the JMar- 
 quisate expired, and the Earldom and estates passed to 
 another distant kinsman. 
 
 Let us look at the manner in which the Campbells of 
 Breadalbane have treated their hundred-mile-long estate. In 
 the Statistical Account of Scotland I find allusions to the de- 
 population of the lands to convert them into sheep farms, but, 
 of course, in cautious and guarded terms. About five-and- 
 twenty years ago, however, a Perthshire laird with whom I 
 am personally acquainted, wrote a book on "The Barriers to 
 the National Prosperity of Scotland," in which passing 
 reference was made to the Breadalbane evictions. The second 
 Marquis of Breadalbane wrote a lame answer in a local paper, 
 which happily provoked from his antagonist a more detailed 
 statement, in regard to which no answer at all appeared. The 
 principal facts therein brought out I now repeat. As late as 1793 
 the Breadalbane estates furnished 1,600 soldiers; sixty years 
 after they could not have produced more than 150. At a 
 time when the highest military authorities express their regret 
 as to the number of boys we have to send into the field, we 
 may well lament the loss of those stalwart Highlanders, whose 
 forefathers so freely shed their blood in fighting the battles 
 of England. But Mr. Alister goes into detail. He states 
 that in Glenqueich, where the same families had been tenants 
 for 400 years, almost all were swept away, the 60 families 
 having been reduced to four or five ; that the 40 or 50 families 
 inhabiting the braes of Taymouth and Tullochyoule were all 
 expatriated; that in Glenetive, where were formerly 16 
 tenants, not one was left ; that in the island of Ling 25 
 families had given place to one ; that the population of Glen- 
 orchy had been reduced by one half; that in three other 
 places, which formerly were tenanted by 50 families in all, 
 only one family was left ; and that several other " toons" had 
 been cleared of from 10 to 14 families each. In twenty years 
 from 1834 no less than 500 families had been cleared off the
 
 196 Our Old A^obility. 
 
 soil. He further states that the land in front of Kenmore, 
 the land around Drummond Hill, and Black Mount had all 
 been converted into deer forests. The latter alone contained 
 nearly 100,000 acres of fine pasture-land capable of grazing 
 70,000 sheep, instead of the 3,000 which were there on a por- 
 tion of it. Well might Sir Walter Scott write : " In too many 
 cases the Highlands have been drained, not of their super- 
 fluity of population, but of the whole mass of the inhabi- 
 tants, dispossessed by an unrelenting avarice, which will be 
 one day found to have been as short-sighted as it is unjust 
 and selfish." Of the selfishness of the policy which drove 
 men out to make room for sheep and deer there can be no 
 question ; of its injustice I have already spoken when dealing 
 with the Leveson-Gowers. The ancestors of these poor 
 people had been living industrious lives in these glens for 
 ages ; it was only by what INIr. Hill Burton calls " iniquitous 
 legal jugglery," that the lords obtained the right to dispossess 
 them. Their expatriation was spoliation of the worst kind. 
 Their descendants in the American Glenorchy, which was 
 named after the old home, might well say with Nicol, 
 
 " We sow the corn and hold the plough. 
 
 We all work for our living ; 
 We gather nought but what we've sown. 
 
 All else we reckon thieving." 
 
 The lords of Breadalbane held a different opinion. By the 
 way, I presume that the rentals furnished for the Landowners' 
 Return do not include the rent of deer forests, but it would 
 be desirable tliat the matter should be made clear by those 
 who are able to give definite information. 
 
 The Earl of Cawdor is descended from a cadet of the great 
 house of Campbell. The property he possesses has been 
 acquired by successive fortunate marriages. He owns in 
 
 Nairn . . . . . 46,176 acies. 
 
 Carmarthen .... 33j782 ,, 
 
 Pembroke .... I7>935 >> 
 
 Inverness .... 3,943 ,- 
 
 Cardigan . . . . . 21 ,, 
 
 Total 101,857 
 ;\Vith a rentroU of _;^44,644. 
 
 A younger son of the Earl of Argyll married the daughter 
 and heiress of Sir John Calder of Caldcr, or Cawdor, in
 
 TJie Campbells. 197 
 
 Nairnshire. At Cawdor Castle they used to show the very 
 room in which King Duncan was murdered. Considering 
 that Duncan was not murdered at all, and that the Castle was 
 not built till some hundreds of years after his death, this must 
 have been a valuable relic of antiquity. They even showed 
 the bed on which the King slept, but unfortunately that was 
 burned. Later, one of these Campbells married the sister 
 and heiress of Sir Gilbert Lort, of Stackpole Court, Pem- 
 brokeshire. It is uncertain how the Lorts acquired the estate. 
 The eldest son of this marriage contracted an alliance with 
 another Welsh heiress. Mar}'- Pryse. His grandson was created 
 Baron Cawdor, and the second Baron obtained an Earldom. 
 
 The Earl of Cawdor is one of those Welsh Torv land- 
 owners who, in virtue of the acres they possess, have hitherto 
 managed to secure, in several of the Welsh Counties, Mem- 
 bers who vote in direct opposition to the principles of the 
 majority of the voters. His eldest son is one of the two 
 Tory J\Iembers for Carmarthenshire, and Pembrokeshire also 
 returns a Tory Member. The county voters of these two 
 counties are just as Liberal as the borough voters. The onlv 
 diiference is that the screw cannot be used in the boroughs 
 as in the counties. If voting was absolutely free, and no 
 canvassing was allowed, the landlords know full well that in 
 all Wales no Tory candidate would have a chance. Under 
 such circumstances, I, for one, should have no more scruple 
 in promising to vote one way and voting another, than in 
 breaking a promise not to prosecute a burglar when it was 
 made with a pistol at my head. 
 
 It is worthy of notice that there are no less than twenty- 
 eight other Campbells, each owning 5,000 acres and upwards, 
 for the most part in Scotland — the total amount being 538,861 
 acres. The Campbells, therefore, hold between them no less 
 than 1,253,989 acres. At the time of the passing of the first 
 Reform Bill, sixteen Campbell placemen and pensioners 
 divided ^24,000 between them annually.
 
 xcv. 
 
 HE Duke of Somerset stands next in order of 
 precedence to the Duke of Norfolk, his title 
 dating as far back as 1547, but he possesses 
 
 but a fragment of the great domains acquired 
 
 by the first holder of the title, the Protector Somerset. 
 In modern times the family have reverted to the ancient 
 manner of spelling their name, derived either from St. IMaur 
 in France, or from a place once called St. IMaur, in Mon- 
 mouthshire. However, as history knows them as Seymours, 
 it will be more convenient to use the latter name only. 
 
 As I have previously stated when sketching the history of 
 the Hereford branch of the house, the Seymours were a Nor- 
 man family of no great note, who were anciently settled at 
 Undy or Woundy, in Monmouth. By two advantageous 
 marriages with an heiress of the great house of Beauchamp 
 .and with an heiress of the Sturmys of Wiltshire, their fortunes 
 were greatly improved. As a result of the latter marriage 
 Wiltshire became their home. In the reign of Henry VIII., 
 John Seymour, having suppressed a Cornish insurrection^ and 
 having served in the French wars, was knighted by the King, 
 who afterwards married his daughter Jane, mother of Edward 
 VI. One of his younger sons, afterwards Lord Seymour of 
 Sudeley, married Henry's widow. Queen Katharine Parr. Sir 
 John's eldest son was created Viscount Beauchamp and Earl 
 of Hertford by Henry. From the same Monarch he also 
 received large grants of land. At Henry's death he, having 
 been appointed one of the King's executors, seized the reins 
 of Government, and was appointed — we might almost say 
 appointed himself— Lord Treasurer of England. He next 
 created himself Duke of Somerset and Protector and Gover- 
 nor of the young King, with a salary of 9,000 marks per
 
 The St. Maiirs. 199 
 
 annum. A little later Edward VI. was made to settle upon 
 him lands of the value of ^500 a-year. He obtained numerous 
 grants beside, amongst others the episcopal palace at Wells, 
 and certain lands belonging to that See, and Covent Garden, 
 which was afterwards granted to the Russells. Somerset 
 House still marks the spot where he commenced building a 
 palace for himself, with practices which showed contempt alike 
 for the rights of the Church or of private property, or even for 
 the graves of the dead. Though rapacious himself, his fall 
 was mainly occasioned by his efforts to save the common 
 people from the rapacity of the new nobility. The extent of 
 his possessions may be to some extent gathered from the fact 
 that, though at his fall he was fined /"2,ooo a-year of land, 
 yet he had subsequently licence granted to him to retain two 
 hundred persons in his service, beside household servants. 
 Much of his property was confiscated, but a portion was 
 restored, and, in regard to a part of the rest, an exchange 
 with the Crown was efl:ected by which he acquired a consider- 
 able estate at Glastonbury, in Somerset. On attempting to 
 regain his lost power he was arrested, condemned, and be- 
 headed, much to the grief of the common people, whose 
 gratitude he had fairly earned. 
 
 The Protector Somerset had obtained his patent of peerage, 
 with remainder to the children of the second marriage, he 
 having repudiated his first wife on account of her alleged 
 incest with her own father, but his honours became forfeited 
 at his execution. The eldest son of his second marriage was, 
 however, created Earl of Hertford by Queen Elizabeth. This 
 unfortunate nobleman, having secretly married the sister of 
 Lady Jane Grey (a lady of Royal blood), was immured for 
 nine years in the Tower, and fined /^i 5,000. His grandson 
 was almost equally unfortunate in matrimony, for, having 
 privately married Lady Arabella Stuart, he had to fly the 
 kingdom to avoid the wrath of James L At the outbreak of 
 the Civil War, after some indecision, he took the Royalist side, 
 and at the Restoration was rewarded by obtaining the reversal 
 of the attainder of the first Duke in his favour. He only 
 enjoyed the Dukedom but a few months, and left two grand- 
 sons, each of whom in turn succeeded him, but died without 
 issue. He left also a granddaughter, by whose marriage with 
 the Earl of Ailesbury the great estates of Savernake Forest 
 and Tottenham Park were carried out of the family.
 
 200 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 The title and remaining estates then devolved upon a 
 cousin of the last Duke, who, having been assassinated in 
 Italy, was succeeded by his brother, " the proud Duke of 
 Somerset, and founder of the celebrated Kit Cat Club, who 
 married the heiress of the Percies. Whatever his faults, it 
 must be admitted that he twice rendered distinguished ser- 
 vices to the nation. At the Revolution of 1688, and at the 
 Accession of the House of Hanover, his great influence was 
 thrown into the scale of Constitutional Government. When 
 Queen Anne died, his attendance at the Privy Council, un- 
 summoned, at the critical moment, contributed largely to the 
 discomfiture of the Jacobite Tories, who desired to restore 
 the Stuarts. His son, who succeeded him, left a daughter, 
 who carried the vast estates of the Percies to the Smithsons 
 on her marriage ; but, the male line of the Protector Somer- 
 set's second marriage having failed, the ducal title was 
 claimed by the eldest male descendant of the first marriage. 
 
 This branch of the family was seated at Berry Pomcroy, in 
 Devonshire, an estate which the Protector Somerset had 
 acquired by purchase in the early days of his prosperity, and 
 had settled upon one of his sons by his first wife. After the 
 Protector's attainder, Edward Seymour had also obtained 
 from the Crown certain of his i'ather's forfeited lands in 
 Somersetshire. The Seymours of Berry Pomeroy, during the 
 Civil War, were staunch Roj^alists, and suffered considerably 
 in the cause, their mansion at that place having been 
 destroyed. The Sir Edward Seymour of the Restoration was 
 a man who possessed the ancestral pride which characterised 
 the Seymours. When he was first presented to William HI., 
 that Monarch happened to remark that he believed Sir Edward 
 was of the Duke of Somerset's family, whereupon the proud 
 commoner corrected the King by informing him that the 
 Duke was of his (Sir Edward's) family. He was for a time 
 Speaker of the House of Commons, and, proud as he was, yet 
 did not scruple to take bribes from the East India Company 
 under the guise of a contract for saltpetre. His character is 
 summed up by Macaulay in one short sentence — " He was 
 licentious, profane, corrupt, too proud to behave with common 
 politeness, yet not too proud to pocket illicit gain." It was 
 the grandson of this Sir Edward who succeeded to the Duke- 
 dom, and who also obtained a lucrative sinecure. The sub- 
 sequent history of the Dukes of Somerset is uneventful.
 
 The St. Maurs. 201 
 
 The present D 
 
 Like owns in 
 
 Devon 
 
 8,138 acres 
 
 Somerset . 
 
 6,553 ,. 
 
 Wilts 
 
 5,824 ,, 
 
 Lincoln 
 
 2,685 „ 
 
 Bucks 
 
 1,640 „ 
 
 Elsewhere 
 
 367 ,. 
 
 
 Total 25,207 „ 
 
 
 With a rentroU of ;^37,58o. 
 
 The derivation of the Devonshire and Somersetshire property 
 has been ah-eady sufficiently indicated. As to Wiltshire, the 
 INIanor of ^Maiden Bradley, where the Dukes of Somerset have 
 long had a seat, was formerly monastic property, and was 
 granted by Henry VIII. to the first Duke. The ninth Duke, 
 who died in 1792, and who held the title and estates for 
 thirty-five years, was a wretched miser, whose parsimony 
 seems to have greatly conduced to the prosperity of his house, 
 for between 1783 and 1803 I find that the Wiltshire estates 
 were greatly enlarged by the purchase of lands at Deptford 
 Tithing, Bathampton, Knook, Hill Deverill, and Fisherton- 
 de-la-]\Iere, all in the same county. 
 
 Bulstrode-park, near Gerrard's Cross, in Bucks, consisting 
 of 800 acres, with lands adjoining, was purchased of the Bul- 
 strodes by that eminent Tory Judge, Jeff'reys, who rebuilt, or 
 greatly enlarged, the mansion. It was subsequently sold by 
 the son-in-law of Jeffreys to the Duke of Portland, from whom 
 it was purchased by one of the Dukes of Somerset. 
 
 The present Duke of Somerset, who was formerly First 
 Lord of the Admiralty in a Liberal Administration, and who 
 is the author of a theological work with freethought ten- 
 dencies, has survived both his sons. The younger died in 
 India from the effects of an encounter with a tiger ; the elder, 
 who was a Volunteer under Garibaldi, died in 1869.
 
 xcvi. • 
 
 jIII^ Dc L'Isle and Dudley Peerage only dates 
 from 1835, but its holder has a right to rank 
 among " Our Old Nobility," as being the re- 
 presentative of one of the most distinguished 
 and popular families in England. Its patronymic has become 
 a common Christian name. One of its members has become 
 renowned as the Bayard of England ; another has had his 
 memory enshrined in the celebrated toast of the Whig Party, 
 and in one of the most stirring of Campbell's shorter poems. 
 Lord De L'Isle and Dudley not only bears the honoured 
 name of Sidney, but is the owner of the ancestral mansion, 
 around which are clustered so many names dear to poetry 
 and history. 
 
 The County of Kent can boast of " many an ancient hall," 
 but of none equal in interest to Penshurst. Knole, Leeds 
 Castle, Ightham IMoat, must all yield the palm to the mansion 
 of the Sidneys. Bedford and Gloucester; the ill-starred 
 Stafford-Buckinghams ; the Sidney of Flodden ; the Sidney 
 who was Elizabeth's Lord Deputy in Ireland; Sir Philip 
 and his friend Edmund Spenser; "Sidney's sister, 
 Pembroke's mother," and the Countess of Sussex who 
 founded Sidney- Sussex College, Cambridge ; Waller and 
 his Sacharissa ; and last, not least, that stout Repub- 
 lican, Colonel Algernon Sidney, are all more or less 
 associated with the stately house at Penshurst. The mansion 
 on certain days is open to the inspection of the public ; were 
 it not so, the exterior and the village itself would be well 
 worth a visit. I was particularly struck with the air of com- 
 fort which seemed to pervade the place, and the good taste 
 with which the more modern houses had been erected, in 
 keeping with the stately mansion hard by. Though knowing 
 many of the villages of England, and of Kent in particular, 
 I should find it hard to name one whose exterior is so satis- 
 factory to a stranger's eye as Penshurst. Whether it is, like
 
 TJic Sidneys. 203 
 
 some others I know, a show village, which has to be con- 
 sidered in contrast with the remainder of the estate, I know 
 not. I simply speak of it as I saw it. 
 
 The Manor of Penshurst was purchased by the Duke of 
 Bedford, one of the younger sons of Henry IV. This Duke, 
 and the Duke of Gloucester, his brother, who inherited it, 
 both died without issue, and it passed to Henry VI., as next 
 heir. By this monarch it was granted to Stafford, Duke of 
 Buckingham, whose grandson was beheaded by Richard III. 
 His son succeeded to the estates, but became one of the 
 earliest victims of Henry VIII. , when Penshurst reverted to 
 the Crown. Edward VI. bestowed it on Sir Ralph Vane ; 
 and, after his execution, re-granted it to Sir William Sidney. 
 
 The Sidneys are a family of Angevin extraction, whose 
 ancestors came over with Henry II. Sir William, who had 
 been Steward of the Household of Henry VIII., and who 
 afterwards was one of the English commanders at Flodden, 
 had a grant from Edward, as an inscription on the house 
 itself records, of " Pencester, with the manors, lands, and 
 appurtenances thereto belonging." His son and heir, Sir 
 Henry Sidney, who obtained from Elizabeth a grant of the 
 advowson of Penshurst, was Lord Deputy of Ireland, and 
 played a prominent part in the Irish Wars of her long and 
 eventful reign. Sir Philip, the son of Sir Henry, who fell on 
 the field of Zutphen in the lifetime of his father, was the 
 friend and patron of Spenser ; and there is a tradition that the 
 author of " The Faerie Queen" sojourned for a time at Pen- 
 shurst, and there wrote his early poem, " The Shepherd's 
 Calendar." At Sir Henry's death, his eldest surviving son 
 succeeded him, and was successively created Baron Sidney, 
 Viscount De LTsle, and Earl of Leicester, by James I. The 
 Earldom of Leicester had been held by several great fami- 
 lies — the Bellamonts, De Montforts, the Dudleys. Elizabeth's 
 Earl of Leicester was the last of the Dudleys who held it ; 
 but the Avife of Sir Henry Sidney was the eldest daughter of 
 Dudley, Duke of Northumberland. The reader will see at 
 once that, in the modern Peerage, an old title and an old 
 family alliance have been kept in view. 
 
 The second Earl of Leicester of the new line was father, 
 beside his successor, of " little Sid for simile renowned," of 
 the patriot Algernon Sidney, and of Dorothy, afterwards 
 Countess of Sunderland (the Sacharissa of Waller's poems).
 
 204 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 In earlier days Ben Jonson, alluding to Sir Philip, had sung 
 
 of 
 
 " That taller tree which of a nut was set 
 At his great birth, when all the ^Muses met." 
 
 A tree, by the way, which no longer exists. But we may 
 still wander in " the sacred shade" of "the lofty beeches " 
 which Waller immortalised in verse when he vainly paid his 
 court to the proud beauties whom he called Sacharissa and 
 Amoret. 
 
 The seventh Earl died apparently without legitimate issue, 
 and left his estates to a natural daughter. The result was 
 prolonged litigation, which was terminated by a compromise. 
 The daughter in question obtained an allowance, and the 
 estates were divided between the daughters and co-heiresses 
 of the third son of the fourth Earl. The park at Penshurst 
 was then curtailed to less than half its former dimensions. 
 
 The daughter of one of these ladies was the second wife of 
 Sir Bysshe Shelley, Bart., and she became the owner of Pens- 
 hurst. Another attempt was made to wrest the estates from 
 the Shelley-Sidneys. The wife of the seventh Earl of 
 Leicester, from whom he was never divorced, although they 
 had long been separated, appears to have had a son, who 
 sought to gain Penshurst by an action at law, but failed. 
 
 The Shelleys are an ancient Kentish family, whose name 
 is derived frem a manor in that count}-. They formerly held 
 Hall Place, in Kent, now the seat of Mr. Samuel IMorley, 
 M.P. John Shelley, who married a Sussex heiress, and who 
 died in 1526, had three sons, from the eldest of whom was 
 descended Sir John Shelley, Bart., who a few years ago was 
 one of the Members for Westminster. From the second is 
 descended Sir Percy Shelley of Castle Goring, Sussex, and 
 Lord De LTsle and Dudley. As before stated, a Sidney 
 heiress was the second wife of Sir Bysshe Shelley. By his 
 first wife Sir Bysshe had a son, Percy Bysshe Shelley, the 
 poet, whose son by his [wife JMary Wollstoncroft Godwin, is 
 the present holder of the baronetage. By his second wife Sir 
 Bysshe had a son. Sir John Shelley Sidney, who inherited 
 the Sidney estates, and whose son was created Lord De 
 LTsle and Dudley in 1835. It looks as though the peerage 
 was due to his matrimonial connections, for in 1825 he married 
 Lady Sophia Fitzclarence, and his peerage was obtained when 
 his father-in-law was King. Be this as it may, the sternest
 
 The Sidneys. 205 
 
 Republican will hardly complain that the illustrious house of 
 Sidney is still represented in the Peerage of England. As the 
 present Lord is the son of the Fitzclarence marriage, he can 
 boast not merely that he has Royal blood in his veins, but 
 that he had a King of England for grandfather. 
 Lord De L'Isle and Dudley owns in 
 
 Kent ..... 4,356 acres. 
 
 Yorkshire ..... 4,896 „ 
 
 Total 9,252 „ 
 
 The Yorkshire estates appear to have been derived by his 
 marriage with the only child of the late Sir William Foulis, 
 Baronet, of Ingleby Manor, in Cleveland. The baronetcy 
 was obtained by Sir David Foulis, one of the Scotch favourites 
 of James L, who became in succession Cofferer to Prince 
 Henry and Prince Charles, and held divers other appoint- 
 ments. His emoluments as a courtier enabled him to pur- 
 chase Ligleby, an ancient baronial seat. In 1633 he became 
 a victim to the tyranny of Strafford, and for speaking plainly 
 concerning the illegal exactions of that Minister he was 
 haled before the Court of Star Chamber, was deprived of all 
 his offices, committed to the Fleet, and fined /"s,ooo to the 
 King and ^3,000 to Strafford. To defray these ruinous fines 
 he was compelled to sell a portion of his estate. The son of 
 Sir David, at the same time, w'as also committed to the Fleet, 
 and fined /^5oo. The subsequent history of the Foulis family 
 has been uneventful. 
 
 The connection of the Sidneys with English history, that is 
 from the day wdien Sir William fought at Plodden to the day 
 when Algernon died upon the scaftbld, onlv occupies a space 
 of about 170 years ; since that time the ancient energy seems 
 to have died out. We might spare, perhaps, the memory of 
 " Flodden's fatal hill," and of the fierce rigour of Lord Deputy 
 Sidney's government of Ireland ; but we could ill spare from 
 our national annals the pathetic story of the field of Zutphen, 
 and the stoical fortitude with which Algernon met a not less 
 glorious death. At the same time, we cannot forget that it 
 was as courtiers the Sidneys gained their possessions. On 
 the gateway at Penshurst, in the records of the Foulis family, 
 in the date of the modern peerage, the same fact is recorded. 
 
 It remains only to be added that Lord Lisle, the defendant 
 in the Brompton County Court case, who is said to have set
 
 2o6 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 up his privileges as a Peer when sued for a paltry coal mer- 
 chant's bill, is not in any way related to the Sidneys. He is 
 an Irish peer, whose family name is Lysaght, and whose 
 ancestors distinguished themselves in the Irish wars of 1641 
 and 1699. This nobleman is, or rather was, owner of 10,376 
 acres in the counties of Cork and Tipperar)% with a rent-roll 
 of /^6, 558. A "Friend of the Family" says that he is an 
 upright and honourable man, though the victim of most 
 adverse circumstances, and that, through the extravagance of 
 his predecessors and the unavoidable expenses of Chancery, 
 he finds himself, as an old man, penniless, having even sold 
 his life interest in all his property for the benefit of his 
 creditors. I am sorry for his misfortunes, but as he has several 
 grown-up sons he ought not to be left destitute. As for the 
 coal bill, a penny subscription among all the Peers would 
 suffice.
 
 XCVIL 
 
 jo family has occupied a more prominent place in 
 the history of Ireland than the Geraldines. Until 
 it pleased Disraeli to reward the faithful support 
 
 of the Abercorn Hamiltons with a dukedom, the 
 
 Duke of Leinster was Ireland's only Duke. One of his 
 ancestors was created Baron of OfFaley in 1205, and another 
 Earl of Kildare in 1316. The dukedom dates from 1766. 
 Its present holder is the twenty-seventh Baron and twenty- 
 second Earl. It so happens, too, that by marriage a cadet of 
 the house of Fitzgerald acquired the ancient English barony 
 of De Ros — the baronies of De Ros and Le Despencer, the 
 two of the oldest English peerages, dating from 1264. The 
 Duke owns in — 
 
 Kildare ..... 70,462 acres. 
 
 Meath . . . . . 1,119 ,, 
 
 Total 71,581 „ 
 With a rentroll of ;^48,84i. 
 
 His family motto is " Crom a boo" — Crom (the ancient seat 
 of the house) to victor}-. His crest, singularly enough, is a 
 monkey, said to be derived from an old tradition that an 
 heir of the house, when an infant, was carried to the top of 
 the castle and brought safely down by a baboon. 
 
 The Fitzgeralds profess to be descended from a Florentine 
 family, one of whom settled in Normandy, and thence passed 
 over to England, where he became one of the favourites of 
 Edward the Confessor. The Norman Conquest was rather 
 favourable to their fortunes than otherwise. Maurice, the 
 great grandson of the original settler in England, in the reign 
 of Henry II., went on an expedition to Ireland, in which he 
 was afterwards joined by Strongbow. The conquest then made 
 laid the foundation of the Geraldines as a great Irish house. 
 Maurice, brother of the ancestor of the Fitzmaurices, obtained 
 as his share of the plunder the Baronies of Oifaley and Wick-
 
 208 Our Old Ahbility. 
 
 low, and other estates, including IVIaynooth. The son of 
 IMauricc, who built the Castles of Armagh and Athlone, was 
 created Baron Ofifaley, and appointed Lord Justice of Ireland. 
 One might almost say that the history of this powerful family 
 is the history of Ireland for several centuries. Successively 
 they held the highest judicial and other offices, and down to 
 the reign of Elizabeth they did more to extend and consoli- 
 date the rule of English Kings in the sister island than any 
 other noble house. In the almost incessant rebellions that 
 occurred the Geraldines were constantly at tlie front when- 
 ever there was any fighting to be done. Parenthetically I 
 may here note that the son of the sixth Lord Oifaley had two 
 sons, the younger of whom was created Earl of Desmond. 
 Both these branches of the Geraldines from time to time 
 augmented their fortunes by matrimonial alliances, but the 
 Earls of Desmond for a time seem to have eclipsed the elder 
 branch. Like other of the Norman-Irish nobility, they seem 
 in process of time to have become thoroughly Irish, and were 
 followed with passionate loyalty by the people. In the reign 
 of Elizabeth the sixteenth Earl of Desmond was half dragged, 
 half goaded into rebellion. Being defeated, he became a 
 hunted fugitive, and Avas slain ; his head was sent to London, 
 and his vast estates, no miles in length, and comprising 
 nearly 600,000 acres, the greater part of four counties, were 
 confiscated. IMy business, however, is more particularly with 
 the Kildare branch of the Geraldines. 
 
 It is impossible to compress within a reasonable compass 
 an outline of their eventful history ; I can but glance at the 
 principal facts. The sixth Lord Oftaley had a deadly quarrel 
 with Lord de Vesci in 1291, who at that time held the 
 government of that part of Ireland which was subject to the 
 English King. The result was that both were summoned to 
 England, where the cause was heard by Edward I. Accord- 
 ing to the illogical fashion of those times, Off"aley challenged 
 his antagonist to single combat. De Vesci accepted the 
 challenge, but before the appointed day he absconded to 
 France, and the King thereupon conferred De Vesci's lord- 
 ships and manors of Kildare, Rathangan, &:c., upon Oftalc}-, 
 who, in the following reign, was advanced to the Earldom of 
 Kildare. For a lengthened period the Fitzgeralds appear to 
 have been almost continuously occupied in governing Ireland, 
 in waging war upon the chieftains beyond the Pale, and in
 
 The Fitzgeralds. 209 
 
 carrying on private conflicts with the Butlers and other great 
 houses. Their fortunes were further advanced by fresh grants 
 from the Crown, and by marriages with various Irish 
 heiresses. 
 
 Within a hundred years from the accession of Edward IV. 
 the Earls of Kildare had several very narrow escapes from 
 total ruin. In 1467 the Earl of Kildare was attainted at the 
 same time as the Earl of Desmond. Desmond was executed, 
 but Kildare was pardoned, and his estates restored. In the 
 reign of Henry VII. the Earl of Kildare, then Lord Deputy, 
 with his brother, who was Lord Chancellor, was deceived by 
 the impostor, Lambert Simnel, and assisted at his coronation 
 at Dublin. The Chancellor fell in the fight in which Simnel's 
 forces were routed, but Kildare was fortunate enough to have 
 his rebellion condoned by Henry VII. In the following reign 
 another Earl of Kildare was accused of disloyalty and incar- 
 cerated in the Tower of London by Henry VIII. His eldest 
 son, Lord Thomas, broke out into open revolt, and waged for 
 a time an unsuccessful war, in which his Castles of Maynooth 
 and Rathangan were besieged and taken. Ultimately he and 
 his uncles were compelled to surrender, and were afterwards 
 executed, the old Earl having in the meantime died in captivity. 
 By the act of attainder which followed, all the Kildare estates 
 were forfeited, but the next eldest son to Lord Thomas, hav- 
 ing introduced himself at the Court of Edward VI., was for- 
 tunate enough to obtain the restoration of the lordships • 
 and manors of Maynooth, Moylaugh, Rathangan, Portlester 
 (which was originally obtained by the marriage of the eighth 
 Earl with the heiress of Lord Portlester), Kilkea, &c. He 
 continued in favour with I\Iary, who not only restored to him 
 his father's earldom, and all such honours, castles, and 
 manors, which the Crown still retained of the confiscated 
 property, but also conferred upon him lands, chiefly ecclesias- 
 tical, in Down, Meath, Westmeath, Dublin, Kildare, and 
 Louth. Again in 1580 the Geraldines were in great peril. 
 The Earl of Kildare's loyalty being suspected by Elizabeth, 
 he was imprisoned and his estates seized. Subsequently he 
 was liberated and his property restored. At the Revolution 
 of 1688 the Fitzgeralds were fortunate enough to take the 
 winning side, and contributed in a large degree to the triumph 
 of William III. The nineteenth Earl, who was a prominent 
 statesman in the reigns of Anne, George I., and George II., 
 
 14
 
 2IO Our Old Nobility. 
 
 purchased Carton House, Kildare, which was formerly the 
 seat of the Ingoldsby family. He greatly improved this man- 
 sion, which now extends 400 feet from wing to wing, and is 
 the chief seat of the Duke of Leinster. His son, the twentieth 
 Earl, distinguished himself by addressing a memorial to 
 George H., denouncing Stone, the Irish Primate, as " a greedy 
 Churchman, investing himself with temporal power, and 
 affecting to be a second Wolsey in the State." " Your memo- 
 rialist," he concluded, " has nothing to ask of your Majesty, 
 neither place, civil or military, neither employment or prefer- 
 ment for himself or his friends; and begs leave to add that 
 nothing but his duty to your Majesty, and his natural hatred 
 to such detestable monopoly, could have induced your memo- 
 rialist to this presumption." This Earl was subsequently 
 elevated to the Dukedom of Leinster. One of his younger 
 sons was the brave and unfortunate Lord Edward Fitzgerald, 
 whom Cobbett (himself once a common soldier) described as 
 the only really honest officer he ever knew. Lord Edward, 
 who had previously served with credit in the British Army, 
 became deeply imbued with the spirit which animated the 
 French Revolution of 1789, the result being that he was 
 engaged in revolutionary movements in Ireland. When 
 arrested he made a desperate resistance, in which he killed 
 an officer, and was himself fatally wounded. 
 
 The Fitz2:eralds have been almost uniformlv faithful to their 
 generous and liberal traditions, and their conduct has gener- 
 ally manifested their deep attachment to the interests of the 
 race with which they have been for so many centuries con- 
 nected. Of late the}' seem to have receded somewhat from 
 the prominent position they once occupied ; but there are 
 few great Irish houses upon which rests so little odium.
 
 XCVIII. 
 
 [O obtain another conspicuous case of the unearned 
 increase of the rent of land we cannot do better 
 than turn to Lancashire. We have already seen 
 what it has done for the Stanleys ; let us glance 
 at their neighbours, once their rivals in Liverpool, the Moly- 
 neux family. Their wealth has advanced by leaps and bounds 
 with the prosperity of Lancashire, and they have but very 
 narrowly missed being to Liverpool what the Duke of West- 
 minster is to Westminster, or the jNIarquis of Bute to Cardiff, 
 or the Duke of Norfolk to Sheffield. As it is, the Earl of 
 Sefton owns in Lancashire 18,769 acres, with a rent-roll of 
 ^"42,997 — these figures being probably but an inadequate 
 representation of his actual income, and no representation at 
 all of his prospective wealth. Our most powerful land- 
 owners have one foot upon the country and the other upon 
 the town. The rural squire will feel terribly the pinch of 
 agricultural distress. To him a fall in rents means a great 
 deal more than a nominal 10 or 20 per cent. Mortgages and 
 any family burdens with which the land may be charged are 
 a fixed quantity. The 10 or 20 per cent, reduction falls in its 
 entirety upon the nominal owner, after he has paid all other 
 claims. Commercial depression falls but lightly on the land- 
 lords, who draw most of their wealth from great towns. 
 The rents of their leaseholds are secure, or, at worst, they 
 can seize upon valuable property which neither they nor their 
 fathers built. 
 
 The first jMolyneux came over at the Conquest, his name 
 appearing eighteenth on the roll of Battle Abbey. My readers 
 will consequently be prepared to learn that the Molyneux 
 family have obtained everything they possess for nothing at 
 all. A grant made by one of the chief followers of the Con- 
 queror, and other grants made by Yorkist and Lancastrian 
 Kings, have given them the right to all time to take tithe and 
 toll of the industry of South-West Lancashire, always bearing 
 
 14 — 2
 
 2 12 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 in mind that the feudal obligations under which these grants 
 were held have been shifted on to the shoulders of the 
 general body of the people. When I think of the burdens 
 which the land bore for ages ; of the easy terms on which it 
 was obtained by those who were eager to acquire it subject 
 to those burdens ; of the immense growth in the value of 
 land, especially urban land, due alone to the industry and 
 enterprise of the common people — I am lost in astonish- 
 ment to find rational men listening to the absurd non- 
 sense of those who complain of the unfair burdens put upon 
 the land. 
 
 To return to the IMolyneux. William de IMolines came 
 over with the Conqueror. He is said to have been a Norman 
 noble, who derived his name from the town of IMoulins. 
 Considering that William I. was accompanied by half the 
 scum of Europe it is as likely as not that he was no noble at 
 all. However, William De Molines, or his son Vivian, 
 obtained a grant of land from De Poictou, Lord of Lancaster, 
 to whom William L had granted all the lands between the 
 Ribble and the Mersey. The De IMolines grant consisted of 
 Sefton and two other manors, one of which passed to 
 another family by marriage. Sefton Manor has been held 
 in unbroken succession by the Molyneux family ever since 
 the Conquest. Toxteth, however, was exchanged by them 
 for other lands in the reign of King John. We shall see 
 that it afterwards again came into their possession. In pro- 
 cess of time their estates were somewhat augmented by suc- 
 cessive marriages with Lancashire heiresses. 
 
 In the days of the Lancastrian and Yorkist kings Liverpool 
 Avas beginning to acquire some little importance, and between 
 the Stanleys and the Molyneux there was a rivalry which at 
 times almost broke out into private war. Sir Richard IMoly- 
 neux was with Henry V. at Agincourt, and from that King he 
 obtained a grant of the Chief Forestership of the Royal 
 Forests and Parks in West Derby, and the office of Constable 
 of Liverpool Castle. The Stanleys, however, managed to 
 obtain Toxteth-park from the Crown. After a time that pro- 
 perty was sold by an Earl of Derby to the head of the Moly- 
 neux family for /"i,ioo. It consisted of 2,000 acres. It is 
 now covered with villas, houses, factories, and docks, and has 
 a population of more than 70,000 persons. 
 
 With the office of Governor of Liverpool Castle, a building
 
 The Molyncux. > 213 
 
 which was partially demolished in the Civil War, and entirely 
 removed in 1721, Sir Richard Molyneux had a salary equal to 
 _£"iooofour money. By a subsequent grant the office was 
 made hereditary in his family. Sir Richard afterwards held 
 an office in the Court of Henry VI., and from that monarch 
 he obtained a grant of Croxteth, near Liverpool, to him and 
 his heirs. This was confirmed by Edward IV., and the herb- 
 age and agistment of Croxteth-park was given to the Moly- 
 neux for an annual rent of /"loo. An Act of Resumption was 
 passed in the latter part of the reign of Henry VI., but the 
 son of Sir Richard was able to obtain the insertion of a clause 
 therein providing that it should not apply to the Molyneux 
 grants. Richard HI. confirmed them in their possessions, 
 but the accession of Henry VII. still further advanced their 
 fortunes. That King let Croxteth and Simmonds' Wood to 
 William Molyneux for a perpetual rent of /'iG per annum 
 (equal to/'ioo of our money). They were then mere wastes. 
 Croxteth has long been the seat of the family. It is inter- 
 esting to note what was the value of property in Liverpool 
 itself about this time. In the reign of Henry VIII. the Cor- 
 poration of Liverpool demised to Sir William Molyneux a 
 parcel of building land in the town at a rent of sixpence per 
 acre, and as late as 1565 a house in the town let for four 
 shillings per annum, and ten other houses were sold outright 
 for/' 10. 
 
 The IMolyneux were for some time lessees of the Crown 
 customs and dues, Liverpool being Royal property. In the 
 reign of IMarj', Sir R. Molyneux, being a zealous Catholic, 
 obtained a renewal of the lease for 44 years. The Corpora- 
 tion of Liverpool, which had been growing in strength and 
 independence, threw his collector into prison ; but, after an 
 ineffectual struggle, it had to give way. In the reign of 
 Llenry VIII. a Molyneux, who was a Royal Commissioner, 
 had become acquainted with the extent of the Crown Rights, 
 and this knowledge seems to have been kept in remembrance 
 by the family for a favourable opportunity. At the accession 
 of James I. Sir Richard Molyneux was created a baronet; and 
 Charles I. created his son an Irish Viscount. 
 
 When Charles had got into almost inextricable financial 
 difficulties through attempting to govern without a Parliament, 
 he determined to clear off his liabilities to the City of London 
 by a wholesale alienation of nearly three hundred manors
 
 214 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 and estates belonging to the Crown. Included among these 
 was the lordship of Liverpool. The trustees on behalf of the 
 City were, of course, anxious to realise, and the year 1635 
 was a fine time for land jobbers. The lordship of Liverpool 
 was purchased by Lord Molyneux for the trifling sum of 
 £\So, though this did not include the payment to the Crown of 
 a fixed sum of £\\ 6s. 8d., which was also bought up by 
 Lord Molyneux. The second Viscount was an ardent Royalist, 
 and took an active part in the storming of Liverpool by 
 Prince Rupert; he afterwards fought at Worcester, and, 
 dying soon after, was succeeded by his brother, also a Royalist, 
 who had to redeem his estates by the payment of a heavy 
 fine. 
 
 Soon after the Restoration this nobleman began to assert 
 some of the ancient Crown rights which had been so recently 
 purchased. The Corporation of Liverpool, however, con- 
 tended that these alleged rights belonged to them, and not to 
 Lord Molyneux. His lordship contended that the purchase 
 included all the waste lands within the borough, and he put 
 his views into practice by commencing to build on what he 
 called Lord Molyneux Street, now Lord Street, and by pro- 
 ceeding to erect a bridge at the end of it. The Corporation 
 vi el armis stopped the builders, and Lord Molyneux then 
 commenced an action against them. Ultimately a compromise 
 was agreed upon, by which his lordship agreed to grant a 
 lease of the property for a thousand years to the Corporation, 
 at a fixed annual rental of £^0. That property consisted of 
 1,000 acres of building land, which was worth /^5 0,000 a 
 year half a century ago, and probably is worth now double 
 that amount. 
 
 This example of the unearned increase of the rent of urban 
 land is one of the most striking that I know. Had not the 
 municipal authorities of Liverpool in the reign of Charles H. 
 been enlightened and able men, they would have allowed 
 Lord Molyneux to have his own way. The whole story is 
 most instructive. A tyrant King, in order to enable himself 
 to govern without a Parliament, conveys away nearly 300 of 
 the manors and estates which were intended to keep up the 
 dignity and power of the Monarchy. The City of London, 
 being anxious to realise, flood the market, and land and 
 feudal privileges are to be bought up at ridiculously low prices. 
 Among the properties sold is the lordship of Liverpool, which
 
 Tlie Molyneux. 215 
 
 IS obtained by a IMolyneux for ^450. This occurs less than 
 250 years ago. Haifa century after, Lord Molyneux, finding 
 his claims disputed, lets the waste lands in the borough of 
 Liverpool on what is practically a perpetual lease, for the 
 fixed rent of £ ^o per annum. These lands consist of 1,000 
 acres, and are now worth nearly ^100,000 a year. 
 
 Suppose that Lord Molyneux had granted no lease, but had 
 established his rights in a law court. What would he or his 
 descendants have done to give value to that which then was 
 comparatively worthless .? They would have done absolutely 
 nothing except sign their names to leases. And thus that 
 which was only a part of the property of which ^450 was the 
 purchase money would have grown in value to ^'100,000 a 
 year. Yet there are men who talk glibly about the burdens 
 on land. The chief burden on the land is the landlord. You 
 and I, perhaps, would not grumble at having to support him, 
 but it is really too bad that the produce of our hands and 
 brains should be heavily taxed by the Government to relieve 
 him of the onerous conditions under which he obtained his 
 lavish grants.
 
 XCIX. 
 
 [AVING already noticed every English dukedom 
 save one, I now turn to our latest military duke- 
 dom — that of Welhngton. To sketch the military 
 and political career of Arthur, first Duke of Wel- 
 lington, would be quite superfluous, even if I had sufficient 
 space at my disposal. Wy business is with his rewards rather 
 than his work. Suffice it to say that 1 am one of those who 
 regard the great French War as avoidable in its inception, 
 but unavoidable when Napoleon had made himself master of 
 France. The Allies, and especially England, made Bona- 
 parte almost a necessity to the French nation ; but when once 
 he had seized supreme power and embarked upon his career 
 of conquest, resistance to the death became necessary. I 
 hold, therefore, that Wellington was engaged in a war wherein 
 the independence of Europe was at stake, that his victories 
 were of vital importance to Europe at large and to England 
 in particular. I consider, too, that it would have been all the 
 better for the Duke's reputation if he had never meddled in 
 politics — that he was a good soldier, but a bad statesman. 
 Successful generals have often proved wise administrators of 
 dependencies like our Indian Empire, but the atmosphere of 
 militarism is not that in which wise governors of free peoples 
 are nurtured. Since the days of Marlborough we have usually 
 kept the professions of the soldier and the statesman far apart. 
 The solitary exception is that of the Duke of Wellington, and 
 the results are not such as to induce us to repeat the experi- 
 ment. 
 
 The Wellesleys were formerly Cowleys, or Colleys, and 
 appear to have been office holders in Ireland almost unin- 
 terruptedly from the days of Henry VIII. to the middle of the 
 last century. A daughter of the house married into the family 
 of Wesley, or Wellesley, whose ancestor had accompanied
 
 The Wellcsleys. 217 
 
 Henry II. to Ireland, and received from that monarch con- 
 siderable grants of confiscated lands in IMeath and Kildare. 
 The Wesley estates ultimately reverted to Richard Colley, 
 who assumed the name of Wesley, and was created Lord 
 IMornington. His son was advanced to an Earldom. The 
 eldest son of the Earl became Governor-General of India, 
 and, under his administration, the empire of Mysore, ruled 
 by Tippoo Sahib, was conquered. Thus it was that he was 
 created INIarquis Wellesley. At his death the Marquisate 
 expired, but the Earldom of IMornington passed from him to 
 his next brother, thence to that brother's son and grandson, 
 and, at the death of the latter, it passed to the second and 
 present Duke of Wellington. The first Duke of Wellington 
 was the third son of the first Earl of Mornington. 
 
 I have found it somewhat difficult to sum up the pecuniary 
 rewards of the great Duke of Wellington, and can only pre- 
 tend to approximate accuracy. We need not trouble our- 
 selves about presentations of services of plate, of jewelled 
 swords, gold vases, and such showy but unprofitable rewards. 
 In the year 18 10, shortly after the battle of Talavera, the 
 Duke was awarded an annual pension of ^^2,000 by vote of 
 the House of Commons. In 181 2 he was voted another 
 annual pension of / 2,000. After the close of the great war 
 in 1 8 14, Parliament voted ^^300,000 for the purchase of 
 an estate for him, and such further sum as would make up his 
 income to / 17,000 per annum. Besides this, he had a grant 
 of an estate in Spain, of the estimated value o{ £\q,ooo a 
 year. After the battle of Waterloo, Parliament voted him an 
 additional ^^200, 000 for the purchase of an estate and man- 
 sion ; and he also obtained the grant of an estate in the 
 Netherlands, of the estimated annual value of ^2,000. With 
 the Parliamentary grants the estate of Strathfieldsaye, in 
 Hampshire, was purchased — a bargain of which the Iron 
 Duke had no favourable opinion, for he declared that it 
 would have ruined any other man than himself. How 
 far his estimate of the folly of the trustees was well founded 
 I cannot say ; but, if it was a bad bargain, unquestionably a 
 grateful nation did its best to repair any deficiency in that 
 respect. I find that, in 1830, the various pensions which the 
 Duke received from the Consolidated Fund amounted to no 
 less than /'8, 296 a year. He also drew, as Constable of the 
 Tower, /"950 ; as Colonel of the Rifle Brigade, /"238 ; as
 
 2 1 8 Our Old Nobility, 
 
 Colonel of the ist Regiment of Foot Guards, ^2,695 ; and 
 as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, ^295 annually. Sub- 
 sequently, he held the offices of Chief Ranger and Keeper 
 of Hyde Park and St. James's Park. 
 
 Leaving out of sight the Duke's militar)- pay, his emolu- 
 ments during the time when he held civil offices, as Prime 
 IMinister, (S:c., and his salary during the many years that he 
 held the post of Commander-in-Chief, the Duke of Welling- 
 ton must have received from the public purse, in one way or 
 another, upwards of a million of money ; and, if he retained 
 the estates in Spain and the Netherlands, and their actual 
 value proved to be equal to the estimate, he must have re- 
 ceived from these sources nearly half a million more. Nor 
 must we forget that the two Parliamentary pensions of ^4,000 
 per annum descended to the two next inheritors of the 
 title. 
 
 It was not merely the Duke of Wellington himself who was 
 rewarded by a grateful nation, the whole family participated 
 in his success and in that of the Marquis Wellesley. It was 
 estimated in the year 1823 that the Wellesleys obtained no 
 less than ^99,000 annually, either from Church or State. 
 The Marquis Wellesley had a pension of ^5,000 from the 
 East India Company, held a place as Lord Steward of the 
 Household, with a salary of ^1,540, and another as Joint 
 Remembrancer of the Court of Exchequer in Ireland, with a 
 salary of ^5,387. The Marquis had no legitimate issue, but 
 it was stated by an Irish newspaper in his lifetime that his 
 numerous family were all provided for in the public ser\-ice. 
 The mother of the Duke of Wellington — the Countess of 
 Mornington — had a pension of ^600 per annum, dating from 
 1813. A brother of the Duke, the Rev. G. V. Wellesley, 
 went into the Church, where, beside a Royal Chaplaincy, he 
 held a Prebendary in Durham Cathedral, value ^'2,000 ; the 
 rectory of Bishop Wearmouth, value ^2,000 and a residence; 
 the rectory of Chelsea, value /^ 1,400 and a residence; and 
 the rectory of Therfield, value ^^937 and a residence. Be- 
 sides these, there were other relatives, who were provided for 
 in an almost equally lavish manner. The Duke's youngest 
 brother. Lord Cowley, for instance, held in succession a 
 number of lucrative diplomatic appointments, and one of his 
 sons, who went into the Church, became Dean of Windsor 
 and Lord High Almoner of the Queen, offices which he still
 
 Tlie Wdksleys. 219 
 
 continues to hold. The first Lord Cowley, who at one time 
 held the post of Ambassador at Vienna, with a salary of 
 £ 11,000, retired on a pension of ^2,500. The Duke of 
 Wellington also had another brother, Lord Maryborough, 
 who for a great number of years was a place-holder, and 
 seems to have been under the special care of his yet more 
 fortunate brother, the Duke. He began in 1802 with the 
 office of Clerk of the Ordnance. Successively he held the 
 places of Chief Secretary for Ireland, Master of the IMint, 
 Master of the King's Buckhounds, and Postmaster-General. 
 Leaving the less important relatives of the great Duke, I 
 think, from the examples I have given, that the estimate that 
 the family must at one time have drawn nearly a hundred 
 thousand pounds a year from the public revenue is not far 
 from correct. 
 
 At the death of the Great Duke, in 1852, he was succeeded 
 by his eldest son, who is a lieutenant-general in the Army 
 (though his military achievements are 7til), and Lord-Lieu- 
 tenant of Middlesex. The present Duke of Wellington owns 
 in — 
 
 Hants ..... 
 
 Herts ..... 
 
 Somerset ..... 
 
 Essex ..... 
 
 Total 18,999 ,, 
 With a rental of ;!f3i,233. 
 
 The present Duke is over seventy years of age, and has no 
 children. His nephew is presumptive heir to the dukedom 
 and to the pension of ^4,000. 
 
 How far the prodigious rewards of the Marlboroughs, Nel- 
 sons, and Wellingtons serve as an incentive to those who are 
 engaged in the profession of arms it would be difficult to say ; 
 but there can be no comparison between the material prizes 
 of the soldier and those which are offered to those who ser\'e 
 the nation by other than destructive arts. In literature our 
 mightiest Englishmen — Shakespeare and IMilton, and others 
 of later time — have met with scanty recognition from the 
 State. Our greatest inventors — Arkwright, and Watt, and 
 Stephenson — died commoners. Even our greatest statesiiien 
 met with scant reward. Since the accession of the House of 
 Hanover, not one of them has climbed from the House of 
 
 15,847 i 
 
 acres 
 
 2,246 
 
 ,, 
 
 529 
 
 ), 
 
 337 
 
 >>
 
 2 20 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 Commons to the highest rank in the Peerage. It is only the 
 successful general who, commencing at the lowest round of 
 the ladder, can hope to aspire to the position of a Duke. In 
 future times, our children may reach a more just estimate of 
 the value of the services rendered by men to their fellows.
 
 mu f Ota 0f % gMikir. 
 
 Y v/ork having extended to double the length 
 which I had at first projected, I consider that I 
 may now bring the inquiry to a close. It would 
 
 not be difificult to continue it for another year, but 
 
 having sketched the agrarian history of most of our leading 
 families, including every English ducal house, I think I have 
 travelled over sufficient ground for all practical purposes. 
 Before finally closing this series of articles, however, I deem 
 it useful to sum up the results of this inquiry, and to supple- 
 ment it by a few general observations which could hardly find 
 a place when dealing with particular families. I am not con- 
 scious of having done any man an injustice. That the cor- 
 rections I have had to make have been so few and so trivial is 
 to me ample proof that there is hardly anything for which I 
 need offer an apology. I have a strong conviction that, if 
 the whole truth could only be ascertained, the only thing that 
 I should have to apologise for would be that my record of the 
 misdeeds of our great houses has been so incomplete. I have 
 had to use such materials as lay ready to hand, chiefly peer- 
 ages of ancient date and county histories, the compilers of 
 which found a market for their wares among the great houses 
 or those connected with them. Such writers almost invariably 
 represent everything in the most favourable light, and it is 
 only by carefully observing their unguarded admissions that it 
 is possible to get at the truth. From historians like Macaulay, 
 Froude, Burton, Green, Massey, and even Lord Stanhope, I 
 have derived much valuable information, and that able, but 
 now almost forgotten, writer, Mr. William Carpenter, has 
 been often useful in putting me on the right track. 
 
 We mus t never forget that, while in France and other Con- 
 tinental CO untries an aristocratic title involves nothing more 
 than the right of its owner to use a certain style in denomi- 
 nating himself, in England it means that the owner thereof 
 shall have the right of sitting in the Upper House, and of
 
 222 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 helping to mar or put an actual veto upon the legislative work 
 of the representatives of the people. Since 1832 these 
 powers have rarely been exercised in a direct manner. In- 
 directly, however, they are of great importance. The fact 
 that such powers exist continually has a strong influence in 
 shaping legislation. At the same time, I cannot but admit 
 that so long as a landed aristocracy exists it docs less 
 mischief sitting apart, for it cannot hope successfully to 
 contend against the clearly-expressed will of the House of 
 Commons. 
 
 Even as it is, the landed interest dominates to such an ex- 
 tent in that House, that only in a qualified sense can we call 
 it the House of the People. No less than 176 of its members 
 are connected with the Peerage by birth or marriage, and 
 beside these there is a very large number who represent the 
 landowners who are commoners. The state of our county 
 representation is truly lamentable, not so much on account of 
 the party politics of the great majority of county members, 
 but because of the legislative qualifications of a large pro- 
 portion of them. It Avould puzzle the most ardent Conser- 
 vative to discover the senatorial merits of Lords Burghley, 
 Bective, Emlyn, Dalkeith, Holmesdale, Percy, Newport, 
 March, Stafford, Yarmouth, the Hon. W. Egerton, and the 
 Marquis of Hamilton. They sit for counties as representatives 
 of land, not of men. If they were not their fathers' sons no 
 one would have thought of nominating them. There are 
 sons of peers like Lord Hartington, Lord E. Fitzmaurice, 
 Lord George Hamilton, and Lord Sandon, who stand in quite 
 another category, but these are brilliant exceptions. As a 
 rule the aristocratic county members represent not even the 
 Conservatism of the bucolic mind, but simply themselves and 
 their fathers. Could anything be more humiliating than the 
 present position in South Warwickshire } The farmers very 
 properly insist upon a direct representative ; one of the two 
 sitting members is obliged to retire ; but the man who is 
 forced to retire is the best of the two. There can be no 
 comparison between Sir J. Eardley Wilmot and Lord Yar- 
 mouth in point of ability or usefulness ; yet the former has to 
 withdraw, and the latter, Avith no qualification save that he is 
 the son of the Marquis of Hertford, remains. Rural super- 
 stitions are proverbially tenacious of life, and the electoral 
 superstitions are perhaps the most tenacious of all. Until
 
 Party Rewards. 223 
 
 adversity forced men to think, agricultural tenants, as a rule, 
 seemed to regard it to be as much their duty to vote in 
 accordance with their landlords' wishes as to pay their rents 
 and rates. If the landlords or their fathers before them had 
 created the land, they could not have been more docile. It 
 probably never occurred to them to consider how the land had 
 been acquired. As these articles of mine have been extensively 
 quoted in provincial papers, they probably have set not a few 
 thinking upon the subject ; and if the result has been that 
 some agricultural tenants have been led to take a more 
 accurate view of their position, I shall not have written in 
 vain. Alike to the urban population, to the tenant-farmers, 
 and to the agricultural labourers, there is nothing more per- 
 nicious, from a political point of view, than the agrarian 
 electoral superstition. Intrinsically there is little to fear from 
 the Conservative instincts of Englishmen ; it is only as those 
 instincts are made subservient to landlordism that they become 
 a grave national peril. 
 
 Lord Beaconsfield has told us in one of his novels that " we 
 owe the English Peerage to three sources : the spoliation of 
 the Church, the open and flagrant sale of its honours by the 
 elder Stuarts, and the boroughmongering of our own times. 
 These are the three main sources of the existing Peerage of 
 England, and, in my opinion, disgraceful ones." For once I 
 agree with his Lordship, both in his statements and in his 
 inferences. Of course there are exceptions, though not of 
 great importance. That which strikes me most forcibly is 
 that almost all of these great houses, whether ancient or 
 modern, seem to have run to seed. "With such a vantage- 
 ground for nobleness," how few distinguish themselves. Even 
 the Dukes, the duces, are no longer leaders of the people. 
 " What are they doing .?" asked Carlyle a generation ago ; and 
 he gave the scornful answer, "Preserving their game." That 
 is just what the great majority of them are doing at the pre- 
 sent hour. Consider the advantages these men possess. 
 Ample wealth, complete leisure, the highest education, full 
 publicity if they have anything worth saying, influence out of 
 all proportion to their intrinsic merits. The nation has 
 heaped upon them all possible advantages. What are the 
 services they render in return } Who are those who have 
 distinguished themselves in statesmanship or in literature } 
 You can count them on your fingers. As for those who have
 
 2 24 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 made a name as philanthropists you may count them on your 
 thumbs. Thus much for Hving lords ; let us go back a little, 
 and take the Settlement of the House of Hanover as a 
 starting point. Who among our statesmen of the first rank 
 was a member of the House of Lords, or could hope to reach 
 there by right of primogeniture } Not Walpole, nor either of 
 the Pitts, nor Fox, nor Burke, nor Canning, nor Palmerston, 
 nor Russell, nor Gladstone. Among living peers, born to a 
 peerage, only Earl Granville, the Duke of Argyll, the Earl of 
 Carnarvon, the Earl of Derby, and the Marquis of Salisbury, 
 rise above the level of respectable mediocrity, and the last 
 was born a younger son. Considering the splendid traditions 
 of many of the noble houses, we might have expected greater 
 things. With their large acres, their vast wealth, their 
 exalted position, how much might the peers of the United 
 Kingdom achieve I how small are their actual performances ! 
 With but very few exceptions, their translation of the phrase 
 " Noblesse oblige" seems to be, "Nobility obliges us to do 
 nothing."
 
 CI. 
 
 tcntigcf?. 
 
 HAVE dealt almost exclusively with our older 
 nobility, but much might have been said of the 
 wholesale creations of the four last reigns. Mr. 
 
 Disraeli's phrase, " the borough-mongering of our 
 
 own times," is almost obsolete now ; but it is still true that 
 the exercise of electoral influence is the surest road to the 
 House of Lords. When the present Premier was last in 
 office several peers were created who owe their titles to poli- 
 tical partisanship, among the number being Lords Penrhyn, 
 Kesteven and O'N eil. But, during the last six years of 
 power, the iarge-acPSd and steady-voting Tories have had a 
 rare time of it, while superannuated or incompetent colleagues 
 of the INIinister have been lifted into the House of Lords 
 when offices could not be found for them. For nearly forty 
 years Sir John Pakington sat for what was once the pocket- 
 borough of Droitwitch ; in 1874 the people of Droitwitch 
 asserted their independence, and rejected Sir John. At once 
 he was created Lord Hampton. Colonel Wilson Patten, 
 another old colleague, had to be provided for, so he was 
 created Lord Winmarleigh, Then there was the heir of " My 
 dear Grev de Wilton," whom the electors of Bath placed at 
 the bottom of the poll in 1874 ; he, too, was consoled with a 
 seat in the Upper House. The Ormsby-Gore's had done 
 much for the Tories in Shropshire and other counties, and the 
 late Lord Harlech had his reward in his elevation to the 
 Upper House in 1876. The Sturts had been equally useful 
 in Dorsetshire, and in the same year Mr. H. G. Sturt became 
 Lord Alington. Mr. John ToUemache had long served the 
 Tories well in Cheshire and Suffolk ; he had his reward the 
 same year by being created Lord ToUemache. j\Ir. Gerard 
 had helped to secure South Lancashire ; he became Lord 
 fift^ard. Lord Wharncliffe had served the Tories equally 
 well in South Yorkshire ; his reward was an earldom. The 
 late Lord Rayenswo rth and his son, Lord Eslington, had 
 
 IS
 
 2 26 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 fought hard for Conservatism in Northumberland and Dur- 
 ham ; his lordship was created an earl. The Homes, 
 hitherto Scotch peers, were rewarded for the use of their 
 great territorial influence with an English barony. ]\Ir. 
 Hylton Joliffe, whose seat for Wells was abolished by 
 the last Reform Bill, was consoled with the title of Lord 
 Hvlton. Sir Charles Adderley conveniently retired from the 
 Ministry not long ago, and became Lord Norton, The Gov- 
 ernment has certainly been mindful of its friends, but its 
 own principal members have not been lost sight of. I\Ir. 
 Disraeli has become Eari ofB eaconsfieJd, Lord Cairns has 
 become Earl Cairns, Mr. Gathorne Hardy has become Vis- 
 c ou nt CranbrooK, and Sir Stafford Northcote is generally 
 supposed to be only within a few months of his peerage. 
 Perhaps before the Government abandons office Earl Ulundi 
 and Lord Smith will be added to the number. 
 
 These instances, drawn from the history of the last six 
 years, will suffice to show how unscrupulously the House of 
 Lords is used at the present time. The first step for a wealthy 
 parvenu is to buy up land right and left ; the second is to keep 
 a steady pressure upon his agricultural tenants at each elec- 
 tion ; in due time he or his heir may hope for the coveted 
 reward. Since the accession of the House of Hanover a 
 very large proportion of the modern aristocracy — probably 
 half of them — owe one or more titles to the exercise of elec- 
 toral intimidation. We deal in a very curious manner with 
 offences against the free exercise of the franchise. The 
 bribed electors are temporarily disfranchised, the briber 
 obtains an office or a judgeship. The ruffian who tramples 
 on a voter's head is sent to gaol ; the landlord who tramples 
 on a voter's conscience is created a peer. 
 
 There have been not a few modern Peers who have gained 
 their titles by the possession of land alone, as well as a yet 
 larger number who have gained them by the exercise of such 
 influence as the possession of land carried with it. We must 
 never lose sight of the fact that the House of Lords is not 
 only a legislative body, but also a great agrarian institution. 
 We hear much, at the present time, of the artificial causes 
 which tend to the aggregation of estates. We may do much 
 by destroying such of these artificial causes as are due to 
 class legislation, or to the permission by the law of practices 
 which are inimical to the public interest. But the House of
 
 Modem Peerages. 227 
 
 Lords itself is the most powerful of all these artificial causes. 
 I am not pleading for its abolition, but I bring the fact for- 
 ward to show that those who dread Free Trade in Land will 
 still have a powerful conservative force on which to rely, and 
 to ser\'e as an argument against the degradation of the Peer- 
 age, to which we are growing accustomed. We are constantly 
 told that great modern estates which have been acquired by 
 purchase are only the results of natural causes ; but in Eng- 
 land wealthy buyers have constantly been induced to accumu- 
 late land, no matter at what price purchased, as a road to the 
 House of Lords. Thus, out of one great manufacturing 
 establishment in South Wales, during the present century, 
 two Peerages and a Baronetcy have been produced ; but, as a 
 necessary preliminary, the wealthy ironmasters bought up land 
 right and left. The first Mr. Loyd who came to London 
 owned no land at all; the first Lord Overstone has 30,849 
 acres of land in eleven diff"erent counties. The Barings, 
 Caringtons, Foleys, Denisons, and other modern families, 
 have travelled to the Peerage by the same road ; and I might 
 name a multitude who have already reached the half-way 
 house of the Baronetage. Even when a coronet has been 
 obtained, the earth-hunger is unappeased. There are steps 
 in the Peerage to be gained, and the noble who has not suffi- 
 cient brains to become a statesman can still continue to buy 
 up land. It is a common complaint against farmers that they 
 have been too eager to farm more land than their capital 
 allows them to manage properly. Unfortunately, a great many 
 landowners have set them the example. A generation ago, 
 the most conspicuous instance of this tendency was found in 
 the case of one who had already reached the highest rank in 
 the Peerage — the Duke of Buckingham. Though the family 
 was already embarrassed, the Duke went on buying up land 
 which paid him two per cent, with money borrowed at four 
 per cent., until at last the inevitable crash came. There are 
 not a few landlords who have recently been playing the same 
 game, though more circumspectly. It is simply impossible 
 for them to do justice to the land, or to make provision for 
 the depression that has overtaken agriculture. For my part, 
 I am not all surprised at the gradual extinction of the yeoman 
 class, when we offer the highest prizes in the State to the men 
 who will accumulate the most land in their own hands. 
 
 There are some Peers who are not suffering from family 
 
 15—2
 
 2 28 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 greed of aggrandisement, but from past family extravagance. 
 I pity them. They must make no sign of distress, while the 
 teeth of the fox concealed beneath the cloak are fixed in their 
 flesh. Honest poverty is not hard to bear so long as it does 
 not verge on destitution ; but to a good man, assumed wealth, 
 masking actual poverty must be a constant torture. But if I 
 pity such men, still more do I pity their lands and all that 
 dwell thereon. If an ordinary trader cannot meet his bills^ 
 W'C wind up his affairs in the Bankruptcy Court ; if a Duke of 
 Newcastle, with 34,000 acres of land in a single county, is in 
 the same position, another measure is dealt out to him. From 
 a sentimental point of view, it may be well that life-ownership 
 should save an old family from destruction ; but Avhat of the 
 interests of those who live upon the estates of a bankmpt 
 lord } 
 
 Yet another point must not be overlooked. The rent-rolls 
 given in the preceding chapters must only be regarded as 
 giving an approximate idea of the incomes of their owners. 
 Jn some cases I believe they are greatly under the mark ; in 
 others the owners would be only too glad to put into their 
 pockets the amounts put down. There are not a few estates,, 
 even where earth-hunger and extravagance have had but little 
 influence — where "the dead hand" controls the living much 
 more than most people are aware ; and just now landowners 
 are beginning to feel this most acutely. Family encumbrances 
 arc a fixed sum ; rents fluctuate. It was all very well so long- 
 as rentals had an upward tendency ; it is otherwise now. One 
 of the most beneficent results of the great uprising of the farm 
 labourers was to quicken the zeal for improvement in the 
 housing of the men. In some counties the expenditure must 
 have been very large, and has been, doubtless, owing largely 
 to the facilities afforded by Land Improvement Companies. 
 These Companies have also done not a little in the way of 
 agricultural improvement generally, though the inquiries of 
 Lord Salisbury's Commission showed that the cost to land- 
 owners was burdensome even in prosperous times. What 
 must it be now, when rents are fallen on all sides } 
 
 Of legal Peerages of recent date nothing adverse could be 
 reasonably advanced if only they were but Life Peerages. 
 Such men as Lords Selborne, Penzance, O'Hagan, and Cole- 
 ridge, would be ornaments to any Legislative Assembly. The 
 same may be said of what may be called the Civil Service
 
 Mode I'll Fc£rao-cs. 229 
 
 <:5 
 
 Peerages. The matured wisdom and experience of such men 
 as Lords Blachford, Hammond and Cottesloe, should not be 
 lost to the country, or left to find vent in magazine articles, 
 when age has necessitated their retirement from active duty 
 in the less obtrusive, but none the less eminent duties of 
 Statesmanship. As to our modern military peerages, I fear 
 they are quite numerous enough to make the Service im- 
 patient of long-continued peace. Since the outbreak of the 
 Crimean War, we have had Lords Raglan, Clyde, Strathnairn, 
 Sandhurst, Napier of IMagdala, and Airey. Against these, 
 Literature can only place two novelists and one historian, and 
 these would have never sat in theiSousc of Lords had they 
 not been also politicians. 
 Lord Gainsborouglvs family was 
 
 i^ards not Noel, while the ancestors of Lord 
 
 ivers were Medows not Pierreponts. 
 
 n some cases the present svirname was 
 
 umed on marriage with daughters of the 
 
 er family. In others mere personal prefer- 
 
 :e was the cause.
 
 CII. 
 
 JN a hundred chapters I have briefly sketched the 
 agrarian history of the majority of our most not- 
 able aristocraUc houses. In my selection I have 
 not been guided mainly by the greatness of their 
 possessions, but rather by their historic interest or present 
 prominence. Thus I have included some like the Erskines 
 and Fanes, whose estates are small, and have altogether 
 omitted peers like Lord Tredegar, with over 100,000 acres, 
 and Lord Penrhyn, Avith a rentroU of /^66,ooo. I have dealt 
 in all with 122 nobles, owning in round numbers nearly 5-^ 
 millions of acres, with a rentroll of nearly 5I millions, an 
 average ownership of 45,000 acres, and an average rentroll of 
 over ^46,000. 
 
 It certainly has not been my object to seek out examples of 
 what, for want of a better word, I will call the illegitimate 
 acquisition of landed property. When once I have selected a 
 house for inquiry, I have never desisted from completing its 
 story because I found that it had a clear record. Yet the 
 result is that those who can claim that they have obtained 
 their lands by money solely acquired in commercial or pro- 
 fessional pursuits, are singularly few — perhaps about a dozen 
 in all. 
 
 Compared with other people we are a landless nation, and 
 we are a landless nation in consequence of continual encroach- 
 ments upon the rights our ancient forefathers possessed. On 
 this point let me quote I\Ir. Freeman, who says in his Norman 
 Conquest : — " In the realities of Flistory, the king and the 
 lord — that is, the lord on a great scale, and the lord on a 
 small one — are each something which has crept in unawares, 
 something which has grown up at the expense of rights more 
 ancient than its own. Each alike, king and lord, grew to his 
 full dimensions by a series of gradual and stealthy encroach- 
 ments on the rights of the people. As the king swallowed up 
 the powers and possessions of the nation, so the lord swal-
 
 The Growth of the Landed Interest. 231 
 
 lowed up the rights and possessions of * the mark.' " That 
 which was true in ancient times is also true in modern days. 
 Throughout the reigns of the Hanoverian Kings landowners' 
 Parliaments were constantly passing enclosure Acts, desirable, 
 for the most part, with a view to increased production, but 
 resulting in the appropriation of between seven and eight 
 millions of acres of common land, of which the common 
 people retained but a very small proportion — not more than 
 threequarters of a million acres in all. Occasionally I have 
 been able to point out where vast estates have been increased 
 by these Acts ; but generally it has been impossible to obtain 
 exact information. Whenever the agricultural labourers are 
 sufficiently powerful to press their claim to the cultivation of 
 " public lands," especially to charity lands, they will find in 
 the injustice with which their fathers were treated a powerful 
 argument for the equity of their demands. 
 
 It is worthy of notice that anciently the lavish grants of the 
 Crown were checked by the power of Resumption. Most of 
 the vast estates seized and retained by William the Conqueror 
 were dissipated by William Rufus, who was compelled subse- 
 quently to resume the grants which he had made. Henry IV. 
 was called upon by his Parliament to resume the grants, 
 parcel of the ancient inheritance of the Crown, which had 
 been alienated by Edward III. and Richard 11. Similar 
 demands were made and acted upon in the reigns of Henry 
 VI., Edward IV., and Henry VII. In fact, from Henry HI. 
 to Henry VIII. there was only one reign in which one or 
 more Bills of Resumption were not passed. Had it been 
 impossible for English monarchs to alienate the estates appro- 
 priated to the support of the dignity of the Crown, we should 
 have had no occasion in modern times for Royal grants or 
 dowries. Repeated attempts were, indeed, made to restrain 
 the Crown from alienating its lands, but they were generally 
 opposed by crafty and greedy Ministers. The latest instance 
 of a successful Resumption Bill was in the reign of William 
 III. About the middle of last century the grasping avarice 
 of one of the Lowthers, in attempting to obtain for himself a 
 large tract of Crown lands, which had been previously granted 
 to the Bentincks, occasioned the passing of what is known as 
 the Nullus Tempus Act, which secured the grantees of Crown 
 lands against any resumption of their properties. 
 
 It is obviously impossible to reckon up acre by acre the
 
 232 Our Old Nobility, 
 
 quantity of land which has at various times been obtained 
 otherwise than by purchase. The agrarian history of many 
 of the great houses is complicated by the acquisition of pro- 
 perty by marriage. I have, however, traced the previous 
 history of such lands in a sufficient number of cases to show^ 
 that we may safely presume that as a rule they have been 
 acquired in much the same way as the rest. After a careful 
 consideration of all the houses I have noticed, bearing in 
 mind modern Enclosure Acts, and the increased value of 
 lands due to the improvements of tenants, I cannot but arrive 
 at the conclusion that not one-tenth of the estates in question 
 have been acquired for value received. All the rest, in one 
 way or another, has been obtained for nothing. 
 
 In Ireland the great majority of the landlords owe their 
 possessions to successive confiscation. In the North of Scot- 
 land, where the so-called rights of property have been put 
 into force with almost unexampled cruelty and injustice, the 
 landlords owe their position to the iniquity of law. Let me 
 quote Mr. Freeman once more: — "When, as in the Celtic 
 parts of the British Islands, the old constitution of the gens 
 or clan went on longer than it did amongst ourselves, we can 
 see the actual process by which, under the influence of an 
 alien jurisprudence, the chief of the clan changed into the 
 lord of the soil. The land of the clan w-asheld to be the land 
 of the chief, and the body of the clansmen, /« inith his fellmv- 
 OiCners, came to be looked on as tenants holding of him." 
 
 With regard to Irish landowners it ought to be borne in 
 mind that in a very large number of cases it is the labour 
 of successive generations of tenants which has given to the 
 land almost all the value it possesses, and that not a few 
 landlords have improved their properties by the aid of the 
 State. When the Corn Laws were repealed a sop was given 
 to the landowners. In the darkest days of commercial distress 
 no statesman ever proposed to find out of the public revenue 
 capital for manufacturers or shopkeepers ; yet this was what 
 was done for landlords after the repeal of the Corn Laws. 
 Acts were passed which declared, " Whereas it is desirable 
 that works of drainage should be encouraged in order to pro- 
 mote the increased productiveness of the land and the healthi- 
 ness of the districts when it is required, and to supply the demand 
 for agricultural labour, especially at that season of the year when 
 other sources are expanded, &c.," /'2,ooo,ooo were allotted
 
 The Growth of the Landed Interest. 2'i,2i 
 
 to English landowners, and ^1,000,000 to Irish landowners, 
 in order to make advances to them, to be gradually repaid at 
 a low interest. Nor was the accommodation of the State 
 Loan office resorted to by comparatively small proprietors. 
 Among the Irish recipients was the wealthy Marquis of 
 Waterford. For the most part, too, the landlords were con- 
 tent that the farmers should do the work of improvement, and 
 w'e have the authority of Mr. Caird for stating that sometimes 
 they borrowed of the Government for their permanent advan- 
 tage, and charged the farmer, who had only a temporary 
 advantage, one and one and a half per cent, more than they 
 themselves paid. 
 
 The popular theory that in England and Scotland all 
 permanent improvements have been effected by the landlords 
 is only very partially true. Take, for instance, the great re- 
 clamations of land in the Eastern Counties. Anciently, when 
 the embankments gave way, the sheriif had full authority to 
 impress the labour of the county. At different times Acts of 
 Parliament were passed authorising the construction of 
 drainage works, and tenants as well as owners were made 
 contributories. I know I shall be met with the theory that it 
 is the landlord who pays rates in the end, because the tenant 
 would take them into consideration in making his bargain. 
 But until very recent times the tenant brought up to agricul- 
 ture had no choice in the matter but to submit to the terms 
 of the owner of that natural monopoly — land. We, who live 
 in days when the large farmer has many opportunities of em- 
 ploying his capital profitably at home, and can with comparative 
 ease take it to the very ends of the earth, must not make him 
 the standard of measurement for the ancient farmer who lived 
 when he was practically shut up to one employment and one 
 locality. 
 
 If we turn from the lowlands to the hills, the same truth 
 holds good that the cultivator has done the greater part of the 
 work of reclamation. Had I but the space I could give 
 multitudinous examples. Only give a young and energetic 
 man a nineteen years' lease of an uncultivated waste con- 
 tiguous to his farm, and he will work miracles. In a multitude 
 of cases it has needed not even that small securitv, the land- 
 lord's or agent's word was enough. But when the lease 
 expired, or the old landlord or the old tenant died, the 
 permanent gain at once became the property of the owner of
 
 234 ^^^^ ^^'^ Nobility. 
 
 the bare soil. I have walked on land, not more than a long 
 day's walk from London, which is now paying its owner three 
 times what it did a generation ago, and the owner has not 
 laid out a single sixpence upon it. Landowners may try to 
 throw dust in the eyes of the public by complaining that they 
 cannot just now get three per cent, interest on the present 
 purchase-money of agricultural land ; but when I read that 
 a little farm in Carmarthenshire, which in the middle of the 
 last century only brought in £\o a year to its owner, now 
 pay his descendant ten times that amount every year, I 
 laugh them to scorn.
 
 CII. 
 
 I URING the next few years we may expect two 
 demands in regard to the land to be put forward, 
 the demand of the landowners to be relieved of 
 _ burdens at the expense of the public, and the de- 
 mand of the public that property in land shall not be used to 
 the general disadvantage. I trust that I have put not a few 
 weapons into the hands of those who will resist the former 
 and insist upon the latter. 
 
 The favourite panacea of the landed interest for the alle- 
 viation of agricultural distress is the remission of local bur- 
 dens. The tendency of Tory legislation is shown by the 
 Prisons Act, the Scotch Roads and Bridges Act, and the relief 
 of the counties from the charge of lunatics. We shall, prob- 
 ably, have further demands in the same direction, particularly 
 as regards Education and the Poor Law. Already some Con- 
 servative members are demanding that half the cost of the 
 in-door poor shall be thrown upon the Consolidated Fund 
 and the other half spread over the whole country. This 
 means nothing more nor less than that the landlords shall be 
 relieved of present burdens, for, save where farmers have 
 leases, and then they obtain only a temporary advantage, 
 rates remitted go into the pocket of the landlord. There are 
 not a few country members, too, who declare their readiness 
 to vote for Protection, if they can only find fools enough in 
 the towns to follow the Reciprocity craze. The latter only 
 want to use Protection as a temporary weapon by which to 
 force a more liberal tariff for their manufactured goods ; but 
 the former desire a permanent Bread Tax, so that their rents 
 may be kept up by the enforced contributions of every 
 mechanic and labourer in the kingdom. Whether they want 
 us to keep up the dignity of their station by the remission of 
 burdens or the imposition of a tax for their support, it will 
 be quite sufficient answer to point them to the means by which
 
 236 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 their estates have been acquired and have grown to their pre- 
 sent value. 
 
 Their enormous incomes are of comparatively modern 
 growth. We have it on established evidence that, shortly 
 after the Restoration, the revenue of the greatest estates in 
 the kingdom was only about / 20,000 per annum ; and this 
 applies only to such men as the Dukes of Ormond, Bucking- 
 ham and Albermarle. Com.pare these with the Dukes of 
 Westminster and Portland, or the IMarquis of Bute or Lord 
 Derby, or a score of others mentioned in the preceding chap- 
 ters. The wages of agricultural labourers are from three 
 times to four times what they were then, but in those times 
 agricultural labourers had opportunities of adding to their 
 resources of which most of their descendants have been long 
 since deprived, mainly through the grasping policy of the 
 landlords. 
 
 At the same time, land-reformers must remember that on 
 many estates much capital has been laid out during the last 
 generation or two, and especially within the last few years, in 
 improved buildings, cottages, drainage, &c. How partially 
 the work of drainage has been accomplished may be seen 
 from the report of Lord Salisbury's Commission in 1870, that 
 out of 20,000,000 acres requiring drainage, only 3,000,000 
 had been drained. 
 
 We must never lose sight of the root idea that property in 
 land is a trust rather than a right. "Land," says John 
 Stuart Mill, " is the gift of Nature to the whole human race 
 . . . it is a necessary of life . . . it is limited in quan- 
 tity." Even though we might derive our whole consumption 
 of'agricultural produce from foreign countries, it is not to our 
 national advantage that we should do so. Considering the 
 means by which land has been usually acquired, I ask what 
 right have the rent-owners to cripple or ruin agriculture ? 
 What right has the IMarquis of Salisburv, whose ancestors 
 obtained all they had as gifts from the i^Ionarch, to hinder 
 the application of capital to the soil by contracting himself 
 out of the Agricultural Holdings Act } What right has the 
 Duke of Rutland, who owes not a little to Enclosure Acts, 
 passed with the declared object of increasing the agricultural 
 produce of the country, to keep game on his estates to devour 
 the crops that other men have reared } What right has any 
 landowner to provide against the consequences of family im-
 
 Conclusions. 237 
 
 providence by tying up his land in the hands of men who 
 cannot discharge a landowner's duties ? I know the cant of 
 such men as Lord Elcho about " freedom of contract." 
 There should be no freedom of contract detrimental to the 
 public interest, and that is, I believe, an established prin- 
 ciple of law. Behind the right of the landowner is the right 
 of the nation — a right which it has never lost, and which it 
 will, ere long, have to again exercise. Parliament, which has 
 passed Resumption Bills, Enclosure Acts, Nullus Tempus 
 Acts — which recognises the ultimate right of the nation in 
 the Irish Encumbered Estates and Land Acts, the Artisans' 
 Dwellings Act, in every Public Improvement Bill, and every 
 Railway Bill, may and will exercise its powers still further. 
 
 I refrain from arguing for or against any particular scheme 
 of land reform. I am content to lay down one principle — 
 that the right of the nation is superior to every other right, 
 and that the rights of a class who have acquired landed pro- 
 perty in all kinds of sinister ways must always be subor- 
 dinated thereto. When the fathers of this generation of 
 landowners asked, " Cannot we do what we like with our 
 own.?" Thomas Carlyle scornfully replied, " Yes, indeed ! 
 If I could melt Gneiss Rock, and create Law of Gravitation ; 
 if I could stride out to the Doggerbank some morning, and, 
 striking down my trident there mto the mud-waves, say, ' Be 
 land, be fields, meadows, mountains, and fresh rolling 
 streams ! ' by Heaven, I should incline to have the letting of 
 that land in perpetuity, and sell the wheat of it, or burn the 
 wheat of it, according to my own good judgment." 
 
 My lords and gentlemen, you have no right to do what you 
 will with land. You have no right whatever to prevent it pro- 
 ducing as much as possible. None. Your conquests, your con- 
 fiscations, your Royal grants, your Enclosure Acts must all 
 be subordinated to the right of the nation to support itself 
 and the right of the people to live. I have shown you how 
 you have obtained possession ; it is for you to prove, if you 
 can, that you have any right whatever to exceptional privi- 
 leges. You have farms on your hands, have you ? Then 
 go back to the rents of your great-great-great-great- 
 grandfathers, or else hand them back to the State. It 
 is not our business to keep up your rents to a certain figure. 
 You always preached the law of supply and demand to the 
 labourer ; nov/ take it for your own comfort. You always
 
 238 Our Old Nobility. 
 
 denounced any trade union rules in restraint of trade ; we 
 shall apply the same principle to yourselves. You keep upon 
 your lands vermin that cat up very often a fourth of the 
 farmer's crops, you claim to be a preferential creditor, you 
 tie the farmer down to cultivate as you please, you refuse the 
 fanner compensation for improvement. All these things are 
 in restraint of the trade of agriculture. You fence round 
 your great estates with artificial legal restrictions, which keep 
 vast estates in the hands of men whose interest is to get all 
 they can out of the land for the benefit of their 3'ounger chil- 
 dren, and which prevent the golden stream of capital from 
 fertilising the soil — all this is in restraint of trade. 
 
 All this you do in the prostituted name of Freedom. It is 
 the freedom of one man to injure another, the freedom of the 
 few to gratify their selfishness at the expense of the whole 
 community. It cannot stand. Ignorance and corruption and 
 servility may avail you for a little time longer, but cannot 
 avert the inevitable end. The longer you delay reform the 
 more drastic will it be when it comes. At the present moment 
 you have the opportunity to secure yourselves and even to 
 check the fall in your rents by allowing to the food-producers 
 the same legal rights which every other manufacturer enjoys 
 — if you are wise you will use the opportunity. We are on 
 the eve of great changes. Hitherto, British agriculture has 
 been very much subordinated to family aggrandisement, selfish 
 pleasures, and aristocratic assumptions. Those who are the 
 competitors of your tenants know nothing of these disadvan- 
 tages. You must yield to the moderate demands now made, 
 and the sooner the better for yourselves, and your tenants, 
 and the nation at large. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 LONDON : 
 BBADLEY AND COMP/NY, PRINTERS, 12, Ij, AND I^, FETTER LANE, E.C.
 
 
 
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