VV.K HASKL 
 
 /
 
 TALES 
 
 OUR GREAT FAMILIES- 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 OUK GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 EDWARD WALFORD, M.A. 
 
 AND LATE 8CHOLAE OF BALLIOL COLL., OXFORD. 
 ATTTHOB OF 
 
 " THE COUNTY FAMILIES," 
 &c., Ac. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON: 
 HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS, 
 
 13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 
 
 1877. 
 
 All rights reserved.
 
 (LT 
 715 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 UNDER the title of Tales of our Great 
 Families," I have ventured to publish 
 a series of narratives relating to the families 
 of the titled and untitled nobility of this 
 country, in the hope of amusing my readers 
 with materials which for twenty years I have 
 been gleaning from various sources, and which 
 have grown so rapidly in my hands that my only 
 difficulty seems to lie in selecting amid such an 
 erribarras de richesses. If it be not literally true 
 that every house, whether high or low, has its 
 " skeleton in the closet," at all events the past 
 history of most of our ancient houses is replete 
 with incidents which, however artlessly they may 
 be told, will certainly make good the adage 
 that " truth is stranger than fiction." 
 
 In treating of these matters I wish by way of 
 preface to remark that my readers must not
 
 VI PREFACE. 
 
 always look for novelty. I shall often, I know, 
 be telling a " thrice-told tale ;" for in the anec- 
 dotal writings of Horace Walpole, Mrs. Delany, Sir 
 Nathaniel Wraxall, the Hon. Grantley Berkeley, 
 Captain Gronow, Lord William Lennox, the late 
 Duke of Buckingham, and Dr. Doran, I have a 
 constant well from which to draw supplies. It 
 will be possible, however, to recast these mate- 
 rials and those taken from other sources, and to 
 mould them all into one harmonious whole, 
 which, I trust, may not be found devoid of 
 interest. I am treading on delicate ground, and I 
 am conscious that here and there I may wound 
 the tender susceptibilities of descendants and 
 relatives of the personages whom I may bring 
 upon the stage. But to these I would say that 
 the lives of the members of our old historic 
 houses are themselves historic, and that I have a 
 full right to wake up the memory of what already 
 stands recorded against them in the gossiping 
 pages of Sir Nathaniel Wraxall or Horace Wal- 
 pole, unless I have reason to believe that 
 the stories I tell are untrue. If these papers 
 shall have any result beyond the amusement 
 of the leisure hours of those who take an 
 interest in the fates and fortunes of our " Great 
 Families," I feel no doubt that, on the whole, 
 that influence will not be of an injurious
 
 PREFACE. vii 
 
 nature, and that I shall not be justly chargeable 
 with lowering the esteem in which I hope that 
 the aristocracy of this land will long be held. 
 My papers may occasionally help to show up a 
 pretender and a charlatan in his true colours ; 
 but in the long run they will be found, I am 
 confident, rather to enhance the interest which 
 attaches to that body at whose head stand the 
 titled names of Howard and Stanley, Talbot and 
 Herbert, Courtenay and Cavendish, and the equally 
 noble though untitled name of Scrope. 
 
 It should be stated that some of these Tales 
 have appeared in the columns of " The Queen," 
 while a few others saw the light in " Chambers' 
 Journal" and " The City Press."
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 OF 
 
 THE FIRST VOLUME. 
 
 THE LADY BLANCHE ABUNDELL OP WAEDOTTR . . 1 
 
 THE Two FAIB GUNNINGS . . . .19 
 
 THE THELLUSSONB . . . . .41 
 
 THE NOBLE HOUSE OF CECIL . . . .52 
 
 LAURENCE, EABL FEBBEBS . . . .83 
 
 THE DUCHESS OF KINGSTON .... 105 
 THE DBUMMONDS, EABLS OF PEBTH . . . 130 
 
 THE THBEE Miss WALPOLES .... 147 
 THE WOOING OF SIB HENEAGE FINCH . . . 168 
 
 THE DUCAL HOUSE OF LEEDS .... 183 
 AN EPISODE IN THE HISTOBT OF THE CATHOABTS . 194 
 AN EPISODE IN THE NOBLE HOUSE OF HASTINGS . 207 
 THOMAS PITT, LOBD CAMELFOBD . . . 215 
 
 AN EPISODE IN THE EABLDOM OF PEMBBOKB . . 235 
 
 THE RISE OP THE ROTHSCHILDS . . . 250 
 
 AN EPISODE IN THE HOUSE OF HABLET . . 269 
 
 THE BAD LOBD STOUBTON .... 282 
 
 BENJAMIN, LOBD BLOOMFIELD .... 298
 
 TALES 
 
 OP 
 
 OUR GREAT FAMILIES, 
 
 THE LADY BLANCHE ARUNDELL 
 
 OF WARDOUR. 
 
 FEW of the ruined homes of our ancient 
 families are surrounded with a brighter 
 halo of interest than the old Castle of Ward our, 
 which stands on the south-western border of 
 Wiltshire, about half way between Salisbury 
 and Shaftesbury ; and few heroines of our own 
 country have earned a fairer name for bravery, 
 courage, and devotion in the hour of danger than 
 the Lady Blanche Arundell of Wardour. 
 
 By birth the Lady Blanche came of a noble 
 and distinguished race, the Somersets, at that 
 time Earls of Worcester, now Marquises of 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 2 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 Worcester and Dukes of Beaufort. She was the 
 sixth out of seven daughters who were born to 
 Edward, the fourth Earl, by his wife Elizabeth, 
 daughter of Francis, Earl of Huntingdon ; and 
 early in the reign of James I. she became the 
 wife of Thomas, second Lord Arundell of 
 Wardour, whose father, known far and wide in 
 his day as " the Valiant," had been created Lord 
 Arundell of Wardour, and also a Count of the 
 Holy Roman Empire on account of his gallantry 
 at the siege of Gran in Hungary, where, serving 
 under the banner of the Emperor Rudolph of 
 Germany, he captured the Turkish standard with 
 his own hands. 
 
 The Emperor's patent or charter (A.D. 1695) 
 states expressly that the title was conferred on 
 him because " he had behaved himself manfully in 
 the field, and also had shown great proof of 
 valour in the assaulting of divers cities and 
 castles, especially in forcing the water-tower near 
 Strigonium, when he took from the Turks their 
 banner with his own hand." This honour was 
 extended to every oue of his children and de- 
 scendants of either sex, so that every infant 
 who is born an Arundell is born also a count 
 or countess of the Roman Empire. Collins, in 
 his Peerage, Vol. V. p. 119, gives an amusing 
 account of the reason which led to his being
 
 THE LADY BLANCHE ARUNDELL 3 
 
 created au English Baron also. " On his return 
 home, a controversy arising among the Peers 
 whether that dignity, so conferred by a foreign 
 potentate, should be allowed here as to place 
 and precedence, or any other privilege, it occa- 
 sioned a warm dispute, which is mentioned by 
 Camden in his History of Queen Elizabeth. The 
 Queen, being asked her opinion of the case, is 
 reported to have answered that ' there was a close 
 tie of affection between the prince and subject, 
 and that, as chaste wives should have no glances 
 but for their own spouses, so should faithful 
 subjects keep their eyes at home, and not gaze 
 on foreign coronets ; that she, for her part, did 
 not care that her sheep should wear a stranger's 
 mark, or dance after the whistle of every 
 foreigner.'" The consequence was that the 
 precedence claimed on account of this foreign 
 honour was disallowed. King James, however, 
 soon after his accession, made amends for Eliza- 
 beth's jealousy by creating him Lord Arundell, 
 of Wardour, in the county of Wilts. 
 
 In 1639 Lady Blanche's husband succeeded to 
 his father's peerage, just as the Puritan storm 
 was gathering which was destined to burst on 
 the head of King Charles I. and of all his devoted 
 and loyal-heared followers and subjects, whether 
 Protestants or Roman Catholics. 
 
 B 2
 
 4 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 In the history of the Civil War which is usually 
 known as " The Great Rebellion," few episodes 
 are more touching than that of the siege, capture, 
 and recapture of the Castle of Wardour; but 1 
 must first say a word or two about the castle 
 itself. 
 
 The manor of Wardour or Warder, as may be 
 seen in Sir R. C. Hoare's " History of Wiltshire," 
 was in early times the property of a family 
 named St. Martin ; but the castle itself appears 
 to have been built in the reign of Richard II., 
 the last of the Plautagenets, by John, Lord 
 Lovel of Tichmarsh. The Lovels inhabited it 
 for only three generations, as it was sold on the 
 death of the last-named nobleman's grandson in 
 1494, the next heir to the estate finding himself 
 involved in great difficulties by his adherence to 
 the failing cause of the Red Rose of Lancaster. 
 
 The property of the Lovels was at that time 
 as extensive as any in the kingdom, and it must 
 be owned that Lord Lovel showed great taste 
 in the selection of a site for his castle, which is 
 thus described in the Gentleman's Magazine for 
 August, 1867 : " It stands on a flat plateau, 
 supported by high wooded banks on every side, 
 except on the south-west, where the ground 
 slopes down to the park and the lake, admitting 
 a glowing sun to light and warm the haughty
 
 THE LADY BLANCHE ARUNDELL. 5 
 
 building. A spot of greater beauty could hardly 
 have been found amongst all the scenes afforded 
 by that peculiarly rich part of Wiltshire where 
 it marches with the Dorsetshire border. On the 
 eastern side, flanked by two strong square 
 towers, was the great entrance, over which is 
 still to be read a Latin inscription relating how 
 the castle came into the hands of the Arundells." 
 
 We learn that after the Lovels, its next owners 
 were the Touchets, Lords Audley (afterwards 
 Earls of Castlehaven), to whom it was given by 
 Edward IV. in reward of their adherence to the 
 White Rose of York. The Touchets, however, 
 did not long hold it ; for the second of that line 
 who owned it, having been taken in arms against 
 Henry VII. at the battle of Blackheath, was 
 beheaded on Tower Hill. His estates, of course, 
 were confiscated ; and Wardour Castle, after 
 having been held for a short time by Sir Fulke 
 Greville, was purchased by Sir John Arundell, 
 of Llanherne, in Cornwall, who presented it to 
 his second son, Thomas, who married a sister of 
 Catharine Howard, the fifth wife of Henry VIII. 
 Attaching himself, however, very warmly to the 
 Duke of Somerset, in the next reign he shared 
 the Duke's fate, and perished on the scaffold. 
 
 The estates of Wardour were now again con- 
 fiscated, and granted to the Earl of Pembroke,
 
 n TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 whose seat at Wilton lay but a few miles dis- 
 tant, and who, no doubt, was glad to join War- 
 dour on to his own domain. However, in the 
 course of a few years the Earl resolved to sell it, 
 when it was repurchased by Sir Matthew Arun- 
 dell, whose eldest son was the hero of Hungary, 
 and became the first Lord Arundell of Wardour. 
 The chief features of the building, as it was 
 erected by Lord Lovel, still remain to the 
 present day. It forms an irregular quadrangle, 
 flanked at the four corners by four large main 
 towers. Above the entrance are the large win- 
 dows of what was the great banqueting hall ; 
 they still remain, presenting but a few indica- 
 tions of the rich tracery with which they once 
 were filled. The form of the court was a hexagon. 
 Each tower had a staircase of its own, and a 
 door leading into the courtyard I can scarcely 
 call a six-sided space a quadrangle in the centre 
 of which was a deep well. Besides these, there 
 was one principal staircase, leading up from the 
 court into the great hall. Parts of these stair- 
 cases still remain, but not a floor or a roof now 
 stands entire ; and the great banqueting hall, 
 which once resounded with song and music, and 
 was gay with banners and tapestry, is now roof- 
 less and bare, inhabited only by owls and jackdaws, 
 which find a home in the ivy that clusters thick
 
 THE LADY BLANCHE ARUNDELL. 7 
 
 and dark around the tenantless walls. But it is 
 time that I should hasten on to tell the story of 
 the siege of Wardour Castle, and of the heroism 
 of the Lady Blanche Arundell. 
 
 Thomas, the second Lord Arundell, having 
 always shown the warmest and most loyal at- 
 tachment to the royal cause, as soon as the Civil 
 War broke out, joined King Charles I. with a 
 regiment of horse, which he had raised and 
 equipped at his own expense, and was soon as 
 much distinguished by his bravery as by his 
 fidelity. Foreseeing the vengeance which his 
 loyalty would be sure to call down on his house 
 and family should the cause of the Roundheads 
 and Puritans triumph, before joining the King's 
 standard he exacted from his wife a promise that, 
 if his castle should be attacked in his absence, it 
 should be defended to the very last extremity. 
 How faithfully the Lady Blanche redeemed the 
 promise which she made to her lord, as he tore 
 himself from her embrace on quitting Wardour 
 for the last time, is proved by the written testi- 
 mony of both friends and enemies. 
 
 I will not waste time by dwelling long on the 
 picture which that parting scene must have pre- 
 sented, beyond saying that it is enough to have 
 inspired half our painters and poets. There is 
 the gate of the old grey castle, in deep shadow,
 
 8 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 while the rays of the afternoon sun light up the 
 opposite bank with a golden glow, which catches 
 the plumes of the cavaliers and dances on their 
 long flowing hair, as their horses prance and 
 toss their heads impatient to start on their march 
 towards Lansdowne Hill and Bath ; and the first 
 of the troops are already defiling from the castle 
 yard. The standard of the Arundells (sable, 
 six swallows, hirondelles, arg.) waves in the 
 breeze, and the ringing bugle, the tramping of 
 the horses, the gay colouring of their housings, 
 and the bright equipments of their riders, all 
 combine to form a brilliant contrast to that 
 group of anxious and loving faces that cluster 
 round the great doorway, seeking the last em- 
 brace and the last words of those dear ones on 
 whom they know and feel they are possibly now 
 to look for the last time. 
 
 Alas, for the Lady Blanche ! Her fair face, 
 crowned with locks whitening with her sixtieth 
 summer, is raised to meet the lips of her true 
 lord, who lowers his casque and stoops from his 
 charger to give her the last kiss. Alas indeed 
 for her ! for, whatever fate may be in store for 
 the dear ones of her companion ladies, that kiss 
 and that look of her husband was destined to be 
 the very last. A few short months, and her 
 husband would come back indeed, but a corpse.
 
 THE LADY BLANCHE ARUXDELL. 
 
 He would come back with glory and honour to 
 Wardour, but not to her ; he would come back 
 to his grave in the church hard by. He would 
 come back ; but it would not be in his power to 
 give her that which she coveted most of all 
 things in this world the smile of approval, the 
 thought of which was to be her solace through 
 the weary and toilsome hours of the coining siege. 
 There too stands her son's wife, Cicely, the 
 daughter of Sir Henry Compton, of Brambletye 
 House, Sussex, and widow of Sir John Fermor, 
 young and delicate, and half heart-broken at 
 having to part with her husband, the father of 
 her three young children, who cling to her, half 
 sobbing, half smiling, puzzled at the grief of 
 their mother and their grandmother, and at the 
 pretty sight of the warlike cavalcade. 
 
 As Lord Arundell rode away, gazing back on 
 his home, well may we imagine that the Lady 
 Blanche would raise her hands to heaven and 
 vow before saints and angels that she would keep 
 the word which she had given to her lord, and 
 that the vow was echoed back firmly and quietly 
 by Cicely, and somewhat more loudly and 
 emphatically by the fifty serving men who were 
 to form the garrison, and the bevy of waiting 
 maids who stood crying in the background. 
 Though sixty years old, she joined to the
 
 10 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 firmness and wisdom of that age the energy of 
 youth and the spirit of a Somerset ; and it was 
 without the smallest signs of fear or of any weak 
 emotion that on the 2nd of May, 1643, she 
 received the news that the Puritan leader, Sir 
 Edward Hungerford, was at her doors, and that, 
 in the name of the Parliament, he required 
 admittance in order to search for cavaliers and 
 " malignants." 
 
 It is needless to say that Sir Edward's demand 
 was disdainfully refused, and that he saw enough 
 to convince him that it would be no easy task to 
 effect an entry into that castle in its owner's 
 absence. He therefore sent for Colonel Strode and 
 some troops under his command, which raised 
 the force at his disposal to a total of thirteen 
 hundred men. He then sent a messenger to the 
 Lady Blanche, demanding the surrender of the 
 castle in due form ; but the only reply that he 
 received was that " she had a command from her 
 lord to keep it, and would obey that com- 
 mand." 
 
 For the last time on that evening, Lady 
 Arundell looked out in freedom from her chamber 
 in the tower; and it must have been with a 
 heavy heart that she gazed on the lake below 
 her windows that lake which still spreads its 
 peaceful waters to reflect the glowing sunsets
 
 THE LADY BLANCHE ARUNDELL. 11 
 
 and noted the splashing of the carp as they 
 played on its surface, and the song of the black- 
 bird, the thrush, and the cuckoo. But, together 
 with that heavy heart, she nursed and inwardly 
 cherished the firm resolve that she would dare 
 and do all that woman could and might, for the 
 sake of her husband who had gone to the 
 war. 
 
 Late at night, a harsher sound must have been 
 borne on the breeze to her ears the rattle of 
 heavy guns and of soldiers escorting them along 
 the road that wound through the woods. The 
 Puritans, at all events, had lost no time, for in 
 the morning her waiting-maid aroused her by the 
 news that the guns were already in position to 
 bear full upon the walls. Unfortunately, too, for 
 herself and for Wardour, the castle was placed 
 in a situation chosen rather for its beauty than 
 for its military capabilities. It lay low, and the 
 ground, rising around it on three out of the four 
 sides, gave her enemies a great advantage, of 
 which the Roundheads were not slow to avail 
 themselves. 
 
 Next day commenced a fierce cannonade, and 
 the first shot fell with deadly force in the 
 banqueting hall, where it cruelly damaged the 
 great chimney-piece, richly carved in dark red 
 marble, and said to have been worth .2000 even
 
 12 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 at that time a far larger sum than that which is 
 now represented by those figures. Portions of 
 this mantel-piece are still preserved in the 
 grounds, worked into a sort of rockery, and some 
 of the cannon balls have also been kept as relics 
 and memorials of the siege. For six long days 
 and nights, almost without intermission, the 
 battery continued to hurl its deadly missiles on 
 the besieged garrison, who stoutly and valiantly 
 rejected the conditions proffered over and over 
 again by the Roundheads, who promised quarter 
 to the ladies alone and not to the men under 
 arms. The number within the walls was small, 
 for out of the fifty males only twenty-five were 
 trained fighting men ; and had it not been for the 
 assistance of the maid-servants, who steadily 
 loaded their muskets, they would have been ex- 
 hausted with fatigue and want of sleep before 
 they could have held out long enough to obtain 
 honourable terms for all. 
 
 On the fourth or fifth day of the siege two mines 
 were sprung. The first did but little damage, 
 as fortunately it proved to be outside the walls of 
 the castle ; but the second, which exploded inside 
 one of the smaller vaults, greatly shook the 
 building, and showed that the fabric was in 
 danger of destruction. Still, however, the Lady 
 Blanche resolved not to yield ; and it was not
 
 THE LADY BLANCHE ARUNDELL. 13 
 
 until the sixth day, when the rebels brought 
 petards and applied them to the great door, and 
 balls of wild-fire to throw in at the windows, that 
 the gallant defender found herself obliged to 
 " sound a parley." 
 
 Thus reduced to the last straits, she agreed to 
 a surrender, but on condition of obtaining quarter 
 for all within the castle. It was also agreed that 
 the wearing apparel of the ladies should be at 
 their own disposal, and they should be allowed 
 six serving men to attend upon them wherever 
 their captors s'hould dispose of them ; and it 
 was further agreed that all the furniture in 
 the castle should be safe from plunder. 
 
 Finding themselves, however, in possession of 
 the castle walls, these " saints of the Lord" did 
 not feel bound to observe any of their promises 
 except the first. " Faith is not to be kept with 
 heretics," it would appear, is a principle current 
 in society at large, and acted on by many others 
 besides those whom the world calls " Romish 
 bigots." It is true that they spared the lives of 
 the gallant defenders of the castle, though the 
 latter had used their guns and cross-bows so well 
 as to kill above sixty of the besieging force. 
 The ladies and the three children were at once 
 led off as prisoners of war to Shaftesbury, just 
 over the Dorsetshire border, where they had the
 
 14 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 mortification of seeing five cartloads of the spoils 
 of Wardotir driven in triumph through the streets 
 of the town on their way to Dorchester, which 
 was then in the hands of the Parliamentary 
 army. 
 
 After a time, considering, or pretending to 
 consider, that the captive ladies and children 
 were not safe at Shaftesbury. the rebels pro- 
 posed to remove them to Bath, where the plague 
 was then raging, and where the " saints" pro- 
 bably hoped that death would do the work which 
 they dared not try with their own hands. But 
 here the high spirit of Lady Arundell was fully 
 roused, and, as she lay at the time in bed, worn 
 out with fatigue and anxiety, she refused to be 
 removed unless she was dragged by actual main 
 force. Dreading the unpopularity which such 
 severity would draw down upon their cause in 
 the Western counties, where the name of Arun- 
 dell was held in high esteem, at length the 
 " saints" abandoned their designs ; so they con- 
 tented themselves with wresting from Cicely 
 Arundell her two little boys, aged nine and seven 
 respectively, whom they considered such objects 
 of alarm that they sent them under a strong 
 guard to Dorchester. 
 
 Meantime my readers may wish to know how 
 it fared with the fabric which had stood the
 
 THE LADY BLANCHE ARUNDELL. 15 
 
 siege, and with the estates that surrounded it. 
 If so, I will tell them. 
 
 Sir Edward Hungerford and his troops, out 
 of pure revenge and spite, laid waste the whole 
 place with a frantic zeal, the effects of which 
 are felt down to the present day. They tore up 
 the park railings several miles in extent, let 
 loose or killed the red and fallow deer which 
 have never since been replaced burnt the park 
 lodges and entrances, and cut down the trees, 
 which they sold for fourpence and sixpence 
 apiece, though they must have been worth as 
 many pounds. They drove away all the horses 
 and cattle, and even cut to pieces and sold 
 as waste metal the leaden pipes which con- 
 veyed water underground to the Castle ; and, 
 in short, it is computed by local antiquaries that 
 the havoc which they caused would scarcely be 
 repaired for a hundred thousand pounds. Sir 
 Edward Hungerford placed the Castle under the 
 command of Colonel Ludlow, who held it from 
 May 1643 to the March of the following year. 
 
 Just at this time of Ludlow's taking posses- 
 sion, news was brought to Wardour that Lord 
 Arundell, the husband of the Lady Blanche, 
 had died at Oxford of wounds which he had re- 
 ceived at the battle of Lansdowne. A fortnight 
 had scarcely elapsed when hie son, young Lord
 
 16 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 Arundell, the husband of Cicely, appeared before 
 the walls, and summoned Ludlow and his crew 
 to deliver up the place to him, " for his Ma- 
 jesty's use." This summons was of course 
 refused ; and, burning with rage at his father's 
 death, his mother's capture, and his children's 
 imprisonment, he withdrew for a time to collect 
 materials for the siege of his own castle. Early 
 in the following year, accordingly, he sat down 
 before it, determining to retake it, either by 
 siege or by blockade. At length, despairing of 
 being able to effect his object by any less violent 
 means, he resolved to blow up the towers and 
 walls rather than to leave it in the hands of the 
 rebels. Accordingly, in the middle of the month 
 of March, he sprang beneath it a mine which 
 shattered its walls and western towers, and did 
 so much damage also to the stores of corn and 
 other provisions, that the garrison found them- 
 selves reduced to only four days' rations. Seeing 
 at length that all hope was at an end, Colonel 
 Ludlow capitulated, on terms which were ob- 
 served by the Royalists, and the Castle came 
 back again into the hands of its rightful 
 owners : 
 
 " And Bertram's right and Bertram's might 
 Did meet on Ellangowan height." 
 
 But the fabric came back into the hands of
 
 THE LADY BLANCHE ARUNDELL. 17 
 
 the noble and gallant Arundells sadly shorn of 
 its chief ornaments, and of all that makes a 
 house to be a home ; and bitter indeed must have 
 been the feelings of the young Lord Arundell 
 when he once again entered the well-known 
 halls, and gazed upon the bare walls of the 
 despoiled rooms, which for ten long weary 
 months had been tenanted by the rough and sour 
 soldiers of the Parliament, instead of by his own 
 gentle wife and his noble-hearted mother. How- 
 ever, he did return; and the family once more 
 occupied such portions of the Castle as could be 
 put into a habitable condition. 
 
 Just a hundred years ago, when the old Castle 
 had seen a hundred and thirty years of ruin and 
 desolation, a new and noble mansion, in the 
 Classical style, which now bears the name of 
 Wardour Castle, was built by the then Lord 
 Arundell, about a mile from the ancient site, 
 where the old grey walls rising proudly out of 
 a wilderness of dark foliage beside a lake, and 
 what once was a garden and a " pleasaunce," 
 still tell the tale of their defence by the hands of 
 the Lady Blanche Arundell. 
 
 And what about Lady Blanche herself? She 
 survived for some six years or more the loss of 
 her husband and the siege of his Castle. On 
 her release from captivity at Slmftesbury, she 
 
 VOL. i. C
 
 18 TALES' OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 retired to Winchester, where she lived in seclu- 
 sion, leading a life of piety and charity; and 
 there she ended her days in October, 1649, 
 having lived long enough to add to her other 
 griefs by mourning the fate of the sovereign 
 whom her husband had served so loyally. The 
 fine old parish church of Tisbury, adjoining the 
 park of Wardour, now holds all that is mortal 
 of the Lady Blanche Arundell. 
 
 It is some satisfaction, though a poor one at 
 the best, to know that Providence in the end 
 punished the proud house of Hungerford, one of 
 whose members had taken so active a part in 
 bringing about the desolation of the fair Castle of 
 Wardour. Those who wish to know how justice 
 overtook the Hungerfords, will do well to con- 
 sult that storehouse of amusing anecdote, " The 
 Vicissitudes of Families," by Sir Bernard 
 Burke.
 
 19 
 
 THE TWO FAIR GUNNINGS. 
 
 CAN it be that female beauty has degenerated 
 in England during the last century ? Such 
 a decadence seems improbable, nay, impossible, 
 in a country where the fair sex avail themselves 
 so plentifully of Nature's two great beautifiers, 
 fresh air and cold water ! And yet, which among 
 our celebrated beauties of the present day, whose 
 photographs may be seen in every stationer's 
 window, can boast of having excited one half of 
 the furore created by the two fair Miss Gunnings, 
 who took the London world of fashion by storm 
 in the year 1751, and turned the West End 
 almost mad ? 
 
 These ladies, whose beauty and whose names 
 are familiar to every reader of Horace Walpole 
 and of books of contemporary anecdote and 
 biography, were sisters, of plain Irish extrac- 
 
 C 2
 
 20 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 tion, wholly without fortune; and their only 
 title to aristocratic family wus the fact that they 
 were distantly related to an Irish baronet of the 
 name. The sudden appearance of these stars in 
 the heaven of London fashion caused so great a 
 sensation that even the staid rules of a Court 
 drawing room at St. James's were defied by a 
 mob of noble gentlemen and ladies clambering 
 upon chairs and tables to get a look at 
 them. 
 
 Walpole speaks of them as being " scarce 
 gentlewomen, but by their mother ;" but this 
 somewhat ill-natured remark is scarcely true. 
 The family of Gunning could hardly be said 
 to be aristocratic in name or in lineage, but 
 still it was respectable enough; and on their 
 mother's side Maria and Elizabeth Gunning might 
 fairly boast that the blood of the Plantagenets 
 ran in their veins. 
 
 All that the Heralds' College can tell us of the 
 Gunning family beyond the fact that a member 
 of it, having been British Minister at the Courts 
 of Berlin and St. Petersburg, was raised to a 
 baronetcy about a century ago is that it was 
 divided into two branches, which possessed in 
 the reign of Henry VIII. considerable estates in 
 the counties of Kent, Somerset, and Gloucester, 
 and that one of the Kentish Gunnings, in the
 
 THE TWO FAIR GUNNIXGS. 21 
 
 reign of James I., settled in Ireland, where he 
 became the ancestor of the Gunnings of Castle 
 Coote, in the county of Roscommon. One of 
 these, a Mr. John Gunning, by his marriage with 
 the Hon. Bridget Bourke, a daughter of Viscount 
 Bourke, of Mayo, had. along with a son who 
 became a general in the army, and who dis- 
 tinguished himself at the battle of Bunker's 
 Hill, three fair daughters, who were said to rival 
 the Three Graces. Two of these came to 
 London, like many other portionless girls before 
 and after their time, to push their way in 
 the world of fashion, their "faces" being their 
 "fortunes," in the words of the well-known 
 song : 
 
 " My face is my fortune, Sir, she said." 
 
 The third, and youngest, appears to have settled 
 down quietly in matrimonial life, in the south of 
 Ireland ; but she does not come within the scope 
 of this paper, which I intend to devote to the 
 career of her two sisters. 
 
 A letter concerning the Gunnings, written by 
 the parish clerk of Ileiningford Grey, in Hunt- 
 ingdonshire, to Mr. James Madden, of Cole House, 
 Fulham, is worth transcribing, less for the sake 
 of the information it contains, which is, 
 for the most part, an incorrect version of well-
 
 22 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 known facts, than on account of the amusing 
 self-importance of the writer. I follow his ortho- 
 graphy : 
 
 " Sir, 
 
 "I take the Freedom in wrighting to you, 
 from an information of Mr. Warrinton, that 
 you would be Glad to have the account of my 
 Townswoman the Notefied, the Farm's, Beauti- 
 full Miss Gunnings. Born at Hemingford Grey, 
 tho they left the Parish before I had Knoledge 
 Enough to Remember them, and I was born in 
 32 (1732). But I will give you the Best account 
 I can, which I believe is Better than any man 
 in the Country besides M3 7 self, tho I have not 
 the Birth Register for so long a Date, and since 
 Dr Dickens is dead, I dont know where it is, 
 but the Best account I Can Give you is, Elizth. 
 the Eldest, married to his Grace the Duke of 
 Hamilton, after his Decease to the Duke of 
 Arguile; the second, Mary, to the Viscount of 
 Coventre ; the third I never knew ritely to 
 home, but I beleeve to some privett Gentleman. 
 I Rember a many years ago at least 30, seeing 
 her picture in a print shop, I believe in St. Foul's 
 Churchyard, as follows : 
 
 " the youngest of these Beauties here we have in vue, 
 so like in person to the other two, 
 ho Ever views her features and her fame, 
 will see at once that Gunning is her Name."
 
 THE TWO FAIR GUNNINGS. 23 
 
 which is the Best account I Can give you of these 
 three but then there was two more, which 
 perhaps you don't know anything about, which 
 I will give you the true Mortalick register off, 
 from a black mavel which lies in our chancel, as 
 follows : Sophia Gunning, the youngest of four 
 daughters, all born at Hemniingford, in Hunt- 
 ingdonshire, to John Gunning, Esq.; died an 
 infant, 1737. Lissy Gunning, his fifth daughter, 
 born in Ireland ; died December 31, 1752, aged 
 8 years 10 months. ' Suffer little children and 
 forbid them not to come unto me, for of such is 
 the kingdom of heaven.' Matt. xix. 14. This, 
 Sir, is the Truest and Best Information I Can 
 Give you, or can Get, and if this is of any use 
 to you, I should be much obliged to you to let 
 me have a line or two from you, that I may be 
 satisfied that it was not in vain. 
 
 " And am, Sir, 
 
 "Your most obedient and humble servant, 
 " WM. CRISWELL. 
 
 " Hemmingford Grey, August 14, 1796." 
 
 But little is known of Catherine, the third Miss 
 Gunning, in the annals of fashion ; but I can so 
 far supplement the information of Mr. William 
 Criswell, as to tell your readers that the "privett 
 gentleman " alluded to was Robert Travis, Esq.,
 
 24 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 to whom Catherine Gunning was married in 
 1769, and who had a daughter who in the next 
 generation kept up the fame of the family for 
 personal beauty. 
 
 Whatever may have been the original fortune 
 and estate of John Gunning, of Castle Coote, 
 Ireland, the progenitor of " the two fair Gun- 
 nings," it would seem that at the time when they 
 were just budding into womanhood, their mother, 
 the Hon. Mrs Gunning, seriously contemplated 
 sending them to seek their fortunes upon the stage. 
 Walpole more than once alludes to this intention ; 
 and the circumstances under which the lovely 
 sisters were presented at Dublin Castle the year 
 before their debut in London, would seem to give 
 colour to the supposition. The Gunnings were 
 on intimate terms with Thomas Sheridan, at that 
 time manager of the Dublin Theatre ; and Mrs 
 Gunning, wishing to present her daughters to 
 the Earl of Harrington, then Lord-Lieutenant, 
 consulted Sheridan how could she procure 
 the necessary dresses, which she had not the 
 means to purchase. The difficulty was over- 
 come by Sheridan arraying the distressed beauties 
 out of the resources of the stage wardrobe ; 
 and so Maria and Elizabeth Gunning made 
 their first courtesies to the Lord-Lieutenant at- 
 tired as Lady Macbeth and Juliet, and, as tradi-
 
 THE TWO FAIR GUXNINGS. 25 
 
 tion states, looked most lovely. I wish it did not 
 also state that, when they became great ladies, 
 they proved forgetful of former kindness in their 
 time of need on the part of the warm-hearted, 
 improvident Sheridan. 
 
 The first mention that we find of the fair Gun- 
 nings as the "Belles of the season" in London, 
 is in a letter from Horace Walpole in June, 1751, 
 when he speaks of them as " two Irish girls of no 
 fortune, who make more noise than any of their 
 predecessors since the days of Helen, and who 
 are declared the handsomest women alive." The 
 fastidious Horace " was willing to allow the truth 
 of the statement if they were both taken to- 
 gether ;" though he adds by way of qualification, 
 that " singly he has seen much handsomer women 
 than either of them." How this can be, however, 
 is not clear to my dull comprehension. 
 
 There can be no doubt of the sensation caused 
 by the two fair Gunnings wherever they went 
 about London. They could not take a walk in 
 the park, or spend an evening at Vauxhall, 
 without being followed by such mobs as to force 
 them to retire and go home. One day when the 
 sisters visited Hampton Court, the housekeeper, 
 whether in sport or in earnest, showed the 
 company who were "lionising" the place into 
 the room where the Miss Gunnings were sitting,
 
 20 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 instead of into the apartment known as the 
 " Beauty room," with the significant remark, 
 " These are the beauties, ladies." 
 
 The fair sisters, the elder of whom had barely 
 completed her eighteenth year at the time of which 
 lam speaking, as may easily be imagined, did not 
 long retain the humble patronymic which they had 
 brought with them from Ireland, and had rendered 
 so famous. Elizabeth, the younger sister, drew 
 the first prize in the matrimonial lottery ; and the 
 story of her courtship and marriage had best 
 perhaps be told in Horace Walpole's own words, 
 which lets us into a scene in Mayfair Chapel in 
 the days when marriages not a la mode were 
 solemnised there. The old gossip writes to his 
 friend Sir Horace Mann, at Florence, under date 
 Feb. 27, 1752 : 
 
 " The event which has made the most noise 
 since my last is the wedding of the younger Miss 
 Gunning. . . . About six weeks ago the Duke 
 of Hamilton, the very reverse of the Earl [of 
 Coventry], but debauched, extravagant, and 
 equally damaged in his fortune and in his person, 
 fell in love with the youngest at a masquerade, 
 and determined to marry her in the spring. 
 About a fortnight since, at an immense assembly 
 at Lord Chesterfield's, made to show [off] the 
 house, which is really most magnificent, the
 
 THE TWO FAIR GUNNINGS. 27 
 
 Duke made love at one end of the room, while 
 he was playing at pharaoh (i.e., faro) with the 
 other : that is, he saw neither the bank nor his 
 own cards, which were of .300 each. He soon 
 lost a thousand. I own I was so little a professor 
 in love that I thought this parade looked ill for the 
 poor girl, and could not conceive, if he was so 
 much engaged with his mistress as to disregard 
 such sums, why he played at all. However, 
 two nights afterwards, being left alone with her 
 he found himself so impatient that he sent for a 
 parson. The doctor refused to perform the 
 ceremony without either a license or a ring. 
 The Duke swore he would send for the arch- 
 bishop. At last they were married with a ring 
 of the bed curtain, at half an hour after twelve, 
 at Mayfair Chapel. The Scotch are enraged ; 
 the women mad that so much beauty has had its 
 effect; and, what is most silly, my Lord Coven- 
 try declares that now he will marry the other. 
 The Duchess was presented on Friday. The 
 crowd was so great that even the noble mob in 
 the drawing room clambered into chairs and on 
 tables to get a look at her. There are mobs at 
 their door to see them get into their chairs ; and 
 people go early to get places at the theatres 
 when it is known that they will be there." 
 
 A few weeks after the marriage, the Duke of
 
 28 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 Hamilton conducted his lovely bride to the home 
 of his ancestors ; and so widely spread was the 
 fame of the beautiful Duchess, even in those 
 days when railways, penny postage, and daily 
 newspapers were things unknown, that, when 
 they stopped one night at a Yorkshire inn during 
 their journey, " seven hundred people sat up all 
 night in and about the house merely to see the 
 Duchess get into her post-chaise the next morn- 
 ing." 
 
 There can be little doubt that Elizabeth Gun- 
 ning's first marriage was prompted by ambition : 
 it could hardly have been a happy one, if we 
 may credit Wai pole's account of the Hamilton 
 menage. "The Duchess of Hamilton's history," 
 says he, " is not unentertaining. The Duke of 
 Hamilton is the abstract of Scotch pride. He and 
 the Duchess, at their own house, walk in to dinner 
 before their company, sit together at the upper 
 end of their own table, eat off the same plate, 
 and drink to nobody beneath the rank of an 
 earl. Would not one wonder how they could get 
 anybody, either above or below that rank, to 
 dine with them at all ?" It is indeed a marvel 
 how such a host could find guests of any degree 
 sufficiently wanting in self-respect to sit at his 
 table and endure his pompous insolence the 
 insolence of an innately vulgar mind, which,
 
 THE TWO FAIR GUNNINGS. 29 
 
 unhappily, is sometimes to be met even in the 
 most exalted rank of life. 
 
 Let us now for the present leave Elizabeth 
 Duchess of Hamilton to the enjoyment of her 
 conjugal felicity in the congenial society of her 
 stately spouse, and see what had meanwhile be- 
 fallen her sister Maria. 
 
 Maria Gunning, the elder and according to the 
 general opinion the loveliest of the two sisters, 
 on her first introduction to the beau monde of 
 London was followed by a long train of aristo- 
 cratic and noble admirers, among whom was the 
 Earl of Coventry ; a grave young lord of the re- 
 mains of the patriot breed, who long dangled after 
 her. The wavering intention of the Eurl was 
 most probably decided by the example set 
 him by one even of higher rank than himself; 
 and the marriage of Elizabeth to his Grace of 
 Hamilton was followed in less than three 
 weeks by that of Maria to his Lordship. Our 
 old friend Horace Walpole comments in a most 
 characteristic manner upon the notoriety of the 
 fair sisters. After recording the fact of their 
 marriages, he continues, " There are two wretched 
 women that are just as mnch talked of as the 
 two beauties, a Miss Jefferies and a Miss Blandy ; 
 the one condemned for murdering her uncle, the 
 other for the murder of her father." Lady
 
 30 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 Gower, writing to a friend in the country 
 shortly after the execution of these two 
 criminals, and lamenting the lack of sufficient 
 news to make her letter interesting says: 
 " Since the two Misses were hanged (Blandy 
 and Jefferies) and the other two Misses were 
 married (the Gunnings), there is nothing at all 
 talked of." 
 
 Shortly after their marriage the Earl and 
 Countess of Coventry, accompanied by Lady 
 Caroline Petersham another celebrated beauty, 
 whose charms were, however, at this period 
 somewhat on the wane paid a visit to France. 
 But the standard of beauty must have been 
 widely different in the two countries at that 
 time, for the English belles, doubtless to 
 their own extreme amazement, found themselves 
 entirely at a discount in the French capital. 
 " Our beauties," writes Walpole in October, 
 1752, " are returned, and have done no execution. 
 The French would not conceive that Lady 
 Caroline Petersham ever had been handsome, 
 nor that my Lady Coventry has much pretence to 
 be so now. Poor Lady Coventry," he continues, 
 " was under piteous disadvantages ; for, besides 
 being very silly, ignorant of the world and good 
 breeding, speaking no French, and suffered to 
 wear neither red nor powder, she had that
 
 THE TWO FAIR GUNNINGS. 31 
 
 perpetual drawback upon her beauty ; her lord, 
 who is sillier in a wiser way, and as ignorant, 
 speaking very little French himself, just enough 
 to show how ill-bred he is." It would have been 
 well for Lady Coventry if she had never been 
 suffered to wear " red nor powder ;" for it was to 
 the lavish use of paint that the malady which 
 caused her early death was attributed by her 
 physicians. 
 
 The lovely Countess seems to have divided 
 her time between her toilette and her amusements, 
 On one occasion she exhibited to George Selwyn 
 the costume which she was going to wear at an 
 approaching fete. The dress was of blue silk, 
 richly brocaded with silver spots of the size of a 
 shilling. "And how do you think I shall look 
 in it, Mr. Selwyn ?" asked the self-satisfied beauty. 
 "Why," replied he, "you will look like change 
 for a guinea !" 
 
 Conspicuous in the list of this lady's adorers 
 was Frederick St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, 
 apropos of whom Walpole writes, March 2, 1754 : 
 " T'other night they danced minuets for the 
 entertainment of the King at the masquerade, 
 and then he sent for Lady Coventry to dance. 
 It was quite like Herodias ; and I believe, if he 
 had offered a boon, she would have chosen the 
 head of St. John I think I told you of her
 
 32 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 passion for the young Lord Bolingbroke." A 
 little later the Duke of Cumberland's admiration 
 of Lady Coventry was the topic of conversation, 
 according to that universal intelligencer from 
 whom most of the gossip of the day has come 
 down to us. 
 
 Many amusing stories are told of Lady 
 Coventry's extreme silliness ; one of the best of 
 them is as follows : The old King (George II.) 
 asked her one evening if she was not sorry that 
 there were to be no more masquerades. She 
 replied that " She was tired of them indeed, that 
 she was surfeited with most London sights ; there 
 was but one left that she wanted to see and 
 that was a coronation I" This wish (expressed 
 with such naivete) was not granted, for Lady 
 Coventry died just a fortnight before the King. 
 
 The prestige of Lady Coventry's exceeding 
 beauty attended her to the last. Only a few 
 months before her death in 1760, she was so 
 mobbed by a crowd of admiring plebeians while 
 walking in the park, that the King ordered a 
 guard to be always ready for the future, whenever 
 Lady Coventry should be pleased to ' take her 
 walks abroad." Another letter-writer of the 
 period, the Hon. J. West, gives an amusing 
 description of the result of these precautions. 
 "Her ladyship went to the park, and, pretending
 
 THE TWO FAIR GUNNINGS. 33 
 
 to be frightened, directly desired the assistance 
 of the officer of the guard, who ordered twelve 
 sergeants to walk abreast before her, and a 
 sergeant and twelve men behind her, and in 
 this pomp did the idiot walk about all the 
 evening, with more mob about her than ever, 
 as you may imagine; her sensible husband 
 supporting her on one side, and Lord Pembroke 
 on the other. This is at present the talk of the 
 whole town." 
 
 Elizabeth Gunning, having become a widow in 
 1758, gave her hand, a twelvemonth later, to 
 one Colonel John Campbell, then heir presump- 
 tive to the honours of the great ducal house of 
 Argyll, and commenced married life for a second 
 time under auspices even more brilliant and far 
 happier than her first venture. Walpole writes 
 of it as " A match that would not disgrace Ar- 
 cadia. Her beauty has made enough sensation, 
 and in some people's eyes is even improved. He 
 has a most pleasing person, countenance, man- 
 ner; and, if they could but carry to Scotland 
 some of our sultry English weather, they might 
 restore the ancient pastoral life, when fair kings 
 and queens reigned at once over their subjects 
 and their sheep." 
 
 It is a well-known fact, frequently mentioned 
 by Chesterfield, Walpole, and other contem- 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 o4 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 porary writers, that for the sake of Colonel 
 Campbell, Elizabeth Gunning, in her year of 
 widowhood, had rejected another ducal coronet, 
 that of the Duke of Bridgewater. 
 
 But the career of the beautiful Countess was 
 fast drawing to a close, and Walpole writes to 
 a friend : " The kingdom of beauty is in as 
 great disorder as the kingdom of Ireland. My 
 Lady Pembroke looks like a ghost. My Lady 
 Coventry is going to be one." Poor creature ! 
 The heartless wit spoke only too truly. 
 
 One of the last occasions on which we hear of 
 her appearance in public was at the trial of 
 Earl Ferrers, in the House of Lords, April 1760, 
 for the murder of his steward. Walpole writes 
 of this trial : " The seats of the peeresses were 
 not near full, and most of the beauties absent; 
 but, to the amazement of everybody, Lady 
 Coventry was there, and, what surprised me 
 much more, looked as well as ever. I sat next 
 but one to her, and should not have asked her 
 if she had been ill, yet they are positive she has 
 few weeks to live. She and Lord Bolingbroke 
 seemed to have different thoughts, and were 
 acting over all the old comedy of eyes." 
 
 Walpole's description of her death-bed is a 
 most melancholy one. " Poor Lady Coventry," 
 he writes, " concluded her short race with the
 
 THE TWO FAIR GUNNINGS. 35 
 
 same attention to her looks. She lay constantly 
 on a couch, with a pocket-glass in her hand ; 
 and when that told her how great the change 
 was, she took to her bed. During the last fort- 
 night she had no light in her room but the lamp 
 of a tea-kettle, and at last took things in through 
 the curtains of her bed, without suffering them 
 to be withdrawn." The mob, who never quitted 
 curiosit}' about her, went to the number of ten 
 thousand only to see her coffin. Her married 
 life extended over something more than eight 
 years. She did not, however, pass away until 
 she had borne to the earl three children; two 
 daughters, and also a son, George William, who 
 became the seventh Earl of Coventry, and lived 
 for nine years in the present century. 
 
 I have before mentioned that Lady Coventry's 
 early death was mainly attributed to her lavish 
 use of cosmetics; and I find another terrible 
 example of the same extraordinary infatuation 
 in the pages from which I have already so largely 
 quoted. Horace Walpole writes in 1762 : "That 
 pretty young woman, Lady Fortrose, Lady Har- 
 rington's daughter, is at the point of death, 
 killed, like Lady Coventry and others, by white 
 lead, of which nothing could cure her." 
 
 It will probably strike the reader of Horace 
 Wai pole's Letters that he speaks with undue 
 
 l> 2
 
 36 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 harshness of Lady Coventry's ignorance and ill- 
 breeding, when we consider the giddy height to 
 which she had been raised from a life of obscu- 
 rity, if not of poverty, at a very early age; the 
 amount of adulation poured upon her by the 
 highest personages in the land ; and, above all, 
 the facts that coarseness and ignorance were 
 common failings among the aristocracy of that 
 day. 
 
 At the time of her sister's death, in October, 
 1760, the Duchess of Hamilton was in such bad 
 health that her physicians apprehended a rapid 
 decline, and ordered her to pass the winter 
 abroad. Walpole speaks of her at this time as 
 possessing " but little remains of beauty ;" her 
 features, he adds, " were never so handsome as 
 Lady Coventry's, and she has long been changed, 
 though not yet, I think, above six-and-twenty ; 
 the other was but twenty-seven." The Duchess, 
 however, recovered, and was one of the three 
 ladies appointed to accompany the Princess 
 Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz from Ger- 
 many to England previous to her marriage with 
 George III. It is said that when the young 
 German bride arrived in sight of the palace of 
 her future husband, she turned pale, and evinced 
 such evident symptoms of terror as to force a 
 smile from the Duchess of Hamilton, who sat
 
 THE TWO FAIR GUNNINGS. 37 
 
 by her side ; upon which the young princess 
 briskly remarked, " My dear duchess, you may 
 laugh, for you have been married twice; but it 
 is no joke to me." 
 
 The general respect in which the young 
 Dowager Duchess of Hamilton was held at the 
 time of her second marriage, forced an acknow- 
 ledgment even from the censorious Walpole, that 
 her merit was as conspicuous as her good for- 
 tune, and that the extraordinary sensation 
 created by her beauty had not at all impaired 
 the modesty of her behaviour. The Duchess of 
 Hamilton became Duchess of Argyll in 1770, a 
 change of title characteristically commented upon 
 by Walpole, who observes that, " As she is not 
 quite so charming as she was," he does not know 
 " whether it is not better than to retain a title 
 which put one in mind of her beauty." In 177 tf 
 she was created Baroness Hamilton, of Hamilton, 
 in Leicestershire, in her own right. She was 
 one of the Ladies of the Bedchamber to Queen 
 Charlotte, who, jealous of her undoubted favour 
 with the King, treated her so badly that at one 
 time she contemplated resigning her post. The 
 Duke consented that she should do so, on condi- 
 dition that he might dictate the letter of resigna- 
 tion. The letter was accordingly written, but 
 the Duchess, greatly dissatisfied with the terms
 
 38 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 employed, which by no means expressed her feel- 
 ings, added a postscript to this effect : " Though 
 / wrote the letter, the Duke dictated it." Ulti- 
 mately the affair was arranged by the Duchess 
 retaining her place. 
 
 Elizabeth, Duchess of Hamilton and of Argyll, 
 was the wife of two dukes, and the mother of 
 four. By her first husband, she was mother of 
 James, seventh duke, and of Douglas, eighth 
 Duke of Hamilton : and by her second husband, 
 of George, sixth duke, and of John, seventh 
 Duke of Argyll. She died on the 20th Decem- 
 ber, 1790, and so terminated the history of the 
 two fair Gunnings. 
 
 There is at Croome Court, the seat of the pre- 
 sent Earl of Coventry, a fine portrait of Maria 
 Gunning, and another of her " double-duchessed" 
 sister; the latter was also painted by Sir Joshua 
 Reynolds, and sat to other artists. At Inverary 
 Castle, Argyllshire, the seat of the Duke of 
 Argyll, there is an authentic full-length portrait 
 of Elizabeth Gunning (his Grace's grand-mother) 
 by Cotes, and another, also full-length, is to be 
 seen at Hamilton Palace. I am given to under- 
 stand that the present Duke of Argyll, the 
 grandson of Elizabeth Gunning, has two other 
 portraits of his ancestress, both half length, and
 
 THE TWO FAIR GUNNINGS. 39 
 
 that one of them is at his Grace's town residence 
 at Campden-hill. 
 
 The " fair Gunnings" were painted as com- 
 panion pictures by Cotes in 1751, and also by 
 Read ; the latter pictures were both engraved by 
 Finlayson, and other engravings of Maria and 
 Elizabeth are to be seen in the British Museum. 
 Read represents the Duchess in a lace mob cap 
 and cloak, while an engraving by Houston por- 
 trays her as a country lass, with a rose in her 
 bosom. Of Maria there is a portrait by Hamil- 
 ton, whole length, with a greyhound by her side. 
 The two sisters are very much alike ; both are 
 remarkable for their small mouths, high fore- 
 heads, aquiline noses, and arched eyebrows. 
 Certainly, Maria would be adjudged by the 
 ladies nowadays the prettier in detail she is 
 slim and elegant, though rather inanimate ; but 
 I much prefer the looks of Elizabeth, who is 
 darker, plumper, and more intelligent, and alto- 
 gether a finer woman. I am told that there is 
 also a mezzotint of " the three Miss Gunnings," 
 but 1 have not been able to find a copy in the 
 Print Room at the British Museum.
 
 40 
 
 THE THELLUSSONS. 
 
 IT is stated as a fact, by a writer in the Stock 
 Exchange Review, that " at the end of the 
 last century, when George the Third was King, 
 and when .Meyer Auselm Rothschild kept a 
 broker's shop in the Jew-lane of Frankfort, 
 there were six bankers in London who had each 
 and all the repute of being possessed of extraordi- 
 nary wealth, or what would now be termed 
 millionaires. These six bankers," he adds, " were 
 Thomas Coutts, Francis Baring, Joseph Denison, 
 Henry Hope, Lewis Tessier, and Peter Thellus- 
 son." I purpose in my present chapter to tell my 
 readers a little about the latter wealthy gentle- 
 man, what sort of will he made, and what 
 became of his wealth, which at one time threat- 
 ened to prove of fabulous amount, to swallow 
 up half the riches of his contemporaries, and to
 
 THE THELLUSSONS. 41 
 
 form the nucleus of a fortune which should 
 fairly outstrip the Rothschilds and Esterhazys. 
 
 We are told by Sir Nathaniel William Wraxall, 
 in his amusing "Memoirs of My own Time," 
 that George the Third had a very great objection 
 to raise to the peerage any member of a family 
 engaged in commercial pursuits ; and it was 
 long before he could be persuaded even by his 
 favourite " heaven-born" minister, William Pitt 
 to break his resolution. The first to burst 
 down the barrier of royal exclusiveness was Mr. 
 Robert Smith, a banker in London, and the 
 son of a banker at Nottingham, to whom Pitt was 
 largely indebted for the " sinews of war" in the 
 earlier part of his career, and on whom, there- 
 fore, was conferred, in 1797, the title of Lord 
 Carrington, or, as the family now spell it, 
 Caringtou. 
 
 Another of the wealthy money-changers and 
 money-brokers, whose fortunes were established 
 by successful commerce, east of Temple Bar, in 
 the middle of the last century, was the afore- 
 said Peter Thellusson, who was born in 1735. 
 Though not known to fame on this side the 
 British Channel, yet, according to Sir Bernard 
 Burke and the Heralds, the Thellussons trace 
 back their origin to the ancienne noblesse of the 
 kingdom of France. The first of the name of
 
 42 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 whom we hear anything in particular was Frede- 
 rick de Thellusson, Seigneur de Flesche'res, 
 and Baron de Saphorin, one among the nobles 
 who assisted Philip VI. of France in his expedi- 
 tion into Flanders early in the fourteenth century. 
 His family still owned their hereditary estates at 
 Fleschere*, near Lyons, up to the time of the great 
 Massacre of St. Bartholomew, in August, 1572, 
 when they fell among the victims of that dreadful 
 night According to tradition, the only member of 
 the family who escaped the slaughter was Theo- 
 philus de Thellusson, who had married a sister of 
 the Count de Saluce, at that time the Governor of 
 the city of Lyons; he seems to have effected his 
 escape into Savoy, and thence to Geneva, where 
 he settled, and his descendants at different times 
 filled high places connected with the Republic 
 of that city. 
 
 Isaac de Thellusson, who established himself as 
 a banker in a good way of business in Geneva, 
 and afterwards at Paris, and who was Ambas- 
 sador from his native city to the Court of France 
 in the reign of Louis XV., had four sons, one of 
 whom, Peter, became the great merchant of 
 London, whom we have already named. His 
 history is certainly a very singular one. The 
 father had largely increased his business by 
 taking into his employ as a clerk, and afterwards
 
 THE THELLUSSONS. 43 
 
 as a partner, a man subsequently celebrated in 
 French history, M. Necker, the same who was 
 Minister of Finance during the French Revolu- 
 tion. The firm accordingly became known as 
 Messrs. Thellusson and Necker. The son had 
 joined his father's banking house in Paris when 
 a young man ; but as soon as the first throes of 
 the Revolution made themselves felt, he resolved 
 to seek a country where property would be 
 more secure, and with that view to establish in 
 London a branch in connection with his father's 
 business. His great and absorbing passion 
 seems to have been to acquire a large fortune 
 in hard cash ; and many years had not elapsed 
 ere Mr. Peter Thellusson found his sails swell- 
 ing with the breezes of favouring fortune, for he 
 succeeded in establishing one of the principal 
 banking houses in the City. 
 
 " A man of great sagacity and extraordinary 
 perseverance," writes Mr. F. Martin, "coupled 
 with a desire of making money, which amounted 
 to an all-absorbing passion. Mr. Thellusson soon 
 found success at his door, and in a few years 
 built up one of the first banking establishments 
 in the British metropolis." But however great 
 his wealth, he still yearned for more. Accord- 
 ingly unsated with the gold which he had ac- 
 cumulated, he resolved, as he knew that he
 
 44 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 could not live for ever himself, to try at 
 least if he could not hand down a colossal for- 
 tune to his distant posterity, either entire or in 
 three shares, he did not much care which. Pro- 
 bably such a will as he devised, in order to 
 effect that end, had never been heard of, or 
 even dreamt of, before the year of grace 1797; 
 the sequel will prove that it is a good thing 
 for society at large that there have not been 
 many found to imitate his example ; and it is 
 well that, although his will was allowed to stand, 
 the recurrence of such a disposition was forbid- 
 den by a special Act of Parliament. 
 
 Towards the close of the last century, when he 
 was still several years short of the allotted 
 " three score and ten," he one day quietly took 
 stock of his worldly possessions, and found that 
 he was the owner of a clear .6,000,000 in hard 
 cash, besides an annual rent roll of 4,500. He 
 " had satisfied the ordinary ambition of an Eng- 
 lish bourgeois he had founded a family. Peter 
 Isaac, the son of his youth and the prop of his 
 house, was heir to ,35,000 a year in money and 
 land, and might claim to be a born gentleman. 
 Peers and peeresses might hereafter spring in 
 intermediate succession from the loins of that 
 denizen of a dingy little back parlour behind the 
 Bank. The best men upon 'Change envied the
 
 THE THELLUSSONS. 45 
 
 prosperous Peter Thellusson, who had no object 
 of ambition unsatisfied. Peter himself was of a 
 different mind ; he had not nearly money enough. 
 Let other men be content to found one family ; 
 Peter was lucky enough to have three sons, and 
 he would found three families. It was not that 
 he loved his sons, or his sons' sons ; but it was 
 the hope and desire of this magnificent posthu- 
 mous miser to associate his name with three 
 colossal fortunes. If he did not love his sons, 
 he did not hate them ; he was simply indifferent 
 to everything except to his one cherished ob- 
 ject." 
 
 Accordingly he took the very best legal ad- 
 vice upon the subject, and made, as most men 
 make, a will. By this he left about .100,000 
 to his wife, his three sons, and three daughters 
 probably in order to show the world that no 
 unnatural antipathy to his nearest relatives 
 tainted his last dying testament with mania ; 
 while the rest of his fortune, amounting to 
 more than 600,000, was conveyed to trustees, 
 who were to let it accumulate till after the 
 deaths not only of his children, but of all the 
 male issue of his sons and grandsons ; in fact, 
 till every man, woman, and child of the off- 
 spring of Peter, and alive or begotten at Peter's 
 decease, should be defunct. After that event
 
 46 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 the vast property, with its accumulations at 
 compound interest, was to be given to the nearest 
 male descendants who should bear the family 
 name of Thellusson. No one of the children or 
 grandchildren who had smiled in old Peter Thel- 
 lusson's face, or had trembled at his presence, 
 or had squalled at the sound of his hard, harsh 
 voice, should be ever the better or richer for all 
 his wealth. The money, divided into three 
 equal parts, was to go to the eldest male descen- 
 dants of his eldest, his second, and his third 
 sons respectively. If there should be a failure 
 in the male issue of any of the three, the share 
 was to be divided among the representatives of 
 the other two ; if a failure of two, then the three 
 shares were to go as one vast property to the 
 one survivor ; but, should after all no lineal male 
 descendants then remain, the whole was directed 
 to be sold, in order that it might be applied 
 towards paying off a part of the national debt ! 
 This was the grandest part, perhaps, of all his 
 scheme ; the very idea of it is bewildering to the 
 ordinary business mind. 
 
 Having done what he pleased with his own, 
 and excluded, like an unnatural parent, his own 
 offspring from almost any share in the benefit of 
 the estate which he held in trust for " those of 
 his own household," he winds up his testament
 
 THE THELLUSSONS. 47 
 
 with a whining appeal to the Legislature, almost 
 worthy of Shylock appealing against mercy ; he 
 had earned his money by honest industry, and 
 he humbly trusted that the two Houses of Parlia- 
 ment would not alter his will. But, though man 
 proposes, a higher Power disposes ; and this Mr. 
 Thellusson's family learned speedily. With such 
 intentions recorded in his will, which he duly 
 signed and sealed, Peter Thellusson died ; but 
 those intentions, like so many others in this world, 
 were doomed to be frustrated. The family met 
 after the funeral and the will was opened, and 
 created sensations which vibrated through the 
 laud in widening circles. Our law books picture 
 to us the blank disappointment of the then living 
 relatives, the gentle murmur of a past generation 
 of lawyers, and the gaping wonder of the general 
 public. There were then alive three sons and six 
 grandsons of this malignant old merchant, " all 
 destined to live the life of Tantalus ; to see this 
 great pagoda tree growing up before them, yet 
 never to pluck one unit of its fruit." The terms 
 of the will enjoined, that when the last survivor 
 of all the nine children and grandchildren should 
 yield up his breath, then the charm was to end ; 
 the great mountain of accumulated wealth was to 
 be divided into three portions, and one-third was 
 to be given to each of the " eldest male lineal
 
 48 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 descendant " of his three sons. It is indeed 
 strange to think that so shrewd a man should 
 have had apparently no suspicion that his 
 nearest relations would do anything rather than 
 rest content under such a will, or that the Court 
 of Chancery under Lord Eldon would not engulph 
 in its wide jaws a good portion of his fortune 
 under such tempting conditions. And so it came 
 to pass that in something less than two years 
 after Peter Thellussoii was gathered to his fathers, 
 two bills had been filed in Chancery impeaching 
 the will, the one by his widow and children, and 
 the other by his trustees. 
 
 But although the suits were unsuccessful, the 
 will being allowed to stand good by the Lord 
 Chancellor and the other judges of the court, who 
 decided in favour of the testator, yet, for years 
 after, members of the bar found a rich mine which 
 they were not unwilling to work in cases con- 
 nected with the Thellusson will ; and only a few 
 years of the present century had elapsed when 
 poor Mrs Thellusson, the widow, died it is said 
 of a broken heart. 
 
 To be brief, such men as Lords Loughborough, 
 and Alvauley, and Eldon, allowed the litigation to 
 go up to the House of Lords, by which the will 
 was confirmed. The Legislature, however, after- 
 wards took up the affair, and, although they
 
 THE THELLUSSONS. 49 
 
 would not set aside the will by an ex post facto 
 law, they enacted that the power of devising 
 property for the purpose of accumulation shall be 
 restrained in general to twenty-one years after 
 the. death of the testator. It was calculated at 
 the time that the Thellusson fund, if it had been 
 left to accumulate as its founder had specified, 
 could not have amounted to less than 19,000,000 
 at the moment of distribution, and would very 
 probably have reached the figure of 32,000,000. 
 But this calculation was rash. It was beautifully 
 correct in theory and on paper, but would not 
 work in practice ; evidently, too, not a shadow of 
 a doubt existed in his mind when he made the 
 will, that by the simple process of allowing a large 
 capital locked up under the protection of the law 
 to accumulate through three generations, the 
 wealth of the future Thellusson would swell into 
 dimensions compared with which fortunes of 
 kings and emperors would be mere beggarly flea- 
 bites. Unfortunately for himself, he had left out 
 of his calculation one all-important item, the ex- 
 istence of a certain institution called the Court of 
 Chancery, with its array of long-robed worship, 
 all ready to claim a share in the interest and 
 compound interest. The Court of Chancery so 
 " clipped and pollarded Peter Thellusson's oak 
 that it was not much larger than when he left it." 
 VOL i. E
 
 50 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 Not only was there a Chancery suit to set aside 
 the will, but there was a cross suit to have the 
 trusts of the will performed under the direction 
 of the Court of Chancery a suit which at sixty 
 years old was as lively as ever. Of, course, there 
 were also other suits ; suits about post-testament 
 acquisitions, ajpout advowsons, &c. The last 
 survivor of the nine lives died in February, 1856. 
 
 The unhappy lady who was the wife of this 
 selfish millionaire, was a Miss Wood ford, the 
 daughter of Mr Matthew Woodford, and sister of 
 Sir Ralph Woodford, of Carlby, sometime M.P. 
 for Evesham. She derived but little comfort from 
 her husband's bank notes, and owned with her 
 last breath that the source of true happiness is 
 not to be looked for in money bags. 
 
 Seats in the House of Commons were found for 
 all the three sons of Peter Thellusson ; the Irish 
 Barony of Rendlesham was conferred on the 
 eldest, Peter Isaac, in 1800, and three of this 
 nobleman's sous having held the title in succes- 
 sion, the latter now belongs to his grandson, the 
 fifth Lord Rendlesham. 
 
 But the many millions sterling which the great 
 merchant had hoped would eventually come to his 
 descendants, what has become of them ? The 
 money was never destined to be theirs in its in- 
 tegrity ; and but a comparatively modest fortune
 
 THE THELLUSSONS. 51 
 
 remained, and still remains, to the house. Lord 
 Rendlesham, the head of the family, holds a seat 
 in the House of Commons, as one of the Members 
 for Suffolk, in which county he owns a fair estate ; 
 but though only eighty years have passed since 
 old Peter Thellusson's death, there is now no 
 banking house which bears his name in the great 
 world of London. Sic transit gloria mundi. 
 
 E 2
 
 51 
 
 THF NOBLE HOUSE OF CECIL. 
 
 IF HORACE WALPOLE was allowed to 
 manufacture such a word as "Double- 
 Duchessed" as an epithet to the fair Miss 
 Gunning; who married successively the Dukes of 
 Hamilton and Argyll, I suppose that I may be 
 pardoned if I take a similar liberty and ask my 
 readers to pardon me for giving them a brief 
 account of the " Double-Marquissed" House of 
 Cecil. It is not often that two members of 
 the same family are created Earls in a single day, 
 and that their respective male descendants attain 
 a still higher step in the peerage after a lapse 
 of nearly two centuries. Yet such is the history of 
 the Cecils, now Earls and Marquises of Exeter 
 and of Salisbury. 
 
 And first it may strike my readers as strange 
 that, though the name of Cecil is no older than
 
 THE NOBLE HOUSE OF CECIL. 53 
 
 the reign of Queen Mary, yet the ancestors of 
 this two-fold marquisate were a very ancient 
 stock ; for did not Robert Sisilt assist Robert 
 Fitz-Hamon in the conquest of Glamorganshire 
 and Gower Land, under William Rufus? And 
 did he not receive, in recompense for his services, 
 the fair manor oi Alterennes, in the County of 
 Hereford ? And was not his son and heir Sir 
 James Sisilt, of Beaufort, in the County of 
 Glamorgan ? and did he not fall at the siege of 
 Wallingford, " having then on him a vesture 
 with his arms and ensigns in needlework, as they 
 afterwards appeared on the tomb of his descendant, 
 Gerard, in the Abbey of Dore," the same which 
 were formally assigned by the King to his lineal 
 descendant, Sir John Sisilt, and the same which 
 are now borne by the Marquises of Exeter and 
 of Salisbury, viz., " Barry of ten, arg. and az. 
 over all six escutcheons, three, two, and one, sa., 
 each charged with a lion rampant of the first" 
 the latter, adds Sir Bernard Burke, "with a 
 crescent for difference f I pass over some seven 
 or eight generations, and come to the above-named 
 Sir John Sisilt, concerning whom Mr. Sharpe 
 relates in his " Present Peerage" that a fierce 
 contest arose at Halidon Hill in 1333 between 
 him and Sir William de Fakenham respecting 
 the arms thus heraldically described. On this
 
 54 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 occasion they were adjudged to Sir John by a 
 commission from Edward JIL, who forbade the 
 rival knights from meeting and doing battle 
 for the shield in single and possibly in deadly 
 combat. His great grandson Philip appears to 
 have spelt his name as Sicelt, which was again 
 modernised into Cyssel by his son David, Sergeant- 
 at-Arms and steward of the manor of Weston, in 
 Northamptonshire, memorable in after-time as 
 the place where Henry VIII. parted with his 
 daughter, the Lady Margaret, who eventually 
 became the ancestress of the Stewart and Bruns- 
 wick lines. 
 
 David's son, Richard, who appears to have 
 called himself indifferently Sitcell, Sicelt, or 
 Syssel, was page and groom of the wardrobe to 
 " bluff King Hal" and Constable of Warwick 
 Castle; and he attended Henry as one of his 
 Court on his interview with Francis, King of 
 France, on the Field of the Cloth of Gold. He 
 is described as being " of Burley," and he certainly 
 served as High Sheriff of Rutlandshire in 1539. 
 He received from the Crown a grant of 300 
 acres in St. Martin's at Stamford, together with 
 the site of St. Michael's Priory ; and he seems 
 also to have purchased the manor of Esyngdon, 
 or Essendon, in Rutlandshire, whence his
 
 THE NOBLE HOUSE OF CECIL. 00 
 
 grandson, the first Lord Salisbury, took the title 
 of Lord Cecil of Essendon. 
 
 This gentleman was the father of a statesman 
 whose name is familiar to every reader of the 
 History of England under the reigns of the 
 Tudors and Stuarts William, Lord Burghley. 
 I will not, however, speak here of the great 
 Burleigh in his capacity of a statesman, but only 
 as a private individual. He was an ardent and 
 zealous genealogist, when his public duties gave 
 him time for such pursuits ; and his labours or 
 amusements in this direction, though they often 
 related to other families than his own, were 
 sometimes directed to researches into the early 
 annals of his own house. An excessive eagerness 
 for the credit of a noble ancestry was one of his 
 foibles ; and a leading antiquary of the day, 
 taking advantage of the classical appearance of 
 the newly-adapted name of Cecil, endeavoured 
 to court his favour by gravely trying to trace 
 his descent from a patrician house of ancient 
 Rome the gens Ccecilia ! 
 
 Passing, however, from the realm of myth 
 to that of plain prose and history, and coming to 
 his early manhood, I find him at the age of 
 twenty-one a student in Gray's Inn. Inclining 
 strongly to the " new faith," he attracted King 
 Henry's notice and favour by a successful
 
 56 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 disputation, which he held with two intemperate 
 chaplains of O'Neill, the Irish chieftain, as to the 
 limits of the power of the Roman Pontiff. The 
 King accordingly granted him the reversion of 
 the office of "custos brevium" in one of the 
 courts of law ; and his career henceforth forms 
 part of English history. I will therefore dwell 
 briefly on it, simply stating that, on the Protector 
 Somerset establishing a Court of Requests in his 
 own house, he appointed Sir William Cecil its 
 first master. The latter subsequently followed 
 his patron to Scotland, and on the field of Mussel- 
 burgh he narrowly escaped death from a cannon 
 ball which passed close beside him. On his 
 return south he was made Secretary of State, 
 and sworn a member of the Privy Council. On 
 the fall of Somerset he was sent to the Tower 
 to share his chiefs imprisonment. Released 
 thence, I find him restored to his high post, in 
 which, says Sharpe, " Queen Mary offered to 
 retain him permanently if he would consent to 
 abjure the Protestant faith; this, however, he 
 refused to do." The rest of his story shall be 
 told in the words of Sir Bernard Burke, which 
 differ slightly from the above statement : 
 
 "Under the rule of Mary, although a very 
 zealous reformist previously, Sir William, with 
 all the tact of that renowned churchman, the vicar
 
 THE NOBLE HOUSE OF CECIL. 57 
 
 of Bray, doffed his Protestant mantle, and 
 conformed to the ancient faith outwardly, says 
 his biographer, Dr. Nares, but certainly so far 
 as engaging a Catholic domestic chaplain, 
 humbling himself at the confessional, and kneeling 
 before the altar of the real presence, constitute 
 such a confirmation. This outward demonstration 
 proved not to have been assumed in vain, for we 
 find the wily politician enjoying again the sunshine 
 of royal favour, and actually nominated, with 
 Lord Paget and Sir Edward Hastings, to 
 conduct Cardinal Pole, then invested with a 
 legatine commission, into England. In this 
 reign Cecil represented the county of Lincoln in 
 Parliament. Immediately upon the accession of 
 Elizabeth, however, with whom he constantly 
 corresponded, and on whose accession he was the 
 first person of whom the new Queen sought 
 advice, he became once more a staunch denouncer 
 of Popish errors ; the star of his fortune arose, 
 and few statesmen have been guided through a 
 more brilliant course. His first official employ- 
 ment was the resumption of the secretary-of- 
 stateship, and in that post, so sensible was his 
 royal mistress of his important services that 
 she elevated him to the peerage, by the title of 
 Baron Burghley, in 1571, although at this period 
 his private fortune does not appear to have been
 
 58 TALES OP OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 much advanced; for by a letter written by 
 himself just after his elevation he says that he is 
 "the poorest lord in England." Soon after this, 
 however, he obtained a post of more profit as 
 well as honour, that of " Master of the Court of 
 Wards," which he held along with his portfolio 
 of State. A conspiracy was soon afterwards 
 discovered against his life, and the two assassins, 
 Barney and Natter, declared at their execution 
 that they were instigated by the Spanish 
 ambassador, for which, and other offences, his 
 Excellency was ordered to depart the kingdom. 
 As a consolation for these perils, the secretary 
 was honoured with the Order of the Garter in 
 June, 1572 , and in the September following, at 
 the decease of the Marquess of Winchester, 
 was appointed Lord High Treasurer, and was 
 Chancellor of the University of Cambridge for 
 forty years, from 1558 to 1598." 
 
 His mode of living, say contemporary writers, 
 was in keeping with his rank and the custom of 
 the times. " He had four places of residence 
 his lodgings at Court, his house in the Strand, 
 his family seat at Burleigh, and his own favou- 
 rite seat of Theobalds," near Waltham Cross, to 
 which he loved to retire from harness. At his 
 house in London, he (when free) supported a
 
 THE NOBLE HOUSE OF CECIL. 59 
 
 family of fourscore persons, without counting 
 those who attended him in public. 
 
 " He kept a standing table for gentlemen, and 
 two other tables for those of a meaner condi- 
 tion," says Sir Bernard Burke ; and these were 
 always served alike, whether he was in or out 
 of town. Twelve times he entertained Elizabeth 
 at his house, on more than one occasion for some 
 weeks together; and as Royal visits are rather 
 expensive luxuries, and Elizabeth formed no ex- 
 ception to the rule, (for they cost each between 
 .1000 and .2000,) the only wonder is that his 
 purse was not exhausted, and that he was able 
 to leave his son 25,000 in money and valuable' 
 effects, besides 4000 a year in landed estates. 
 Be this, however, as it may, his son Thomas, 
 who was raised to the earldom of Exeter in 1605, 
 complained loudly of his poverty, which on one 
 occasion he urged as an excuse for declining the 
 honour of a step in the peerage, writing to the 
 Attorney-General, in 1606, that " he was re- 
 solved to content himself with the estate (degree) 
 which he had, of a baron, and that he found his 
 estate little enough to maintain the degree he 
 was in." 
 
 It is somewhat strange to add that two years 
 later he and his younger brother, Robert, were 
 both created earls, and on the very same day,
 
 60 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 May 4, Lord Burghlcy taking the title of Exeter, 
 and his brother that of Salisbury. It is still 
 more strange that the younger brother on this 
 occasion should have taken precedence of the 
 elder, his patent having passed the Great Seal 
 in the morning, while that of Lord Burghle}', 
 it is said, did not take effect till the afternoon 
 or evening. This accident is reported to have 
 occasioned some ill blood between the brothers 
 at the time, though they were soon reconciled 
 by finding themselves obliged to make common 
 cause against the satirists of the age, who were 
 not slow to attack the twin earls of yesterday, 
 as mere courtiers and place-hunters, and men 
 of no great family pretensions. 
 
 On this subject the old Lord High Treasurer 
 had always been most tenacious ; and his sons, 
 it would seem, followed his example. At all 
 events, in the Harleian MSS. I find the following 
 curious letter from Lord Exeter, evidently writ- 
 ten at this time, which is well worth giving here 
 at length, on account of its bearing on the 
 mooted question of the difference between a 
 " Gentleman" and an " Esquire." 
 
 " There is some cause of late fallen out of one 
 that gives reproachful words to my brother, and 
 therewithal said that it was a strange thing that
 
 THE NOBLE HOUSE OF CECIL. 61 
 
 such a one as he, whose grandfather was a sieve- 
 maker, should rule the whole state of England ; 
 and though the malice of the party was towards 
 him, yet I must be likewise sensible thereof 
 myself, both being descended from him ; there- 
 fore I have thought good to require you forthwith 
 to take the pains to make search in my study at 
 Burghley, amongst my boxes, of my evidences, 
 and I think you will find the very writ itself by 
 which my grandfather or great-grandfather, or 
 both, were made sheriffs of Lincolnshire or North- 
 amptonshire, and likewise a warrant from the 
 Duke of Suffolk, in King Henry VIII.'s time, to my 
 grandfather and old Mr. Wingfield, that dead is, for 
 the certifying touching the fall of woods in Clyff 
 Park or Rockingham Forest, by the name of 
 David Cecyle Esquire ; which title at those days 
 was not used but to such that were gentlemen 
 of note, where commonly they were entitled but 
 by the name of gentlemen. If you have any 
 record of your own to show the descent of my 
 great-grandfather, I pray you send a note there- 
 of likewise. My lord, my father's altering the 
 writing of his name maketh many that are not 
 very well affected to our house to doubt whether 
 we be rightly descended from the house of Wales, 
 because they write their names ' Sitsilt,' and our 
 name is written ' Cecyle ;' my grandfather wrote
 
 62 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 it * Syssell ;' and so in orthography all these 
 names differ, whereof I marvel what moved my 
 lord my father to alter it. I have my lord's 
 pedigree very well set out, which he left unto 
 me. I pray you let this be secret unto yourself, 
 which my brother of Salisbury desired me so to 
 give in charge unto you ; and so I commend you 
 very kindly unto yourself and my good aunt, 
 your wife ; from London, this 13th of November, 
 1605. 
 
 " Your very loving cousin and friend, 
 " EXETER. 
 
 " To Hugh Allington, Esquire." 
 
 Lord Exeter, who always maintained an un- 
 blemished character among statesmen who were 
 not all free from blemish, was certainly a man 
 of high talents and good sense ; and he did well 
 in contenting himself with the reflected dignity 
 of his father's splendid name, and in leaving 
 it to his brother to emulate it in the exercise of 
 the higher offices of statecraft. 
 
 Robert, the younger brother, the Earl of Salis- 
 bury, though successively Secretary of State and 
 Lord High Treasurer as his father had been 
 before him married a sister of the unhappy 
 Henry Brooke, Lord Cobham, and died, worn out 
 with the cares of public office and political life,
 
 THE NOBLE HOUSE OF CECIL. 63 
 
 within six years after gaining his coronet. In 
 his last illness he was heard to say to Sir Walter 
 Cope, " Ease and pleasure quake to hear of death ; 
 but my life, full of cares and miseries, desireth to 
 be dissolved." He had some years previously ad- 
 dressed a letter to Sir James Harrington, the 
 poet, in pretty much the same tone. "Good 
 knight," saith the minister, " rest content, and 
 give heed to one that hath sorrowed in the bright 
 lustre of a court, and gone heavily on even the 
 best-seeming fair ground. 'Tis a great task to 
 prove one's honesty and yet not mar one's fortune. 
 You have tasted a little thereof in our good 
 queen's time, who was more than a man, and, in 
 truth, sometimes less than a woman. I wish I 
 waited now in your presence-chamber, with ease 
 at my food and rest in my bed. I am pushed 
 from the shore of comfort, and know not where 
 the winds and waves of a court will bear me. I 
 know it bringing little comfort on earth ; and he 
 is, I reckon, no wise man that looketh this way to 
 heaven." 
 
 His son and successor continued the younger 
 line of the Cecils as Earls of Salisbury through 
 six generations, when James, the seventh earl, was 
 raised in 1789 to the Marquisate by George III., 
 on the recommendation of Mr. Pitt. The grand- 
 son of this nobleman (I may remark by way of
 
 t>4 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 parenthesis) is the present Marquis of Salisbury, 
 who held high office under the Conservative 
 administration of Lord Derby, and is now 
 Chancellor of the University of Oxford. But to 
 return. Twelve years more were destined to 
 elapse before the like honour of a marquis's 
 coronet was extended to the elder branch of the 
 Cecils, of Burleigh, and of Exeter. Around this 
 elder house, however, there is a great halo of 
 romance. 
 
 I have already acquainted my readers that the 
 two sons of the great Lord Burleigh were raised in 
 one day by James I., to the earldoms of Salisbury 
 and Exeter, and that in 1789 the younger line, 
 that of Salisbury, exchanged an earl's coronet 
 for that of a marquis. The same good fortune 
 befell the head of the elder house in 1801, when 
 Henry, tenth Earl of Exeter and eleventh Lord 
 Burleigh, was advanced one step in the peerage 
 of the United Kingdom, by the favour of George 
 III. and Mr. Pitt, by the " name, style, and title" 
 of Marquis of Exeter. There is really not much 
 to say about the intermediate earls, except that 
 they were severally born, succeeded to the family 
 coronet and pew in church, married, begot 
 children, died, and " slept with their fathers." 
 But the case was far different with Earl Henry, 
 who, probably without ever intending or even
 
 THE NOBLE HOUSE OF CECIL. 65 
 
 dreaming of snch a thing, suddenly found himself 
 the hero of a romance of real life, or rather the 
 actor of the protagonist's part in a drama of rural 
 and peasant existence. 
 
 Born in the year 1754, the only son, and, 
 indeed, the only child, of the Hon. Thomas 
 Chambers Cecil, by his marriage with Miss 
 Charlotte Gardner, Henry Cecil, at the age of 
 nineteen, found himself at once an orphan and 
 presumptive heir to the titles and estates of an 
 old uncle who did not care for him a rush, and 
 towards whom probably he felt very little 
 affection 01 regard. At all events, no love was 
 lost between them ; so while the old earl lived 
 the young man kept pretty clear of Burleigh and 
 all its belongings, and travelled through various 
 parts of England, rather enjoying a life of quiet 
 and homely adventure than otherwise. He did 
 not join the gipsies, as did Bampfylde Moore 
 Carew; nor did he elope with an actress or 
 seme foreign duchess, as many young men 
 would have done had they been left their own 
 masters at an equally early age, and been known 
 to have good pecuniary prospects. On the 
 coutrary, he married, quietly and soberly, into 
 a good county family of the west of England, 
 choosing as his bride the pretty Miss Vernon, 
 only child of the squire of Hanbury Hall, in 
 
 VOL. i. F
 
 66 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 Worcestershire. But the young lady did not 
 answer his expectations; and in June, 1791, 
 when he was just seven and thirty, he petitioned 
 for and obtained a divorce. This judgment made 
 him again a free man ; and he resolved, having 
 been once " taken in and done for," to look about 
 for a second wife at his leisure, and to choose no 
 one of whom he was not sure that he could mould 
 her to his own tastes and ways, and that he 
 would' find in her a pattern of conjugal affection 
 and domestic virtue. *' Courts, and courtiers, and 
 coronets," he would say, at all events to himself, 
 " are all very well in their way ; but their way is 
 not my way; and, if I can only find a plain, 
 homely, and truly virtuous maiden, in whatever 
 sphere of life I discover her, in hall, in manor- 
 house, in parsonage, or in cottage, then I swear 
 with King Cophetua, 
 
 " This beggar-maid shall be my queen." 
 
 How far he was true to his oath the sequel will 
 serve to show. I must ask my readers to accom- 
 pany me mentally of course to a charming 
 country village in Shropshire, nestling among 
 green lanes and fruitful apple orchards, and 
 called Bolas Magna ; it is not far from Wellington 
 and Newport, and within six or seven miles of 
 that well-known inland beacon, the Wrekin.
 
 THE NOBLE HOUSE OF CECIL. 67 
 
 It was a fine evening in the month of July, 
 1791, when the grass had been all mown and the 
 hay had been made, and when the harvest had 
 not commenced, that a stranger, apparently 
 between thirty and forty years of age, stopped at 
 the gate of a small farmer and shopkeeper in the 
 village of Bolas. It was by no means a very 
 usual thing to see a stranger in so retired a place, 
 and at first the good man and his wife, who 
 stood at the door, were inclined to refuse the 
 hospitality which he asked. He certainly looked 
 like a gentleman, at all events like a decent 
 person ; but what could a gentleman or any person 
 be doing, wandering about a strange village, five 
 miles at least from the nearest town, at such an 
 hour ? In spite of the evident suspicion of his 
 bona fides, which was entertained by both of the 
 old folks, the stranger urgently yet courteously 
 pressed his demands, begging that at least he 
 might be allowed to stay in their cottage till 
 morning, even if he had only a chair to " rest 
 upon in their lower room." He did not require a 
 bed ; but it was clear that a heavy thunderstorm 
 was coming on, and surely they would not force 
 him to go on his way in the midst of the rain and 
 storm. At last the boon was granted, though 
 it must be owned somewhat grudgingly ; and 
 next morning the guest who had thus forced 
 
 F 2
 
 68 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 himself upon them in their little " castle" made 
 the formal acquaintance of honest Thomas 
 Hoggins and his wife. Ah ! it is not only in the 
 olden time, or only in the regions of the dis- 
 tant East, that "strangers have entertained 
 angels unawares." The stranger's pleasure in 
 the society of Mr and Mrs Hoggins no doubt was 
 enhanced by the appearance at the breakfast 
 table of their daughter, Sarah, a rustic beauty of 
 seventeen, a distant sight of whom on the previous 
 evening, as she washed up "the things" in the 
 kitchen, had fairly enchained his eyes and his 
 heart. The adventure of an hour, connected with 
 crooked roads and coming night, was about 
 suddenly to affect the wanderer's future life, and 
 still more so that of the village maiden who 
 alternately sat beside him and waited on her 
 parents and their unknown guest. 
 
 Breakfast was over; but from that humble 
 cottage where he had slept in a chair in the 
 parlour, from those fields where Sarah Hoggins 
 milked the cows, and from that dairy where her 
 fair hands churned the cream into butter, Mr. 
 Jones for so the stranger styled himself could 
 not be persuaded to stir. He was a puzzle and a 
 mystery ; and there was no CEdipus at hand to 
 solve the riddle of his being who he was and 
 where he came from. In answer to all inquiries,
 
 THE NOBLE HOUSE OF CECIL. 69 
 
 he spoke vaguely and unsatisfactorily ; at last 
 he said he was an " undertaker," or something of 
 the kind, taking refuge in the vagueness of the 
 term. Possibly such a vocation might serve to 
 account for the air of tender melancholy which 
 seemed to surround him ; or possibly the word 
 might have been meant as a gentle hint to Sarah 
 Hoggins that, stranger as he was, he was ready 
 to undertake any office, however new to him or 
 he to it, in which she herself bore a part. 
 Tennyson, who has made the story which I am 
 about to tell familiar to most English readers, true 
 to the poetic art, makes him out as calling 
 himself not an " undertaker" but a " landscape 
 painter." 
 
 A week or two passed, and by the arrival of 
 harvest time the presence of Mr. Jones in the 
 village had already become a fixed idea. The 
 inhabitants looked upon him with a respectful 
 fear. As weeks went on he made occasional 
 absences from Bolas ; these were always short, 
 and confined to two or three days ; and on his 
 return he seemed to abound with money. The 
 natives of Salop are not dull. They put the 
 money and the absences together, and they 
 whispered the result to one another. They felt 
 sure Jones was a highwayman, and possibly the 
 tortuous and tree-darkened lanes, and the stories
 
 70 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 of highwaymen and footpads on the roads around 
 Bolas Magna may have made the robber idea 
 unpleasantly credible. Probably they did not 
 reflect that such a sparse country, so rarely 
 visited by strangers, would not support a single 
 footpad unless he possessed a large capital and 
 could afford to abide the event. 
 
 After awhile, Mr. Jones, or Mr. Cecil we may 
 as well drop the alias became the avowed suitor 
 of Sarah Hoggins ; but the notion that he was a 
 highwayman still clung to her mother's mind, 
 and she sturdily set her face against the connec- 
 tion. The father's logic was simple, and ulti- 
 mately prevailed : " Why, my dear, he has 
 plenty of money." 
 
 He showed his easy circumstances, indeed, by 
 taking land, and by buying a site, on which he 
 erected the largest house in the neighbourhood, 
 now called Burleigh Villa. It stands amongst 
 fields, facing the Wrekin, some seven miles 
 distant from that landmark. 
 
 The wooing and the love-making of Mr. Cecil 
 was brief; for on the 3rd of October, just as 
 harvest was over, and the orchards were being 
 stripped of the apples for cider, he and Sarah 
 Hoggins were married in the little church of 
 Bolas. But still who Henry Cecil was, and 
 what was his parentage, remained a mystery to
 
 THE NOBLE HOUSE OF CECIL. 71 
 
 all, even to Sarah herself. They still continued 
 to live on in the village it is said in the old 
 folk's house. Next year a little daughter was 
 born to them, but died when only a few days 
 old. She was buried in the little churchyard ; 
 but the grave is now forgotten. 
 
 A little more than two years passed by, and, 
 in spite of the mystery which surrounded him, 
 the respectability of Mr. Cecil's manners and 
 conduct began to inspire the villagers of Bolas 
 with confidence, so that they even appointed him 
 to a post of trust as overseer, or churchwarden, 
 or parish-constable. During this time, he was 
 careful to supply by education all the accom- 
 plishments which might be supposed to be want- 
 ing in a peasant girl, who had become a wife 
 and a mother. 
 
 He was thus circumstanced, when towards the 
 end of December, 1793, when he had been 
 married a little over two years, he read in a 
 country paper the tidings of the death of his 
 uncle, the old earl. His presence, he knew, 
 would now be required at Burghley : 
 
 "Burghley House by Stamford Town." 
 
 and though it was the depth of winter, he 
 resolved to travel thither, taking his wife with 
 him, and to give her an agreeable surprise.
 
 72 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 From Bolas, accordingly, one fine morning in 
 January, having said goodbye to Mr. and Mrs. 
 Hoggins, Henry Cecil and his wife, now just 
 nineteen years of age, set out on horseback for 
 a destination of which she was ignorant. Her 
 husband merely told her that he was called on 
 business into Lincolnshire, and that she must 
 accompany him. Like a good and trustful wife, 
 she at once obeyed his wish, and made the jour- 
 ney seated, as was the fashion of the day, on a 
 pillion behind him. They rode on through 
 Cannock Chase, past Lichfield and Leicester, 
 stopping at various gentlemen's and noblemen's 
 seats on the road, till at last they came within 
 sight of a noble Elizabethan mansion situated 
 in a lordly park. 
 
 Sarah Cecil gazed in admiration, and quietly 
 remarked, " What a magnificent house !" 
 
 " How should you like, my dear Sally, to be 
 mistress of such a place ?' was her lord's reply. 
 
 " Very much indeed, if we were rich enough 
 to live in it." 
 
 " I am glad that you like it ; the place is yours. 
 I am Earl of Exeter, and you are not plain Mrs. 
 Cecil, but my Countess." 
 
 She could scarcely believe her ears; but she 
 could not mistrust the fond and honest words 
 of her husband. The mystery of the last two
 
 THE NOBLE HOUSE OF CECIL. 73 
 
 years was solved at last to her at least. Mr. 
 Cecil was no highwayman, that she knew 
 already ; but a painter of landscapes he might be. 
 It was, however, indeed strange news to her that 
 he was one of the proud peers of England, and 
 that she had the coronet of a countess for her 
 own. In a few minutes they reached the great 
 entrance ; and there was a fresh trial for her 
 nerves, as a crowd of powdered servants carne 
 forward to recognise their new lord and master, 
 who lost no time in presenting to them their 
 future mistress. 
 
 This journey has been immortalised by Tenny- 
 son in his ballad of " The Lord of Burleigh :" 
 
 " Thus her heart rejoiceth greatly, 
 
 Till a gateway she discerns, 
 With armorial bearings stately, 
 And beneath the gate she turns ; 
 
 " Sees a mansion more majestic 
 
 Than all those she saw before ; 
 Many a gallant gay domestic 
 Bows before him at the door ; 
 
 " And they speak in gentle murmur 
 
 When they answer to his call, 
 While he treads with footstep firmer 
 Leading on from hall to hall. 
 
 '' And while now she wonders blindly, 
 
 Nor the meaning can divine, 
 Proudly turns he round and kindly, 
 ' All of that is mine and thine.'
 
 74 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 " Here he lives in state and bounty 
 Lord of Burleigh fair and free, 
 Not a lord in all the county 
 Is so great a lord as he." 
 
 The news of the romantic story spread like 
 wildfire throughout the neighbourhood, and the 
 curiosity of the three counties of Lincoln, Rutland, 
 and Northampton, which all meet within a few 
 miles of Burleigh, was soon gratified by witnessing 
 the entry of the peasant girl of Bolas upon the 
 new sphere of life to which providence had raised 
 her without her own seeking. 
 
 The happiness of the Earl and his Countess was 
 unalloyed: she did ample justice to his choice, 
 and became the partner of his joys and of his 
 sorrows. But their married life was brief. Be- 
 sides their first-born, who lies buried at Bolas, 
 Sarah Hoggins had three children a daughter 
 and two sons. The younger son, Lord Thomas 
 Cecil (after giving birth to whom she died in 
 childbed) lived till 1873 ; the elder son inherited 
 his father's earldom, and also the marquisate 
 conferred on him in 1801, as already stated; the 
 daughter married the late Right Hon. Henry 
 Manvers Pierrepont, by whom she was the mother 
 of Lady Charles Wellesley, who is again the 
 mother of the heir to the honours of the house of 
 Wellesley. Thus strangely enough the future
 
 THE NOBLE HOUSE OF CECIL. 75 
 
 Duke of Wellington is the great-grandson of the 
 peasant girl, who in 1791 milked cows and 
 churned cream in the village of Bolas Magna. 
 
 A friend of mine, who a few years ago travelled 
 in Shropshire, sent me at the time so graphic a 
 description of a pilgrimage which he then made 
 to the scene of this romance, that I venture to 
 give part of it in his own words to my readers : 
 
 " Whilst on a visit, a fortnight since, in Shrop- 
 shire, in sight of that cynosure of neighbouring 
 eyes, the Wrekin, I found myself near the scene 
 of one of the most romantic pages in the history 
 of the English Peerage. On a pleasant Septem- 
 ber afternoon, when the sunlight was bathing the 
 broad pastures, tinging the apples and damsons 
 on the heavily-laden trees, and falling ruddy on 
 the sides of red stone quarries, I bent my steps in 
 the direction of the little village of Bolas Magna 
 not without somo misgivings of losing my way 
 among the little-frequented country roads which 
 lead thither. But a story that Moore has sung, 
 and which has furnished Tennyson with the sub- 
 ject of one of his best poems, was inducement 
 enough to make me strive against my terrible 
 want of topographical acumen, to pace the very 
 spot so consecrate to love, and, if possible, converse 
 with the remaining few who still recall persons 
 and events dating more than seventy years ago.
 
 76 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 After telling the story, much as I have told it 
 to my readers, my friend proceeds : 
 
 " My walk led me past Burleigh Villa. It is 
 a substantial brick house, the front diversified 
 by two bays ; and attached to it are good offices 
 and farm buildings. A wealthy farmer now 
 occupies it ; and, as if still to connect the tradi- 
 tion of Cupid and Hymen's doings with the house, 
 its master, the morning I paid my visit to the 
 spot, had led a third bride to the saffron-coloured 
 altar. Crossing the little river Muse, I entered 
 the village of Great Bolas. It is the beau ideal 
 of an English hamlet clean, picturesque, not 
 fine, and with no excitement about it. There 
 are hundreds like it scattered through our land. 
 The houses, and they are few, are thatched, and 
 irregularly placed. I entered one, which pos- 
 sessed a spacious lower room, beautifully neat 
 and comfortable. Like many Shropshire houses, 
 it had a fire burning under a boiler to prepare 
 turnips for the cattle. Joining the cottage gar- 
 den was a churchyard. The church is a small, 
 uninteresting structure of red stone, but which, 
 from its colour, at a little distance harmonises 
 well with a clump of trees standing close to it. 
 On the ground, which falls away rather steeply 
 from the northern wall of the inclosure, stood 
 Hoggins' farm, of which the only memorials re-
 
 THE NOBLE HOUSE OF CECIL. 77 
 
 maining are a wicket by which it was approached, 
 and a well. The old man whose house I entered 
 was parish clerk. Even he had forgotten the 
 grave of the first-born child ; but he was well 
 acquainted with the circumstances of this story. 
 His wife, who was ill in bed, recollected the 
 persons of Mr. and Mrs. Cecil. Unable to con- 
 verse with this link between the past and the 
 present, I was more fortunate, in walking 
 from the village, to meet an aged woman, her 
 chin adorned with a grey beard, whose memory 
 retained not only the action, but the [persons of 
 the drama. 
 
 "The picture of the 'Peasant Countess,' in 
 the billiard-room at Burghley House, represents 
 her as beautiful : the pencil of Lawrence would 
 hardly do less for so interesting a sitter ; but my 
 inquiries as to her beauty raised no enthusiastic 
 response. The old woman would not even admit 
 that she was handsome. ' She might have been 
 well-looking,' was the extent of her praise. A 
 male informant told me he believed Sarah Hog- 
 gins was a ' straight lass.' Shade of Hogarth ! 
 AVhat a description of beauty !" 
 
 The poet has beautifully described the droop- 
 ing of a flower removed from its native air into 
 a higher level. He has said that the village 
 maiden received with extreme grace the homage
 
 78 TALES OP OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 and love of those about her ; yet that her heart 
 was being eaten out by yearnings for the little 
 village and the old farm, and the simple faces 
 of those among whom she lived in the days of 
 her youth. These influences may have contri- 
 buted somewhat towards her early death ; but the 
 mediate cause took effect in childbirth, and 
 happened only a very few years after she had 
 arrived at her honours, at the early age of 
 twenty-four. 
 
 " And a gentle consort made he, 
 
 And her gentle mind was such 
 That she grew a noble lady, 
 
 And the people lov'd her much. 
 
 " But a trouble weigh'd upon her 
 
 And perplex' d her night and morn, 
 With the burden of an honour 
 Unto which she was not born. 
 
 " Faint she grew and ever fainter, 
 
 And she murmured, ' Oh, that he 
 
 Were once more that landscape painter 
 
 Which did win my heart from me.' 
 
 " So she droop'd and droop'd before him, 
 
 Fading slowly from his side ; 
 Three fair children first she bore him, 
 Then before her tune she died." 
 
 The school of Werther is not a numerous 
 school among our English nobility, whether 
 titled or untitlcd ; but even at the time of Mr.
 
 THE NOBLE HOUSE OP CECIL. 79 
 
 Henry Cecil's love adventure, the spirit of 
 romanticism had penetrated the French and 
 German nations, and also, to some extent, the 
 English. But whether it was the cause or the 
 effect of that revolutionary earthquake which 
 eighty years since was rocking the people of 
 Europe, at all events it had subsided along 
 with those wild political enthusiasms which 
 stirred many fine souls to their lowest depths. 
 For the most part, the alliances of " the Upper 
 Ten Thousand" nowadays are made upon consi- 
 derations which effectually shut out all chance of 
 a rustic love, however real and genuine, ending 
 in matrimony. Nevertheless, from the day 
 when King Cophetua wedded the " beggar- 
 maide" down to the present hour, a few sporadic 
 cases have occurred in high circles in which love, 
 as a kind of eccentricity, I suppose, has broken 
 through the cold and calculating rules which 
 prevail under our social code. And yet, who 
 can say how much benefit some noble families 
 have gained \>y the transfusion into their veins 
 of a little admixture of plebeian blood, red with 
 country health and free from the taint of courts 
 and cities *? 
 
 The romantic tale of Sarah Hoggins, with only 
 a few variations, has also been popularized in 
 another way, namely, as an oratorio, which has
 
 80 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 been performed with much success at more than 
 one Musical Festival for instance at Birmingham 
 in 1875, when it achieved a great success. It 
 was thus described at the time : 
 
 " The story illustrated in music by the com- 
 poser, Signer Schira, is a pleasing and graceful 
 one, and the music makes an admirable match to 
 the words. The subject is essentially pastoral 
 and fanciful, a theme which novelists and poets 
 in all ages have loved to tell, in both simple 
 prose and in ambitious verse. A powerful lord, 
 ' the Lord of Burleigh,' in one of his wanderings 
 in quest of subjects to fill his sketch-book, under 
 the modest title of his Christian name, has wooed 
 and won the affections of a simple rustic beauty, 
 named Marian. On the conclusion of the mar- 
 riage festivities the artist-nobleman and his bride 
 set out, professedly to seek their fortunes, 
 accompanied only by Marian's old playmate, 
 Constance. On their journey they turn aside, 
 led seemingly by an idle impulse, to survey a 
 lordly mansion, near which the road passes, 
 when, to the amazement of Marian, her husband 
 conducts her through the gates, not only without 
 opposition, but with every mark of respect and 
 welcome from the attendants. Cecil then flings 
 off his disguise and avows his stratagem, secure 
 in the conviction that Marian loves him for him-
 
 THE NOBLE HOUSE OF CECIL. 81 
 
 self alone ; but the burden of the state to which 
 she is so suddenly lifted weighs heavily upon 
 his rustic bride, and the happiness of the lovers 
 is shortly ended by the decline and death of 
 Marian, 
 
 " Who, like a lily drooping, 
 Bows down her head and dies." 
 
 A termination sad enough to satisfy the most 
 ardent lovers of the * tear-compelling ballad,' and 
 sufficiently suggestive of variety to give the 
 utmost charm when set to characteristic music ; 
 and as Signer Schira approached his task in 
 the spirit of both poet and musician, the suc- 
 cessful result already spoken of was a matter for 
 little surprise. The character of the music is so 
 happy in form and treatment that the mind is 
 put to no effort to conjure up the several scenes 
 as the music progresses. Now we can see the 
 bridal procession winding down the green hill to 
 the valley in which the moss-covered village 
 church stands, grey with age, the bride and 
 bridegroom, truly 'a comely coup/e,' answering 
 with glowing eyes the kind greetings on all sides, 
 and then the quaint old mansion, bearing evi- 
 dence of strength needed in a former time, when 
 every lord's house was of necessity his castle, 
 the wondering wife passing through lines of 
 VOL. I. G
 
 82 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 obsequious servants, and marvelling at the vast 
 amount of respect with which she and her painter 
 lover are welcomed ; then the effects of trans- 
 planting the lovely flower of the field into the 
 richer parterre of the garden ; the sickness and 
 death of Marian follow with a sad swiftness, 
 making the story like an April day 
 
 " ' Begun with a smile, 
 To end with a sigh." "
 
 83 
 
 LAURENCE, EARL FERRERS. 
 
 AMONG the noblest and the proudest of our 
 old English families deservedly stand the 
 Shirleys, of Shirley in Derbyshire ; of Staunton 
 Harold, in Leicestershire ; of Chartley, in Stafford- 
 shire ; of Eatington, in Warwickshire ; and of 
 half a dozen other places, which are enumerated 
 in the " Landed Gentry " of Sir Bernard Burke, 
 who assigns to them an unbroken descent from 
 the Anglo-Saxon days. And with good reason 
 too ; for does not that learned antiquary Sir 
 Wm. Dugdale himself say that, " the name of 
 their ancestor, Sewallis de Etingdon, argues him 
 to have been of the old English stock f The fact 
 is that the lordship of Etingdon, or (as it is now 
 termed) Eatington or Etington, was granted by 
 William the Conqueror to one of his Norman 
 followers, who appears to have left Sewallis in 
 
 Q 2
 
 84 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 peaceful possession of his lands, though doubtless 
 in nominal dependence on himself. In the course 
 of years, possibly the Norman lords being absen- 
 tees, and not looking well to their own interests, 
 the descendants of Sewallis contrived to make 
 good their hold, and to play first fiddle instead of 
 second. At all events, at a very early date under 
 our Norman sovereigns, the acknowledged lords of 
 Eatington were Shirley s ; and Mr. Sewallis Shirley, 
 the younger, of Eatington, is at present one of 
 the representatives of Warwickshire in Parlia- 
 ment, as his father and grandfather were before 
 him. 
 
 Sir Ralph de Shirley held the manor of Eat- 
 ington, and was also member for Warwickshire in 
 the reign of Edward I., and his descendants, the 
 lords of Eatington, took an active part in the 
 Wars of the Roses and with France ; and if any 
 of my readers desire to know more on the subject, 
 they will find ample information anent the 
 family in three distinct MS. histories of the House 
 of Shirley in the British Museum. 
 
 In the eighteenth generation from the above- 
 named Saxon thane as Dugdale styles him I 
 come to Sir Robert Shirley, a gallant knight and 
 Privy Councillor in the time of William and 
 Mary, who, having inherited the ancient barony of 
 Ferrers de Ohartley, in right of his mother,
 
 LAURENCE, EARL FERRERS. 85 
 
 Dorothy, daughter and heiress of Robert Devereux, 
 Earl of Essex, the unfortunate favourite of Eliza- 
 beth, was raised in 1711 to the Earldom of 
 Ferrers, and whose shield was destined to receive 
 a melancholy tarnish in the person of one of his 
 grandsons, whose story I come to tell. 
 
 The first Earl's eldest son dying without leaving 
 issue male, the title passed to his second son, 
 Henry, and as he died unmarried, it devolved in 
 due course on Laurence Shirley, eldest son of his 
 third son, the Hon. Laurence Shirley, by his wife 
 Anne, daughter of Sir Walter Clarges, Bart. 
 probably one of the family after whom Clarges- 
 street, Piccadilly, is named. Even as a boy it is 
 recorded of him that he was of a moody and pas- 
 sionate temper, and that at times he had but 
 little control over his words or his deeds. His 
 uncle, whose death placed the coronet on his head, 
 had been in confinement under a statute of lunacy, 
 and after a short return of reason relapsed into a 
 state of incurable madness, which ended only 
 with his life. One of his aunts, too the Lady 
 Barbara Shirley was confined as a lunatic. The 
 young lord himself was so far a sharer in the 
 hereditary disorder of his family as to be subject, 
 even after he grew to manhood, to sudden, cause- 
 less, and outrageous passions. According to a 
 writer in the Gentleman's Magazine, he would
 
 86 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 walk hastily about the room, clenching his fists, 
 grinning, biting his lips, and talking to himself 
 without having anything to ruffle his temper, and 
 without being under the influence of liquor. He 
 would also talk to himself incoherently for hours 
 and hours after he had gone to bed. Nor was 
 this all; he would entertain all sorts of groundless 
 delusions and suspicions of those round about 
 him ; he would go about secretly armed with a 
 dagger or a brace of pistols ; when spoken to he 
 was absent, and often would not reply ; he would 
 make odd mouths before a looking-glass, and spit 
 upon it, and use all sorts of strange gestures, as 
 if he was bewitched. It appears, too, that he had 
 contracted a habit of drinking strong liquors 
 while making what was then called the " Grand 
 Tour," without which no member of " the quality " 
 was considered to have finished his education. 
 
 In 1752 the eccentric nobleman had married a 
 .daughter of Sir William Meredith; but, though 
 she was of a mild and gentle disposition, he 
 treated her with great brutality. Nor was his 
 wife the only member of his family to whom he 
 so behaved himself. He was on ill terms with 
 almost all his relations, and appears to have 
 been a nuisance to the neighbourhood and to 
 himself. One day when his brother William, a 
 clergyman, got up from the table, not choosing to
 
 LAURENCE, EARL FERRERS. 87 
 
 sit longer over the bottle, and joined the ladies in 
 the drawing room, he followed him, and, standing 
 with his back to the fire, broke out into a violent 
 rage and insulted him in the presence of the com- 
 pany, though there was not a shadow of pretext 
 for any such treatment. The fact was that his 
 hereditary tendency to insanity had been fostered 
 and cherished by a fond and foolish mamma, who 
 had allowed the dear boy to have his own way in 
 everything when a child, and would not permit 
 his father to correct him. His temper had not 
 been improved by a legal separation which his 
 wife had lately obtained from him by an Act of 
 Parliament, which had also authorised the ap- 
 pointment of a person to receive the income of his 
 estates, and to control his expenditure. So 
 eccentric indeed, had he become that his family 
 solicitor, a Mr Goostrey, declined any longer to act 
 for him, and that, on account of an absurd and 
 groundless quarrel which he contrived to pick 
 with Sir Thomas Stapleton when staying in Lord 
 Westmoreland's house, his relatives had held a 
 cabinet council to discuss the question of apply- 
 ing for a commission of lunacy to be issued 
 against him. From this step, however, it appears 
 that they were deterred by the fact that he 
 enjoyed long intervals of sanity, and that if they 
 should fail they would be in danger of being sen-
 
 88 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 tenced to pay a heavy fine as guilty of scandalum 
 magnatum. 
 
 It appears too that about this period he took up 
 his abode in lodgings at Muswell Hill, near High- 
 gate and Hornsey, where he kept all sort of low 
 company, whom he amused, no doubt, by his 
 vulgar and eccentric conduct. He would drink 
 coffee out of the spout of a kettle, mix his beer 
 and porter with mud, and shave one side of his 
 face only. He threatened on more than one occa- 
 sion to " do for " his landlady upon the most 
 trifling provocation in the world ; and on one occa- 
 sion he violently broke open on a Sunday a stable 
 where his horse was locked up, knocking down 
 with his fist the ostler's wife when she asked him 
 to wait a few minutes while her husband brought 
 the key. During this time, however, he managed 
 his own affairs with shrewdness and penetration, 
 so that Mr. Goostrey said it would be easier to 
 cheat anyone in the county than the Earl, and 
 that he was as sharp as any member of either 
 House of Parliament in dealing with such a mat- 
 ter as the cutting off of an entail. 
 
 Mr. Cradock, in his " Literary and Miscella- 
 neous Memoirs," speak of his Lordship as all 
 but a madman. He writes : 
 
 " I still retain a strong impression of the un- 
 fortunate Earl Ferrers, who, with the Ladies
 
 LAURENCE, EARL FERRERS. 89 
 
 Shirley, his sisters, frequented Leicester races, 
 and visited at my father's house. During the 
 early part of the day, his lordship preserved the 
 character of a polite scholar and a courteous 
 nobleman, but in the evening he became the 
 terror of the inhabitants ; and I distinctly re- 
 member running up-stairs to hide myself, when 
 an alarm was given that Lord Ferrers was 
 coming armed, with a great mob after him. He 
 had behaved well at the ordinary ; the races 
 were then in the afternoon, and the ladies 
 regularly attended the balls. My father's house 
 was situated midway between Lord Ferrers's 
 lodgings and the town-hall, where the race 
 assemblies were then held : he had, as was sup- 
 posed, obtained liquor privately, and then became 
 outrageous ; for from our house he suddenly 
 escaped and proceeded to the town-hall, and, 
 after many most violent acts, threw a large silver 
 tankard of scalding negus amongst the ladies ; 
 he was then secured for that evening. This was 
 the last time of his appearing at Leicester, till 
 brought from Ashby-de-la-Zouch to prison there. 
 It has been much regretted by his friends that, 
 as Lady Ferrers and some of his property had 
 been taken from him, no greater precaution had 
 been used with respect to his own safety, as well 
 as that of all around him. Whilst sober, my
 
 90 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 father, who had a real regard for him, always 
 urged that he was quite manageable ; and when 
 his sisters ventured to come with him to the 
 races, they had an absolute reliance on his good 
 intentions and promises." 
 
 Such was the character of Laurence, third 
 Earl Ferrers, in the early part of the year 1760, 
 when the tragic events which I am about to 
 record took place. When it was ordered by the 
 Court of Chancery that the rents due to Lord 
 Ferrers should be paid to a receiver, the nomi- 
 nation of the said receiver was left to his lordship, 
 who of course hoped to find in that person a 
 pliant tool, who would take things easily, and 
 let him have his own way. The person whom 
 he so appointed was a Mr. John Johnson, his 
 own steward, who had been in the service of 
 the Shirleys for many years even from boyhood. 
 But he soon found out that Johnson would not 
 oblige him at the expense of his honesty and his 
 duty ; and accordingly from that time he con- 
 ceived an inveterate hatred towards him on ac- 
 count of the opposition which he offered to his 
 crotchets. He never spoke of him except in 
 terms of abuse and resentment, not to say with 
 savage oaths; vowing that he had conspired 
 with his enemies to do him a mortal injury, and 
 was a villain, a scoundrel, and so forth. Further,
 
 LAURENCE, EARL FERRERS. 91 
 
 he gave him warning to quit a farm of which he 
 had long been tenant, and of which the trustees 
 of the Ferrers estates had recently renewed the 
 lease. But in this matter he could not get his 
 own way, and from that time he resolved to 
 move heaven and earth to obtain his revenge, 
 even though he should have to " bide his time." 
 He dissembled his feelings, however, so cleverly, 
 that poor Johnson was led to believe that he 
 never stood on better terms with the Earl, who 
 all the while was meditating how to get rid of 
 him. 
 
 In January, 1760, Lord Ferrers was at his 
 seat of Staunton Harold, about two miles from 
 Ashby-de-la-Zouch. His household consisted of 
 
 a Mrs. C , who lived with him nominally as 
 
 his housekeeper, her four daughters, and five 
 domestic servants three maids, a boy, and an 
 old man. Mr. Johnson's farmhouse, The Mount, 
 was about a mile off across the park. On Sun- 
 day, the 18th of that month, Lord Ferrers called 
 on Mr. Johnson, and, after some discourse, 
 desired that he would come to him at Staimton 
 on the following Friday at three o'clock in the 
 afternoon. The Friday came round ; and John- 
 son was true to his appointment. His lordship's 
 dinner hour like that of most country gentlemen 
 of the time was two o'clock ; and risiug early
 
 92 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 from table, shortly before the appointed hour, 
 
 he desired Mrs. C to take the children for a 
 
 walk, arranging that they were to return at five 
 or half-past five o'clock, as the evenings were 
 dark. The two men-servants also he contrived 
 to get out of the way on different pretexts ; so 
 that when Mr. Johnson arrived there was no one 
 in the house except the maids. 
 
 Three o'clock struck ; punctual to his promise, 
 Mr. Johnson knocked and rang the bell, and was 
 ushered by the parlour-maid, Elizabeth Burland, 
 into his lordship's private sitting-room. They 
 had sat together talking on various matters for 
 some ten minutes or more, when the Earl got up, 
 walked to the door, and locked it. He next 
 desired Johnson at once to settle some disputed 
 account ; then, rising higher in his demands, 
 ordered him, as he valued his life, to sign a 
 paper which he had drawn up, and which was 
 a confession of his (Johnson's) villainy. Johnson 
 expostulated and refused, as an honest man 
 would refuse, to sign his name to any such 
 document. The Earl then drew from his pocket 
 a loaded pistol, and bade him kneel down, for 
 that his last hour was come. Johnson bent one 
 knee, but the Earl insisted on his kneeling on 
 both his knees. He did so, and Lord Ferrers 
 at once fired. The ball entered his body below
 
 LAURENCE, EARL FERRERS. 93 
 
 the rib, but it did not do its fell work instan- 
 taneously. Though mortally wounded, the poor 
 fellow had strength to rise, and to call loudly 
 for assistance. The Earl at first coolly prepared 
 as though he would discharge the other pistol, so 
 as to put his victim out of misery ; but, suddenly 
 moved with remorse, he unlocked the door and 
 called for the servants, who on hearing the dis- 
 charge of the pistol had run in fear and trembling 
 to the washhouse, not knowing whether his 
 lordship would not take it into his head to send 
 a bullet through their bodies also. He called 
 them once and again, desired one to fetch a 
 surgeon, and another to help the wounded man 
 into a bed. It was clear, however, that Johnson 
 had not many hours to live ; and as he desired to 
 see his children before he died, the Earl ordered 
 that they should be summoned from the farm. 
 Miss Johnson came speedily, and found her 
 father apparently in the agonies of death, and 
 Lord Ferrers standing by the bedside, and 
 attempting to staunch the blood that flowed from 
 the wound. 
 
 The whole neighbourhood was soon aroused, 
 for the messenger who was sent for the doctor 
 told the sad story to his friends and acquaint- 
 ances along the road to Ashby, and by the time 
 that the surgeon arrived there was a large crowd
 
 94 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 gathering round the house. His lordship now 
 began to quake for his own life, and repeatedly 
 implored the doctor not to allow him to be seized, 
 declaring at the same time that he would shoot 
 anyone who attempted to lay hands on him. 
 
 Fortunately, in order to deaden his feelings, 
 his lordship had recourse to the porter jugs, 
 which he continued to drain one after another, 
 till he was hopelessly drunk ; and for a few 
 minutes he threatened to renew the attack on 
 poor Johnson, whom he reviled and cursed as a 
 villain, vowing that he would shoot him through 
 the head as he lay in the bed. Soon, however, 
 the paroxysm passed away ; and at the end of 
 the day, while his victim was still writhing in 
 agony, his lordship, stupefied with drink, lay 
 down to sleep. 
 
 During the night, by a clever rtise, the sur- 
 geon, Mr. Kirkland, contrived to have Johnson 
 removed to his home in a sort of sedan chair 
 which he extemporised for the occasion ; but he 
 survived the removal only a few hours, dying at 
 nine o'clock the next morning. 
 
 The next part of the story shall be told in the 
 words of the contemporary account as they stand 
 in the Gentleman's Magazine. 
 
 " As soon as it became known that Mr. Johnson 
 was really dead, the neighbours set about seizing
 
 LAURENCE, EARL FERRERS. 95 
 
 the murderer. A few persons armed set out 
 for Staunton, and as they entered the hall-yard 
 they saw the Earl going towards the stable, as 
 they imagined to take horse. He appeared to be 
 just out of bed, his stockings being down and his 
 garters in his hand, having probably taken the 
 alarm immediately on coming out of his room 
 and finding that Johnson had been removed. 
 One Springthorpe, advancing towards his lord- 
 ship presented a pistol, and required him to sur- 
 render ; but his lordship putting his hand to his 
 pocket, Springthorpe imagined he was feeling 
 for a pistol, and stopped short, being probably 
 intimidated. He thus suffered the Earl to es- 
 cape back into the house, where he fastened the 
 doors, and stood on his defence. The crowd of 
 people who had come to apprehend him beset the 
 house, and their number increased very fast. 
 In about two hours Lord Ferrers appeared at the 
 garret window, and called out, 'How is John- 
 son 1' Springthorpe answered ' He is dead ;' upon 
 which his Lordship insulted him, and called him 
 a liar, and swore he would not believe anybody 
 but the surgeon, Kirkland. Upon being again 
 assured that he was dead, he desired that the 
 people might be dispersed, saying that he would 
 surrender; yet, almost in the same breath, he 
 desired that the people might be let in, and have
 
 9t> TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 some victuals and drink ; but the issue was that 
 he went away again from the window, swearing 
 that he would not be taken. The people, how- 
 ever, still continued near the house, and two 
 hours later he was seen on the bowling-green by 
 one Cortis, a collier. ' My Lord' was then armed 
 with a blunderbus and a dagger, and two or 
 three pistols; but Curtis, so far from being 
 intimidated .... marched boldly up to him, 
 and his Lordship was so struck with the deter- 
 minate resolution shown by this brave fellow, 
 that he suffered him to seize him without making 
 any resistance. Yet the moment that he was in 
 custody he declared that he had killed a villain, 
 and that he gloried in the deed." 
 
 The rest of the story is soon told. From 
 Staunton Lord Ferrers was taken to Ashby, 
 where he was kept at an inn till the Monday 
 following. During the interval, a coroner's jury 
 sat upon the body, bringing in a verdict of 
 "wilful murder." From Ashby Lord Ferrers 
 was sent to gaol at Leicester, and thence, about 
 a fortnight later, to London. He was brought 
 up, we are told, in his own landau and six, under 
 a strong guard. He arrived in town about noon 
 on the 14th of February, " dressed like a jockey, 
 in a close riding frock, jockey boots and cap, and 
 a plain shirt."
 
 LAURENCE, EARL FERRERS. 97 
 
 Being arraigned before the House of Lords 
 for a peer has a legal right te be tried by his 
 peers and the coroner's verdict having been 
 read aloud, he was formally committed into the 
 custody of the Usher of the Black Rod, and 
 ordered to be kept in the Tower. He arrived 
 there about six in the evening, and we are gravely 
 told that " he behaved during the whole journey 
 and at his commitment with great exactness and 
 propriety" whatever those words may mean. It 
 may interest Mr. Hepworth Dixon, as the author 
 of " Her Majesty's Tower," to learn on good 
 authority that he was confined in the Round 
 Tower near the drawbridge, two warders being 
 constantly in the room with him, and one at the 
 door ; " two sentinels also were posted on the 
 stairs, and one upon the drawbridge, with their 
 bayonets fixed ; and from this time the gates 
 were ordered to be shut an hour sooner than 
 usual." It is strange that so much of extra pre- 
 caution should have been taken because a culprit 
 about to be tried for his life happened to have 
 worn an earl's coronet. 
 
 We are told by the chronicler of small things 
 relating to this titled prisoner of State, how 
 much beer, how much porter, how much water 
 Lord Ferrers was allowed daily during his incar- 
 ceration. No doubt the writer "interviewed" 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 98 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 or at least tried to interview the noble Earl in 
 his dungeon. Mrs. C- , his lady -housekeeper, 
 and her four young children were allowed to see 
 him from time to time, and to correspond with 
 him daily from a lodging which they had taken 
 in the neighbourhood of the Minories. 
 
 On the 16th of April, when he had been a 
 prisoner a little more than two months, he was 
 brought to trial at the bar of the House of Peers. 
 Lord Henley, afterwards Earl of Northington, 
 who at that time happened to be Keeper of the 
 Great Seal, presided as Lord High Steward, but 
 with a want of dignity to which Horace Walpole 
 more than once alludes in his letters to Sir 
 Horace Mann and Mr. George Montague. The 
 trial lasted till the 18th, when Lord Ferrers 
 endeavoured with great skill and cleverness to 
 elicit from several witnesses proofs of his in- 
 sanity. No detailed report of the substance of 
 such examination is extant; but it may easily 
 be believed that the greater the skill that he dis- 
 played the more signal his failure. 
 
 " His Lordship," says one account, " managed 
 his defence in such a manner as to show perfect 
 recollection of mind and uncommon powers of 
 understanding; he dwelt with the most delicate 
 and affecting sensibility on the hard situation of 
 being reduced to the necessity of proving himself
 
 LAURENCE, EARL FERRERS. 99 
 
 a lunatic in order that he might not be deemed 
 a murderer ; and when at last he found that his 
 plea could avail him nothing, he confessed that 
 he had put it forward only to gratify his friends, 
 being always averse to it himself." 
 
 It is needless to add that each of his brother 
 peers, on being asked the usual question, brought 
 in against Lord Ferrers a verdict of " Guilty upon 
 my honour ;" accordingly he was sentenced by 
 Lord Henley, in due form, to be hanged by the 
 neck till he was dead," and that his body should 
 be given afterwards, as was then the usual 
 practice, to the anatomists for dissection. The 
 day at first fixed for the execution was the 21st of 
 April ; but we are told that, " in consideration of 
 his rank," the fatal hour was postponed to the 5th 
 of May. It seems more to the point to record the 
 fact that, also " in consideration of his rank," 
 he was permitted to be hanged with a silken 
 instead of a hempen rope. 
 
 At the trial, not only the Earl himself, but his 
 two brothers, tried to prove him to have inherited 
 the family misfortune of insanity ; and, as Horace 
 Walpole remarks, " it must have been a strange 
 contradiction to see a man trying, by his own 
 sense, to prove himself out of his senses, and 
 even more shocking to see his two brothers brought 
 to prove the lunacy of their own blood, in order to 
 
 H 2
 
 100 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 save their brother's life. Both," adds the old 
 gossiper, " are almost as ill-looking men as the 
 Earl ; one of them is a clergyman suspended by 
 the Bishop of London for being a methodist; the 
 other a wild vagabond, whom they call in the 
 country ' ragged and dangerous.' " As a proof of 
 the madness of Lord Ferrers himself, it may be 
 mentioned that two years before, in 1758, he at- 
 tempted to murder his wife, " a pretty, harmless 
 young woman," according to Horace Walpole. 
 
 During the interval between his sentence and 
 its execution, his lordship made a will bequeathing 
 
 various sums to Mrs. C , to his children by her, 
 
 and to the children of his victim a poor instalment 
 of the reparation which he owed to the orphans 
 for the murder of their parent. 
 
 The scaffold was erected at Tyburn turnpike, 
 as nearly as possible on the spot where now stand 
 Con naught-place and Connaught- square. About 
 nine o'clock on the morning of the 5th his 
 lordship's person was formally demanded of the 
 keeper of the Tower by the sheriffs of London and 
 Middlesex. Being in form edof the fact, Lord Ferrers 
 requested that he might be allowed to travel to Ty- 
 burn in his own landau, instead of in the mourning 
 coach which had been provided. His request was 
 granted ; and at the gate of the Tower he entered 
 for the last time his own " landau," accompanied
 
 LAURENCE, EARL FERRERS. 101 
 
 by one of the sheriffs and by the chaplain of the 
 Tower, one Mr. Hnmphries. 
 
 The account of the journey from the Tower to 
 Tyburn, as it stands in the Gentleman s Magazine, 
 is so strange that I venture to extract it 
 entire : 
 
 " He was dressed in a suit of light-coloured 
 clothes, embroidered with silver, said to have 
 been his wedding suit ; and soon after the sheriff 
 entered the landau he said, " You may perhaps, 
 sir, think it strange to see me in this dress, but I 
 have my particular reasons for it." The pro- 
 cession then began in the following order: A 
 very large body of constables of the county of 
 Middlesex, preceded by one of the high constables ; 
 a party of horse grenadiers and a party of foot ; 
 Mr. Sheriff Errington in his chariot, accompanied 
 by his under-sheriff, Mr. Jackson; the landau, 
 escorted by two other parties of horse grenadiers 
 and foot ; Mr. Sheriff Vaillant's chariot, in which 
 was the under-sheriff Mr. Nichols; a mourning 
 coach and six, with some of his Lordship's 
 friends; and lastly a hearse and six, provided 
 for the conveyance of his Lordship's corpse 
 from the place of execution to Surgeons' Hall." 
 
 It is added that 
 
 " The procession moved r>o slow that Lord 
 Ferrers was two hours and three-quarters in his
 
 102 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 landau ; but during the whole time he appeared 
 perfectly easy and composed, though he often 
 expressed his desire to have it over, saying that 
 the apparatus of death and the passing through 
 such crowds of people was ten times worse than 
 death itself. He told the sheriff that he had 
 written to the King, begging that he might suffer 
 where his ancestor, the Earl of Essex, had 
 suffered namely, on Tower Hill ; that ' he had 
 been in the greater hope of obtaining this favour 
 as he had the honour of quarteriug part of the 
 same arms arid of being allied to his Majesty ; 
 and that he thought it hard that he should have 
 to die at the place appointed for the execution of 
 common felons.' As to his crime, he declared 
 that he did it * under particular circumstances, 
 having met with so many crosses and vexations 
 that he scarcely knew what he did ;' and in fine 
 he protested that he had not the least malice 
 towards Mr. Johnson." 
 
 It would be profitless to dwell on all the lesser 
 details of Lord Ferrers' last journey how he 
 felt thirsty as he passed the top of Drury-lane, 
 and wanted a glass of wine aud water before he 
 went on ; how he gave a sovereign to the 
 assistant-executioner in mistake for his principal ; 
 how he declared to the chaplain that he believed 
 in a God, but did not like " sectaries" and their
 
 LAURENCE, EARL FERRERS. 103 
 
 teaching ; how he expressed at the last moment 
 his forgiveness of the hangman and of all mankind. 
 
 It is enough to say, in the words of "Sylvanus 
 Urban," whose contributor was doubtless an 
 eye-witness of the scene, that his Lordship met 
 his fate with fortitude and composure of mind as 
 he was pinioned and had the cap drawn over 
 his eyes, and that as soon as the bolt was 
 withdrawn the drop fell, and Lord Ferrers died 
 quickly and with but little apparent pain. At 
 the end of an hour the body was put into a coffin, 
 and taken to Surgeons' Hall, where the remainder 
 of the sentence was carried out in all its disgusting 
 details. The corpse, thus mutilated, was publicly 
 exposed to view, and on the Thursday following 
 was handed to his Lordship's friends and family 
 for interment ; but his remains were not destined 
 to rest with those of his ancestors at Staunton 
 Harold, for Mr. John Timbs tells us in his 
 ' Curiosities of London' that after his execution, 
 the body of Lord Ferrers was taken to old St. 
 Pancras church and there buried privately be- 
 neath the belfry, in a grave fourteen feet 
 deep. 
 
 The Earl's widow also met with a tragic fate. 
 She married, secondly, Lord F. Campbell, 
 brother of John, fifth Duke of Argyll, and was
 
 104 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 burnt to death tit Coombe Bank, Kent, in 1807, 
 aged seventy years. 
 
 Horace Walpole calls Lord Ferrers "a low 
 wretch, a mad assassin, and a wild beast ;" and 
 he details all the circumstances of his trial and 
 execution with considerable minuteness to Sir 
 Horace Mann, then our ambassador at Florence. 
 " What," he asks, " will your Italians say to a 
 peer of England, an earl of one of our best families, 
 tried for murdering his servant with the utmost 
 solemnity, and then hanged at the common place 
 for the execution of highwaymen, and afterwards 
 anatomised ?" 
 
 I will only add that as Lord Ferrers had no 
 legitimate issue, the title and estate passed to 
 his brother, and that therefore the present Earl 
 Ferrers and the various collateral branches of the 
 house of Shirley can at all events boast that they 
 do not inherit one drop of the blood of Laurence, 
 third Earl Ferrers.
 
 105 
 
 THE DUCHESS OF KINGSTON. 
 
 AMONG the ladies of " Quality" who made 
 themselves most conspicuous and famous 
 I may almost say famosce in the classical sense 
 of the term in the good old days when George 
 III. was King, was Elizabeth Chudleigh, Count- 
 ess of Bristol, and (or) Duchess of Kingston. 
 A proud, haughty, and imperious child, she grew 
 up headstrong and self-willed beyond her fellows, 
 in an age when independence of character was 
 far from uncommon among women ; and it is 
 clear that she reigned for many years, feared, if 
 not loved, among the circle of her compeers, long 
 before her name was brought prominently before 
 the world by certain events which I purpose re- 
 cording in the. present paper. 
 
 In the early part of the last century a cer- 
 tain Colonel and Mrs. Chudleigh were living at
 
 10f> TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, where the former, 
 a cadet of a good family in Devonshire, and who 
 had served in the army under Marlborough, held 
 a subordinate post. Mr. and Mrs. Chudleigh had 
 a family of several sons and daughters, the 
 eldest of whom Elizabeth, was, as Horace Wai- 
 pole tells us, one of his playmates when he lived 
 in his father's house at Chelsea.* 
 
 Colonel Chudleigh died early, leaving it to his 
 relict to educate and " bring out" into society his 
 young family on a very small income, exclusive 
 of her pension as an officer's widow. Under 
 these circumstances Mrs. Chudleigh appears to 
 have done what most other women would do in 
 
 * Horace Walpole set her down as being fifty-five or fifty-six 
 at the time of her trial, and he was likely to know the fact, as 
 she and her brothers were his playfellows. The Walpoles 
 then lived at Chelsea, and her father, Colonel Thomas Chud- 
 leigh (who died in 1726) was Deputy Governor of the College. 
 Her mother was something of a heroine in her way ; at all 
 events, the story is told that, being asleep one night as she was 
 returning from a late party between London and Chelsea, she 
 was awakened suddenly by three footpads, one of whom held 
 a pistol to her breast. She coolly put her head out of the 
 other window of her carriage, and said " Fire," when the 
 patrol, who were fortunately at hand, fired, and shot the 
 robber. The daughter, if we may judge from the coolness and 
 nerve which she displayed on the memorable trial in Westmin- 
 ster Hall, was quite a "chip of the old block," and in no way 
 degenerate.
 
 THE DUCHESS OF KINGSTOX. 107 
 
 a like position, and resolved to turn to account 
 her own and her husband's " good connections" 
 the best substitute for money. She hired a 
 house on the outskirts of the town, within reach 
 of the rival camps of St. James's and Kensington 
 Palaces ; and, if she did not seek, at all events 
 she soon found, an opportunity of displaying in 
 high quarters the charms and attractions of her 
 eldest daughter Elizabeth, who was almost a 
 woman at fifteen. From a child, it is said, she 
 was distinguished for a brilliancy of wit and re- 
 partee,* and for other qualities which shone more 
 brightly in fashionable circles than at home. It 
 so happened that Frederick Prince of Wales and 
 the Princess (the father and mother of George 
 III.) held their Court at Leicester House, on the 
 north side of what now is Leicester Square, 
 having quitted St. James's in consequence of the 
 continual quarrels between the Prince and his 
 parents. Mr. Pulteuey, afterwards Earl of Bath, 
 was at this time a great favourite of the Prince 
 and Princess. The Chudleighs knew something 
 
 * As an example of her wit, we may mention the following 
 anecdote, which is told by Sir N. W. Wraxall. The Princess 
 of Wales who was accused of being far too intimate with Lord 
 Bute one day took Miss Chudleigh to task for some act of 
 levity. " Ah, Madame" washer quick retort, " chacvne id a 
 ton But"
 
 108 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 of Mr. Pulteney or of his wife, and Elizabeth, 
 through their interest, was appointed when only 
 just eighteen one of the Maids of Honour to the 
 Princess. Mr. Pulteney took a somewhat more 
 than paternal interest in the clever girl, and en- 
 couraged her to improve her education, which 
 had been somewhat neglected, and made her his 
 amanuensis and constant correspondent. To 
 him she would read aloud, and, although her 
 volatile disposition prevented her from ever se- 
 riously applying herself to study, she gained 
 sufficient superficial information to enable her 
 to fulfil her own avowed aim of being on all sub- 
 jects, whether she wrote or spoke, " short, clear, 
 and surprising." 
 
 Had she lived in our days she would probably 
 have become a lady novelist; as it was, she 
 played a role of her own choosing, acting out a 
 romance instead of writing one. With such a 
 pupil even so grave a statesman as Pulteney 
 could laugh and amuse himself, for she had 
 always plenty of small talk at hand; but it must 
 be owned that when he tried to initiate her into 
 the secrets of political economy and statesman- 
 ship, she rather demurred, and showed a decided 
 preference for literature of a more amusing kind, 
 and probably for lighter and more frivolous 
 diversions. In her station, with a pretty face,
 
 THE DUCHESS OF KINGSTON. 109 
 
 fine figure, and much ready wit to recommend 
 her, Miss Chudleigh soon became a general fa- 
 vourite with the Court at " Leicester Fields," 
 among whom she could laugh and sing and play 
 a part in the miniature theatre as well as any of 
 the rest. A host of admirers sprung up around 
 her, some with coronets in possession, others 
 with titles in prospect. 
 
 Among those who were struck with her beauty 
 and fascination was the Duke of Hamilton, who 
 subsequently wedded one of the beautiful Miss 
 Gunnings, after whom all the world ran mad, as 
 already stated. The Duke proposed and was ac- 
 cepted, and it seemed as if she were about to attain 
 the summit of her ambition, the ducal strawberry 
 leaves, when the machinations of a heartless and 
 meddlesome relative, Mrs. Hanmer, dashed the 
 cup of happiness from her lips. Whatever may 
 have been the motive of Mrs. Hanmer's dislike 
 to the Hamiltons, it is certain that she set her- 
 self deliberately to work to break off the engage- 
 ment of her niece, and to destroy her prospects by 
 intercepting the letters of the Duke during his 
 temporary absence in France. Like many an- 
 other young lady's heart, that of Miss Chudleigh, 
 if she had one, was caught on the rebound. It 
 is probable that her ambition received a more 
 severe blow than her affections in the supposed
 
 110 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 neglect of the Duke. Like the Due de Roussil- 
 lon's pet widow, " she would be a Duchess ;" 
 and a Duchess in some sort, at least in Eng- 
 land, though not in Scotland, she was destined 
 to become, although the intrigues of her aunt 
 prevented her from sharing the honours of his 
 Grace of Hamilton. 
 
 Among the daily visitors of her aunt was a 
 young naval officer, the Honourable Augustus 
 Hervey, of whom Mrs. Hanmer was very fond, 
 and on whom she had, for some inscrutable rea- 
 son, fixed to become the husband of her niece. 
 It was easy to throw the pretty, heedless girl 
 into the young sailor's way, and tci persuade the 
 insulted beauty that the Duke's neglect proved 
 he had ceased to care for her, at the same time 
 contrasting his conduct with the devotion of her 
 new admirer, and artfully suggesting that Her- 
 vey was in ultimate remainder to the Earldom of 
 Bristol. The bait took ; her hopes of becoming 
 a Duchess being for the time frustrated, Elizabeth 
 Chudleigh elected to run the chance of wearing 
 a Countess's coronet, although she cared nothing 
 for the man who was to confer it on her. 
 
 Urged on the one side by the dictates of 
 wounded pride and disappointed ambition, and 
 on the other by the worldly arguments of an 
 artful woman, Miss Chudleigh consented in an
 
 THE DUCHESS OF KINGSTON. Ill 
 
 evil hour to become the wife of Captain Hervey ; 
 but as neither she nor her lover could afford the 
 loss of her place at Court, it was settled that the 
 marriage should be strictly private, and that 
 even afterwards she should still officiate in her 
 capacity as a " maid of honour." 
 
 In the neighbourhood of Winchester there is a 
 small parish named Lainston, and here in a pri- 
 vate chapel adjoining the house of the squire, 
 Mr. Merrill, was celebrated the union between 
 Captain Hervey and Miss Chudleigh. It was 
 celebrated late in the evening, by the light of a 
 tallow candle stuck into an empty bottle, and 
 without much ceremony. The consequences of 
 such a marriage, with no fixed principles of right 
 and wrong on the part of either, could not be 
 otherwise than most disastrous. Captain Hervey 
 seems, indeed, to have been utterly devoid of 
 any qualities which could ensure the esteem of or 
 attach even temporarily such a woman as Eliza- 
 beth Chudleigh ; and her miseries, which date 
 from this ill-starred union, proved the cause of 
 all the future unhappiness which dogged her 
 steps through life and gave a colour to her fate. 
 Only some forty-eight hours had elapsed from the 
 scene in the little chapel when the bride and bride- 
 groom parted ; and, as the union had not been 
 publicly notified, they agreed that it should be
 
 112 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 kept secret. Elizabeth had already had sufficient 
 knowledge of her husband's disposition to be 
 aware it would require all the art of which she 
 was mistress to insure his discretion should he 
 change his mind and propose to make the mar- 
 riage public. The best argument which she 
 could plead was the fact that he had little or 
 nothing to live on but his pay, and that if her 
 marriage was publicly known she would lose her 
 post as maid of honour. He therefore yielded 
 the point, but in a way which showed that he 
 was resolved to play the tyrant and to torture 
 his victim. In fact, as she often expressed her- 
 self, " Her misery began with the arrival of Mr. 
 Hervey in England, and the greatest joy that 
 she experienced was the news of his departure." 
 Hence, while his ship was in the Downs or at 
 Spithead, she always trembled with fear lest his 
 destination might be altered by orders from the 
 Lords of the Admiralty. "A fair wind down 
 the Channel" was the soother of her mind, and 
 nothing pleased her better than to hear that his 
 ship had been " spoken" leagues away from 
 England on the wide Atlantic. 
 
 Miss Chudleigh, or rather Mrs. Hervey, for 
 such she was in the eye of the law a maid in 
 appearance, but really a wife in disguise, came 
 back to London, and mixed as usual in the
 
 THE DUCHESS OF KINGSTON. 113 
 
 highest circles, with a cheerful face, but a heart 
 heavy with the consciousness of her anomalous 
 position and a prescience of the misfortunes 
 which awaited her. Her husband, though quieted 
 for a time, made his presence in London offen- 
 sively known, and even contrived to visit her at 
 her lodgings in Maddox Street. Not many 
 months afterwards Miss Chudleigh gave birth to 
 a son, who, however, lived only a few short weeks. 
 The same thing happened again a year or two 
 later, and for some little time there was a 
 boy who, if he had grown to manhood, would 
 have "put out of joint" the nose of the subse- 
 quent Earls and Marquises of Bristol. About 
 this time, to add to the chagrins of the unhappy 
 young wife, the Duke of Hamilton returned 
 from France, and hastened to throw himself at 
 the feet of his lady love, and to inquire the 
 reason of her mysterious silence. Mutual ex- 
 planations ensued, and it appeared that, so far 
 from his affection for Miss Chudleigh having 
 cooled, he was more than ever desirous of making 
 her his wife without delay. To his surprise his 
 suit was peremptorily rejected, and it being in 
 fact equally impossible for the ci-devant Miss 
 Chudleigh either to accept him, or to explain her 
 reasons for refusing the object of her former 
 ambition, she was subjected to much inconve- 
 VOL. i. I
 
 114 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 nient importunity from her mother, as well as 
 from the Duke. 
 
 To escape the reproaches and resentment of 
 the former, who, all this time was wholly igno- 
 rant of the fact of her daughter's marriage with 
 Mr. Hervey, and of her having become a mother, 
 she next embarked for the Continent, where, 
 says Hone in his " Year Book," she lived in a 
 style of shameless dissipation. Calling herself 
 Miss Chudleigh, she now so wrought upon 
 Frederick the Great that he dispensed with all 
 etiquette, in consequence of her request that "she 
 might study at her ease a prince who gave les- 
 sons to all Europe, and who might boast of 
 having an admirer in every individual of the 
 British nation." During her residence at Berlin 
 she was treated with the greatest distinction. 
 She afterwards went to Dresden, where she ob- 
 tained the friendship of the Electress, who loaded 
 her with presents. Upon returning to England, 
 she .resumed her attendance upon the Princess of 
 Wales, and continued to be the attraction of the 
 Court. Her marriage with Captain Hervey, 
 however, perpetually annoyed her, and, to des- 
 troy all trace of it, she went with a party of 
 friends to the parish where it had been celebrated, 
 and, having asked for the register book, tore out 
 the record of her marriage while the clergyman
 
 THE DUCHESS OF KINGSTON. 115 
 
 was in conversation with the rest of the party. 
 
 Shortly afterwards, Captain Hervey becoming 
 Earl of Bristol by the death of his father, and 
 a rumour prevailing that he was in a declining 
 state of health, Miss Chudleigh, now Countess 
 of Bristol, hoping to be soon a wealthy dowager, 
 obtained the restoration of the entry in the regis- 
 ter. Fortune, however, was against her, and 
 she found that by her precipitate act she had 
 outwitted herself; as, to her great disappoint- 
 ment, the Earl her husband took it into his head 
 to recover his health and strength, and she found 
 herself once more a wife, and yet not a wife. 
 
 How far her marriage with Mr. Hervey had 
 ever leaked out into the ears of " society" is not 
 very clear; but it is an axiom in the highest 
 circles, I believe, that, as sin is not sin in the 
 " elect" of Calvin, so " vice is not vice in a 
 duchess" And, therefore, even if the real state 
 of the case was known to some of her friends, 
 there was no one at hand to " forbid the banns," 
 when, in March, 1769, she publicly married 
 Evelyn Pierrepont, Duke of Kingston, a not very 
 wise old gentleman, who was somewhat of an 
 invalid, and whose death might be expected in 
 the course of nature at no distant date. 
 
 While the arrangements for this second alliance 
 were pending, she made a variety of unavailing 
 
 I 2
 
 116 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 proposals to Lord Bristol to agree to a divorce, 
 and even offered to facilitate it by some flagrant 
 misconduct of her own before the eyes of all. 
 But he refused. Luckily, however, the Earl 
 found another lady who pleased him better, 
 having plenty of cash at her banker's ; and in 
 the course of a few months a sentence of divorce 
 was pronounced by the Ecclesiastical Courts at 
 Doctors'-Commons, and the marriage was solem- 
 nised as I have related. 
 
 Elizabeth Chudleigh was now at all events, if 
 not a countess, at least an honest woman, and 
 (which she valued still more highly) a duchess. 
 She had gained the height of her ambition, and a 
 giddy height she found it. She had but mounted 
 
 " Undo altior esset 
 Casus et impulsse prseceps immane ruinse." 
 
 The Duke very kindly and conveniently lived 
 long enough to establish her fairly in the eyes of 
 the world as his Duchess, and then " died and 
 slept with his fathers." On opening his Grace's 
 will it was found that he had bequeathed to her 
 his entire property, upon condition that she 
 should never marry again ; and the Duchess 
 plunged into a course of licentiousness which 
 exposed her to public censure, and in consequence 
 of which she went to Italy. A magnificent yacht,
 
 THE DUCHESS OP KINGSTON. 117 
 
 built and ornamented at an immense expense, 
 conveyed her to Rome, where she was received 
 with great pomp by the Pope and Cardinals, 
 who knew but little of her antecedents, and 
 treated as a princess. During her residence in 
 Rome she was on the eve of bestowing her hand 
 and fortune upon an adventurer, who represented 
 himself to be the Prince of Albania, when he 
 was apprehended as a swindler, and committed 
 suicide in prison. Soon afterwards, she learned 
 that the heirs of the Duke of Kingston sought to 
 establish against her the charge of bigamy, in 
 order to invalidate her marriage with the Duke, 
 and set aside his will. She instantly repaired to 
 her banker, who, having been gained over by the 
 other party, concealed himself, to avoid giving 
 her the sum requisite for a journey to London. 
 She placed herself at his door, and, pistol in 
 hand, compelled him to comply with her demand. 
 Upon her arrival in England she found that her 
 first marriage had been declared valid, upon the 
 ground of incompetency in the court which had 
 pronounced it void. Public opinion was against 
 her ; and, under the character of Lady Kitty 
 Crocodile, she was ridiculed by Foote in a comedy 
 entitled " A Trip to Calais," of which, however, 
 she succeeded in obtaining the prohibition from 
 the Lord Chamberlain.
 
 118 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 The validity of her first marriage with Mr. 
 Hervey at Lainston having been established by 
 witnesses who were present, to the satisfaction 
 of those of the Duke's relatives who had an 
 interest in setting aside his will, it was resolved 
 that she should be publicly indicted for bigamy, 
 and that her trial should be really a state trial, 
 being held in Westminster Hall, the House of 
 Peers sitting as her judges. 
 
 Finding it necessary to return to England, as 
 already stated, in order to meet the charges which 
 were being made publicly against her, the Duchess 
 embarked for Dover, and reaching London, drove 
 straight to her house at Knightsbridge, where she 
 found plenty of friends ready to espouse her 
 cause amongst others the Earl of Mansfield and 
 the Duke of Newcastle. Anxious, apparently, 
 to turn to the best account the weary weeks which 
 must intervene before the day of the trial, and to 
 advertise herself, and to rouse if possible the 
 men in her cause, even if she scandalised the 
 fairer portion of creation, she resolved to put in 
 her appearance once more in some place of public 
 resort, and accordingly the next night she 
 attended a masked ball at the residence of Mrs. 
 Comely s, at Carlisle House, Soho- square. 
 
 She appeared on this occasion as ' Iphigenia'. 
 There is a print which represents her in this
 
 THE DUCHESS OF KINGSTON. 119 
 
 character, and which fully justifies the sarcastic 
 terms in which Horace Walpole alludes to it. 
 
 Meanwhile the attention of the world was 
 concentrated on the expected trial, to which 
 Horace Walpole often alludes in a vein of banter 
 which shows that he considered the Duchess no 
 better than she ought to be. He writes to his 
 friend Sir Horace Mann, in Italy, March 22, in 
 that year: "Everybody is on the quest for 
 tickets for her Grace of Kingston's trial. I am 
 persuaded that her impudence will operate in 
 some singular manner ; probably she will appeal- 
 in weeds, with a train to reach across Westminster 
 Hall, with mourning maids of honour to support 
 her when she swoons at her dear Duke's name, 
 and in a black veil to conceal her blushing 
 or not blushing. To this farce, novel and 
 curious as it will be, I shall not go. I think 
 cripples have no business in crowds, but at the 
 Pool of Bethesda ; and to be sure this is no angel 
 that troubles the waters." 
 
 The trial was a matter which, for weeks before 
 it came on, absorbed the public attention to an 
 extent which has never since been equalled, 
 except by the trial of the impostor Orton who 
 wanted to palm himself off as a Tichborne. It 
 was attended by Queen Charlotte, the Prince of 
 Wales, by most of _the members of the Royal
 
 120 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 Family, the foreign ambassadors, Members of 
 Parliament, and other distinguished personages. 
 The Duchess, in deep mourning, took her seat 
 unmoved, attended by two femmes de chambre, 
 a physician, an apothecary, her secretary, and a 
 formidable army of defenders in the shape of 
 six barristers in wig and gown. I have before me 
 a picture of the Duchess standing at the bar and 
 pleading her own cause ; and if, as I have reason 
 to think, it is a sketch from life, there can be no 
 doubt that she was a woman well able to hold 
 her own, even before the most august assembly 
 in England. 
 
 As usual, it is from the chatty pages of Horace 
 Walpole that we learn nearly all that is known 
 of the way in which " society" at the time regarded 
 the trial of her Grace the Duchess of Kingston. 
 He did not go actually to see it or hear it, for he 
 " hated crowds," and viewed the chief actor or 
 actress with no favourable eye ; but he describes 
 the scene in Westminster Hall almost as vividly 
 as if he had been present in this letter to Sir 
 Horace Mann, April 17, 1776: 
 
 " We think and talk but of one subject the 
 solemn comedy that is acting in Westminster 
 Hall. Deep wagers had been laid that the 
 Duchess would decamp before the trial came on. 
 This, with a million of other stories, has been so
 
 THE DUCHESS OF KINGSTON. 121 
 
 spread that I am determined to believe no one 
 fact but what I shall read in the printed trial ; 
 for at it I have not been, though curious enough 
 about so august a mummery and so original a 
 culprit. . . . The scene opened on Wednesday 
 with all its pomp . . . and the doubly noble 
 prisoner went through her part with universal 
 admiration. Instead of her usual ostentatious 
 folly and clumsy pretensions to cunning, all her 
 conduct was decent, and even seemed natural. 
 Her dress was entirely black and plain ; her 
 attendants not too numerous ; her dismay at first 
 perfectly unaffected. A few tears balanced 
 cheerfulness enough, and her presence of mind 
 and attention never deserted her. This rational 
 behaviour and the pleadings of her four counsel, 
 who contended for the finality of her Ecclesiastical 
 Court's sentence against a second trial, carried 
 her triumphantly through the first day, and 
 turned the stream much in her favour." 
 
 The next day she was less successful, and, in 
 consequence, " had to be blooded as soon as she 
 retired, and fell into a great passion of tears." 
 And probably Horace Walpole, at this time, was 
 not singular in thinking that the Ecclesiastical 
 Courts were quite as much on their trial as was 
 her Grace. He adds that Lord Bristol, in his 
 opinion, did not stand in a fair predicament, for
 
 122 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 he had never avowed his marriage with Miss 
 Chudleigh, and was supposed to have connived 
 for a sum of money at her marrying the 
 Duke. 
 
 Ever alive to the last floating rumours and the 
 gossip of the day, Horace writes to the Rev. W. 
 Mason, under date April 20, 1776: "The plot 
 thickens, or rather opens. Yesterday the judges 
 were called on for their opinions, and und voce 
 dismantled the Ecclesiastical Court." . . . The 
 Attorney-General, Thurlow, then detailed the 
 " Life and Adventures of Elizabeth Chudleigh, 
 alias Hervey, alias the most high and puissante 
 princess the Duchess of Kingston." Her Grace 
 bore the narration with a front worthy of her 
 exalted rank. Then was produced the first 
 capital witness, the ancient damsel who was 
 present at her first marriage. ... To this witness 
 her Grace was benign, but had a transitory swoon 
 at the mention of her dear Duke's name ; and at 
 intervals has been Wooded enough to have 
 supplied her execution, if necessary. Two babes 
 were likewise proved to have blessed her first 
 nuptials, one of whom, for aught that appears, 
 may exist and become Earl of Bristol." 
 
 The register of Chelsea old church has certainly 
 the following entry, Nov. 2, 1747: "Augustus 
 Hervey, son of the Hon. Augustus Hervey,
 
 THE DUCHESS OF KINGSTON. 123 
 
 baptised by the Hon. and Rev. Henry Aston ;" 
 and the discovery of this entry, as Lysons observes, 
 might have spared many interrogatories at the 
 Duchess of Kingston's trial. 
 
 The trial lasted through several days ; on 
 Friday the 19th and Saturday the 20th the case 
 of the Duchess did not gain ground at all, but 
 rather the reverse. . So much so indeed was this 
 the case, that one of her friends remarked that 
 she must have been mad " to have sought the 
 trial, or not to have poisoned the witnesses." For 
 instance, there appeared a maid who was present 
 at her first marriage. Serjeant Hawkins au- 
 thenticated the birth of at least one child ; and 
 the widow of the parson who officiated at her first 
 marriage, and on whom she forced a fictitious 
 register when she expected Lord Bristol's death 
 and had a mind to be a countess, deposed that, 
 though privy to all these circumstances, on 
 visiting her as Duchess the latter said to her, 
 " Well, Mrs. Phillips, was not the Duke very 
 good to marry an old maid like me ?" 
 
 And what, the reader will ask, was the end of 
 this memorable trial ? Elizabeth Chudleigh was 
 found guilty by the House of Peers, but, " pleading 
 her privilege" as a peer's wife, she was discharged 
 without any punishment. 
 
 Ou the 23rd of April Walpole writes to his
 
 124 TALES OP OUR GREAT FAMILIRS. 
 
 friend Mason : u The wisdom of the land has 
 been exerted for five days in turning a duchess 
 into a countess, and yet does not think it a 
 punishable crime for a countess to convert herself 
 into a duchess. After a paltry defence, and a 
 speech of fifty pages (which she had herself 
 written, and pronounced very well), the sages, 
 in spite of the Attorney-General (who brandished 
 a hot iron), dismissed her with the single in- 
 junction of paying the fees, all voting her guilty, 
 but the Duke of Newcastle her neighbour in the 
 country softening his vote by adding ' erro- 
 neously, not intentionally.' So ends the solemn 
 farce. " The Earl of Bristol, they say," adds 
 Watpole, " does not intend to leave her that 
 title, nor the house of Medows a shilling. ... I 
 am glad to have done with her." 
 
 Hannah More, who was present among the, 
 crowd, tells us that she was dressed in deep 
 mourning, but that hardly a trace of her once 
 enchanting beauty was visible, and that if it had 
 not been for her white face, she might easily 
 have been taken for a bale of bombasin. She 
 adds that she behaved herself properly and even 
 with dignity, and that her presence of mind did 
 not desert her for a single moment. 
 
 Undeterred by the threat of a writ ne exeat regno 
 being issued against her, as soon as the trial was
 
 THE DUCHESS OF KINGSTON. 125 
 
 over the Duchess-countess was off to Calais, and 
 on her way to Paris. She writes from Calais on 
 the 26th to a friend, sarcastically remarking that 
 the peers have recognised her as Countess of 
 Bristol, the Ecclesiastical Courts as duchess, but 
 that she still adhered to her own position, and 
 proudly signed her name to the letter " Elizabeth, 
 Duchesse de Kingston." She retired to Paris 
 " incontinently," as the phrase then ran ; and the 
 writ ne exeat regno was issued just after the bird 
 was flown. Probably her enemies took good 
 care not to drive her too closely into a corner, 
 and felt that it was better for the peace of 
 London, and of " society," that she should be 
 on the other side of the Channel. " Don't let us 
 talk of her any more," writes Horace Walpole ; 
 he adds in the same breath, " Yes, I must say a 
 word more. I will tell you what the droll Lord 
 Abercorn said. Somebody ' hoped that his Lord- 
 ship had not suffered by the trial.' He replied, 
 ' Oh no, nobody suffered by it.' And, indeed, 
 though not a comedy, it was a farce." 
 
 The subsequent career of the ex-Duchess was 
 in keeping with her preceding adventures. I have 
 already mentioned that she was too sharp for the 
 writ ne exeat regno, and before it could be issued 
 she had bolted from Knightsbridge, and turned 
 up at Calais, though there were no railways or
 
 126 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 steamers to aid her flight. From Calais she 
 made her way to Rome, where she contrived to 
 propitiate the favour of the Pope so far as to be 
 received by hfm and feted en princesse a good 
 turn which she requited by a handsome bequest 
 of jewelry in her will. 
 
 After remaining there for some time she re- 
 turned to Calais, and hired a spacious mansion, 
 which she furnished splendidly ; but, the monotony 
 of the town not suiting her volatile and turbulent 
 disposition, she made a voyage to St Petersburg 
 in a magnificent yacht, and was received with 
 the highest distinction by the Empress Catherine, 
 to whom she presented the valuable collection 
 of pictures formed by the Kingston family. She 
 afterwards went to Poland, where Prince Radzivil 
 gave sumptuous entertainments in honour of her 
 visit, particularly a bear hunt by torchlight. 
 Upon returning to France she purchased the 
 beautiful chateau de Sainte Assize, two leagues 
 from Fontainebleau, and a mansion at the Rue 
 Coq Heron at Paris, where she died in 1788, 
 after executing a will, made by two attorneys 
 who came from England on purpose. She be- 
 queathed a set of jewels to the Empress of Russia, 
 a large diamond to the Pope, and a costly pearl 
 necklace and earrings to the Countess of Salisbury, 
 because they had belonged to a lady who bore
 
 THE DUCHESS OF KINGSTON. 127 
 
 that title in the reign of Henry IV. Her property 
 in France was estimated at .200,000 sterling, 
 besides which she had valuable possessions in 
 England and Russia. 
 
 The Duchess of Kingston, during her second 
 noces and in her second widowhood, lived at 
 Kingston House, Knightsbridge, afterwards 
 known as Listowel House, and at one time the 
 residence of the Marquis Wellesley. In allusion 
 to her connection with this spot, she is spoken of 
 in a play of the last century as " the notified Bet 
 Cheatley, Duchess of Knightsbridge." Peter 
 Cunningham, in his " Handbook of London," 
 briefly and tersely disposes of her as "the 
 profligate and eccentric Duchess." Leigh Hunt, 
 in bis " Old Court Suburb," styles her " an 
 adventuress, who after playing tricks with a 
 parish register for the purpose of alternately 
 falsifying and substantiating a real marriage, 
 according as the prospects of her husband varied, 
 imposed herself upon a duke for a spinster, and 
 survived him as a duchess until unmasked in a 
 court of law." He adds his opinion that she was 
 "a well-born and handsome, but coarse-minded 
 woman, qualified to impose on none but very 
 young or very shallow admirers. Her first 
 husband, who became Earl of Bristol, was at the 
 time of his marriage with her a young seaman
 
 128 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES- 
 
 just out of his teens ; and the Duke, her second 
 husband, though he was the nephew of Lady 
 Mary Wortley Montague, appears never to have 
 outgrown the teens of his understanding." Mr. 
 Leigh Hunt thus wittily and pithily expresses 
 his opinion about her : " Hating prolixity and 
 mock modesty, her maxim . . . was to be ' short, 
 clear, and surprising ;' so she concentrated her 
 rhetoric into swearing, and dressed in a style 
 next door to nakedness. The wealth, however, 
 which was bequeathed to her by the Duke enabled 
 her, in spite of the loss of his title in England, 
 to go and flare as a duchess abroad, where her 
 jewels procured for her the friendship of 
 sovereigns, and the Pope himself figured in her 
 will." 
 
 For my own part, I venture to think that she may 
 have had, and probably had au fond a good and 
 noble disposition, accompanied, however, with a 
 high and proud spirit and strong passions. The 
 cruel deceit practised on her when young by her 
 aunt, coupled with her intense ambition, her 
 waywardness, and her pride, perverted the better 
 part of her nature, and drove her into courses 
 from which in the innocence of childhood and 
 youth she would have shrunk back with 
 horror. 
 
 There is a sense of awful responsibility in the
 
 THE DUCHESS OF KINGSTON. 129 
 
 reflection that we all exercise an influence, more 
 or less, for good or evil on those around us ; and 
 for those who misuse it to warp the ductile 
 minds of the young in order to carry out their 
 own selfish purposes a fearful day of reckoning 
 will surely come, when they will plead in vain, 
 "Am I my brother's keeper?" Such at least is 
 the moral that I would have my readers draw 
 from the story of Elizabeth Chudleigh. 
 
 Mr Addison, in his "Anecdotes," tells an 
 amusing story of the Duchess, showing that she 
 was proud and haughty, and had far too high a 
 sense of her dignity. Being one day detained in 
 her carriage by a cart of coals that was unloading 
 in a very narrow street, she leaned out with 
 both her arms upon the door, and asked the 
 fellow, " How dare you, sirrah, to stop a woman 
 of quality in the street?" "Woman of quality !" 
 replied the man. "Yes, fellow," rejoined her 
 Grace ;" don't you see my arms upon my carriage ?" 
 " Yes. I do indeed," he answered, " and a pair of 
 d d coarse arms they are." 
 
 VOL. i. K
 
 130 
 
 THE DRUMMONDS, EARLS OF PERTH. 
 
 FEW names, even in Scottish history, stand 
 forward more nobly and well-known than 
 that of Drummond. According to Sir Bernard 
 Burke and the heralds, the house of Drummond 
 derives its descent from a Hungarian in the suite 
 of Edgar Atheling, the cotemporary, and in 
 some sense rival, of William the Conqueror; but 
 the importance of the family dates really from 
 the reign of Robert III. of Scotland, who took 
 for his consort Lady Annabella, a fair daughter 
 of Drummond of Stobhall. From that period 
 they became closely connected with the Court 
 and the Crown of Scotland, and attained the 
 honours of the peerage of that country nearly 
 four hundred years ago, in A.D. 1487, when the 
 head of the house, Sir John Drummond, of Car- 
 gill and Stobhall, a distinguished statesman and
 
 THE DRUMMONDS, EARLS OF PERTH. 131 
 
 diplomatist of his day, and Ambassador Exrtaor- 
 dinary to the Court of St. James, was created 
 Lord Drummond: his great-great-grandson, James 
 fourth Lord, being Ambassador for King James 
 VI. to Spain, was created in 1605, Earl of Perth, 
 with remainder to his " heirs male whomsoever." 
 
 The story of the origin of the name of Drum- 
 mond is thus related in the older Peerages : 
 " Maurice, son of George, son of Andrew, King 
 of Hungary, being in command of the vessel in 
 which Saint Margaret, afterwards Queen of Mal- 
 colm III., embarked for Hungary, happened to be 
 driven by a storm into the Frith of Forth. Here, 
 on landing, fortune befriended him, for he was 
 made Steward of Lennox, and received from the 
 hands of King Malcolm the lands of Drymen, or 
 Drummen, from which was derived the name of 
 Drummoud. And to this day, in memory of his 
 safe pilotage of Queen Margaret, his descendants 
 bear for their arms ' three bars wavy, gules,' 
 representing the waves of the sea." 
 
 His descendant in the fifth generation, Sir 
 John Drummond of Drummond, and Steward or 
 Thane of Lennox, was a brave defender of the 
 liberties of Scotland at the commencement of 
 King Edward's usurpation ; and his son, Sir 
 Malcolm, immediately after the Battle of Ban- 
 nockburn, obtained from Robert I. a grant of 
 
 K 2
 
 132 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 broad lands in Perthshire, in reward of his ser- 
 vices in that battle, in which by his advice 
 caltrops were first used as a defence against the 
 English horse. In memory of this sage counsel 
 " his descendants," as Burke tells us, " bear 
 caltrops upon a compartment with their arms, 
 along with the motto, ' Gang warily.' " 
 
 His grandson, Sir John Drummond, marrying 
 a lady named De Pontifex, heiress of Stobhall 
 and other extensive estates in Perthshire, became 
 by her the father of a daughter, the Lady Anna- 
 bella, a lady of great beauty and merit, whom 
 we have already mentioned as the wife of King 
 Robert III. She was crowned with him, as Queen 
 Consort of Scotland, in September, 1390; and 
 it is worthy of note that her blood runs in the 
 veins not merely of Queen Victoria, but of many 
 other crowned heads of Europe in this our nine- 
 teenth century. 
 
 It is not my purpose here to give an exact 
 account of all the achievements of all the Lords 
 of Drummond and Earls of Perth. It is enough 
 to say that, in the words of one of the members 
 of that House, Lady Clementina Davies, in her 
 " Recollections of Society," they " first suffered 
 exile and losses in common with the Stuarts, 
 whom they regarded as their only true Sove- 
 reigns ; and then, after a hundred years of exile
 
 THE DRUMMONDS, EARLS OF PERTH. 133 
 
 at St. Germain, they shared the fall and mis- 
 fortunes of the House of Bourbon, to which they 
 had been scarcely less loyally attached." 
 
 This claim, advanced by Lady C. Davies, is 
 supported by the independent testimony of Burke, 
 who observes : " Their loyalty (i. e. that of the 
 Drummonds) to the throne shone at all times 
 conspicuous, but the crisis which called out their 
 whole energies and devotion was the great con- 
 test which preceded the final overthrow of the 
 ancient dynasty of Scotland, that of the Stuarts. 
 So long as the conflict was waged on the battle 
 field the Drummonds fought manfully in the 
 cause which they had espoused, and, at length, 
 when the last ruin of the hapless cause of Stuart 
 was consummated at Culloden, they left their 
 native land, to die banished and broken-hearted 
 in a foreign clime. They had fearlessly set their 
 all upon the cast of the die, and they cheerfully 
 submitted to its hazard." 
 
 And such really was the case; James, the 
 fourth Earl of Perth, on the defeat and abdica- 
 tion of King James II., accompanied his Sove- 
 reign into exile at St. Germain. He was Lord 
 Chancellor of Scotland, and a man of high stand- 
 ing in the world of politics as well as of law; 
 he was also connected with the noblest of the 
 Scottish houses, his three wives having been
 
 134 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 respectively the daughter of the Marquis of Dou- 
 glas, the widow of the Earl of Tullibardine, and 
 the daughter of the Marquis of Huntly, head of 
 the Ducal House of Gordon. His fidelity to the 
 Stuarts was not unrewarded, as he was raised 
 by James in 1695, to the Dukedom of Perth, a 
 title which was confirmed in France by Louis 
 XIV. on the death of James, along with the 
 other Dukedoms of Berwick, Fitzjames, Albe- 
 marle and Melfort. He died just before the 
 Scottish rising of 1715. 
 
 But I must pass on to another part of the 
 story of the Drummonds, that of the second 
 Duke of Perth and of his gallant Duchess. His- 
 tory tells us how James, fifth Earl and second 
 Duke of Perth, fought by the side of King James 
 at the Battle of the Boyne, at Limerick, and at 
 Londonderry, and remaining with him till all 
 his hopes were defeated, returned to Scotland in 
 1692. While his father lay a prisoner in Stir- 
 ling Castle, he crossed over to France, and was 
 made Master of the Horse to Mary of Modena, 
 James's Queen. Next, returning to Scotland, 
 we find him opposing the Union with all his 
 might; and, in 1715, he joined the standard of 
 rebellion raised by the Earl of Mar and his High- 
 land chieftains, and commanded the cavalry at 
 the Battle of Sheriffmuir. His wife was Lady
 
 THE DRUMMOXDS, EARLS OF PERTH. 135 
 
 Jean Gordon, a daughter of the Duke of Gordon, 
 whose story I here relate. 
 
 " Both by family descent her father and her 
 mother being strict Roman Catholics and also 
 in virtue of her marriage, her Grace had imbibed 
 a spirit of entire devotion to the Stuart cause. 
 She is described, in a contemporary pamphlet, 
 now very scarce, as having a ' tolerable share of 
 beauty, and a majestic person' qualities which 
 certainly are more than borne out by the original 
 portrait of her Grace, painted by Van Vost in 
 1711, and still to be seen at Drummond Castle. 
 She has a magnificent high forehead, and pro- 
 minent nose and chin : a mouth expressive of 
 the most firm resolution ; and bro\vn eyes, a 
 shade or two darker than her hair. As we look 
 on that face, we can easily believe that her tem- 
 per was ' rather imperious than soft,' and that 
 she was as ' passionate' as ' obstinate.' We are 
 told that even as a child she showed some traces 
 of ferocity and cruelty; but, adds the writer 
 (who, however, is prejudiced against her, as a 
 ' female rebel'), ' since she commenced to play 
 the warrior, she has given a full swing to the 
 natural fierceness of her disposition, and in many 
 cases has laid aside not only the woman, but 
 even humanity.' 
 
 " It appears that when the Chevalier first landed
 
 136 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 in the Highlands, the Duke of Perth, though 
 wishing well to his cause, was scarcely willing to 
 risk a rising in his favour; but his duchess, like a 
 true woman, was no such half-hearted partisan. 
 His Grace's disposition caused her great un- 
 easiness ; ' she sweetened, cajoled, threatened, and 
 caressed him by turns. ; sometimes she was all 
 mildness, and would attempt to reason him into 
 her measures ; at other times she was all fire and 
 flint, and would needs form him into her terms. 
 And when the Duke would reply, as he did some- 
 times, that he would gladly make an effort if he 
 saw a chance of success, she called him a ' poor 
 pusillanimous wretch,' and taunted him in bitter 
 terms with the meanness of waiting to see what 
 other chiefs would join the Chevalier's standard. 
 ' You wait,' she cried, ' till some great man joins 
 him ; another, till a third joins ; and he till you 
 both join. The consequence will be that you will 
 be so long in debating as to whether it is safe to 
 join or not, that you will lose the opportunity for 
 
 ever For God's sake ! if you deserve to be 
 
 Duke of Perth, exert yourself suitably to your 
 rank, and show by your actions that you deserve 
 the title you bear by daring to fight for it.' " 
 
 In this way her Grace continued to urge the 
 Duke till Charles Edward was within a few miles 
 of Castle Drummond ; and when her husband
 
 THE DRUMMONDS, EARLS OF PERTH. 137 
 
 would have gladly absented himself and washed 
 his hands of the affair, she vowed that she would 
 shut the gates against him and give him up as a 
 prisoner to the Prince, if he would not stir him- 
 self. Accordingly, he thought it best to obey his 
 spouse, and to wait on Charles Edward. So " he 
 and she went in their coach and six, and met him 
 about seven miles from Castle Drummond, where 
 he lay that night." We can easily imagine with 
 what zeal and politeness she exerted herself to 
 entertain her royal guest, while the Duke sat by 
 in a melancholy " brown study." Indeed so suc- 
 cessfully did she ply her woman's weapons of 
 banter, jest, and taunt, that before the Prince 
 left the house the Duke had plucked up a spirit, 
 and entered heart and soul into that brave but 
 mad enterprise, which was to strip him of his 
 princely possessions, and send him forth an exile 
 and a wanderer, like the prince whose failing 
 cause he espoused. 
 
 Next day the Duke contented himself with 
 escorting the Prince as far as Perth, and with 
 issuing a proclamation calling on his retainers to 
 appear under the banner of the house of Castle 
 Drummond within six days. But her Grace was 
 a much more active partisan, She was out on 
 horseback for three days and three nights, during 
 which she never slept, and theii returned to the
 
 138 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 castle at the head of seven hundred and fifty men. 
 As the Duke had not come back, she set up the 
 family standard with her own hand, proclaimed 
 the Prince by the sound of bagpipes and hunting- 
 horns, which she was obliged to use for want of 
 trumpets, laid open her cellars to the multitude, 
 and mounting on horseback, rode at the head of 
 her troops to meet the Duke. The latter, who had 
 no idea of seeing so many men under arms, was 
 at first afraid, and thought that he was about to 
 be seized and arrested ; but the Duchess assured 
 him there was no ground for alarm, and that the 
 men at her back were her own levy. " The 
 change of fancied enemies into real friends," says 
 the pamphlet, " was very agreeable to the Duke 
 and his party, who, it is said, showed very little 
 stomach to fight, and if the joke had been carried 
 any further, would in all probability have showed 
 her Grace a pair of heels. This advantage afforded 
 table talk to the young Pretender's court for a 
 considerable time ; and the banter was carried so 
 far against the Duke that he was much annoyed at 
 it, and the Pretender was obliged to put a stop to 
 it by his authority. 
 
 Accompanying her husband and the Prince to 
 Edinburgh, the Duchess added much to the 
 brilliancy of his court at Holyrood. All sorts of 
 anecdotes are told of her wit, her presence of
 
 THE DRUMMONDS, EARLS OF PERTH. 139 
 
 mind, and readiness of resource. For instance, 
 just before the Battle of Prestonpans, when her 
 husband came to take leave of her in a desponding 
 mood, she quietly said, " Well, you are going to 
 the battle, and I to cards ; both are in the hands 
 of chance, and I shall be quite happy if you come 
 back victorious, though with the loss of a leg or 
 an arm ; but I really care little whether you die 
 on the field of honour or in my arms on a bed ; 
 but I would rather be the widow of a man who 
 had died nobly in a righteous cause, than the wife 
 of the greatest duke or prince on earth." 
 
 After the battle, she urged the Duke to follow 
 up the success which he had thus far gained, and 
 to push on while the enemy was panic-struck, 
 before the King's troops could be brought together. 
 But she seems to have been as cruel as she was 
 audacious ; for she urged her husband to put the 
 prisoners that were taken to the sword, and to 
 carry a Border castle by assault, or starve its 
 holders into submission. And when she could 
 not gain her point, it is recorded that she took a 
 barbarous pleasure in insulting the prisoners 
 whom she had in hand, and even blamed the 
 Prince for treating them with common humanity. 
 
 When the Highland army crossed into Eng- 
 land, the Duchess would not be left behind, but 
 attended by only a lady friend, Mrs. Murray, and
 
 140 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 a single maid, she resolved to join in the cam- 
 paign, though it was winter. In the March of 
 that year she was up and on horseback with the 
 daybreak; and when Carlisle surrendered, she 
 strongly urged the policy of hanging all the 
 townsmen, because they did not open their gates 
 at her first summons, holding that it was a good 
 thing to strike terror at once. Here, as is well 
 known, both the Prince and her husband, not 
 seeing much prospect of being able to carry the 
 war by a coup de main, were inclined to turn 
 back into Scotland ; but her Grace set aside the 
 idea by vowing that if her husband would not 
 head the Drummonds, she would head them her- 
 self, and fight till not one remained ; adding, 
 with true female spite, that if he wished so much 
 to save his pitiful carcass, she would try to do 
 his part in the field, and he would not be much 
 missed in the cabinet I 
 
 On the return of the army northwards, we are 
 told that the citizens of Glasgow were made by 
 her to feel the full weight of her resentment, and 
 that it was through her that the levies and sup- 
 plies enforced upon that city were so exorbitant. 
 From this place, however, she found it necessary 
 to return with the Duke and a detachment to 
 Drummond Castle, and there she remained till 
 the rest of the defeated Highlanders rejoined
 
 THE DRUMMONDS, EARLS OF PERTH. 141 
 
 them. Here it would seem that, fairly brought 
 to bay, and irritated to madness at the failure of 
 her enterprise, she gave loose reins to her innate 
 cruelty, not only taking a barbarous pleasure in 
 seeing the common prisoners tortured, and in- 
 sulting the officers, but showing herself a terror 
 and scourge even to her own people. She was, 
 we are told, so strict a disciplinarian that she 
 would forgive no fault, however trifling, or neg- 
 lect of her wishes even in trifles. 
 
 At Cullodeu her Grace was in the rear of the 
 army, and it was with difficulty that she was 
 prevented from appearing in the front. When 
 the troops began to show some signs of rout, she 
 saw a certain lord making away at full speed. 
 As he passed her Grace, she cried out : " My 
 Lord, you mistake your way : the enemies are 
 behind, and you will not meet them in that 
 direction!" In the retreat she helped to cover 
 the hindmost of the fugitives, and wheeled round 
 several times against the light horse that were in 
 close pursuit. She kept with the fugitives as far 
 as Inverness, where, worn out with vexation and 
 disappointment far more than by actual fatigue, 
 she was forced to rest for an hour, and there 
 was arrested the same day, partly by force and 
 partly by treachery, together with some other 
 ladies of less note.
 
 142 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 Long after her husband's death the Duchess 
 continued, though passively, to maintain the 
 Stuart cause in the North ; and it is recorded of 
 her that she had the greater part of the walls of 
 Drummond Castle demolished and levelled to 
 their foundations, in order to prevent it from 
 being seized and garrisoned by the Royal troops. 
 She remained there so says the family tradition 
 until she saw the work of destruction com- 
 pleted, when she retired to Stobhall, in Perth- 
 shire, and there she ended her troubled days in 
 peace at the age of about ninety years, 
 
 A fatality seems to have constantly followed 
 the holders of the Ducal title. The Duke died at 
 Paris in 1720, leaving two sons, James and 
 John, both of whom, exiles in a foreign land, in 
 turn assumed the coronet of barren strawberry 
 leaves, though under attainder, while their noble 
 estates were confiscated by the Crown, and 
 given to the Drummonds of Lundin, a younger 
 branch. 
 
 After John, the fourth duke, came two other 
 dukes, his uncles ; but they speedily followed 
 each other to the tomb at St. Germain, issueless, 
 and apparently unmarried. And in the year 1760 
 perished the last male descendant of the loyal 
 Scottish Chancellor, the earldom being dormant, 
 or presumed to have become extinct through the
 
 THE DRUMMONDS, EARLS OF PERTH. 143 
 
 operation of the attainder thirty-five years pre- 
 viously. 
 
 A distant cousin, James Drummond, of Lun- 
 din, bent upon reviving, if possible, the lost 
 but untarnished shield of the family, got himself 
 served at Ediburgh in 1765 heir male of the 
 exiled lords, and in consequence was recognised 
 as head and representative of the house of 
 Drummond. He was styled by his friends tenth 
 Earl of Perth, and such no doubt, he was dejure, 
 though the earldom was under the eclipse of the 
 attainder. His son and successor, James, 
 eleventh Earl, de jure, obtained in 1785 the 
 restoration of the Drummond estates by the 
 Court of Session and Act of Parliament, as being 
 " the nearest collateral heir male of Lord John 
 Drummond, in whom the lands had become for- 
 feited in 1746." His Scottish earldom, however, 
 was never recognised by the Crown or Parliament, 
 nor did he ever attempt to record his vote at 
 elections for Scottish representative peers. But 
 in 1797, he was created a peer of Great Britain 
 as Baron of Perth; he died, however, in 1800 
 without leaving a son ; and the magnificent 
 estates of the ancient Earls of Perth, including 
 Drummond Castle, passed by inheritance to his 
 only daughter and heir, who carried them in mar- 
 riage to the Lord Willoughby de Eresby.
 
 144 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 The representation, however, of the dormant 
 earldom of Perth, apart from the possession of 
 its estates, reverted to the nearest heir male, 
 James Lewis, fourth Duke of Melfort in France 
 (great grandson of John Drummond, Earl and 
 Duke of Melfort.) He died, however, a few 
 months subsequently, when his brother, Charles 
 Edward Drummond, became fifth Duke of Mel- 
 fort in France, and de jure thirteenth Earl of 
 Perth in Scotland. Being a Catholic prelate, 
 however, he was never able to effect the restora- 
 tion of his dormant Scottish honours, or even to 
 bring his case before the House of Lords. On 
 his death at Rome, in 1840, the headship of the 
 family devolved on his nephew, George Drum- 
 mond, who was born in London in 1807, and for 
 some years held a commission in the British 
 Army. In 1853 his petition to that effect having 
 been duly presented and considered, he was re- 
 stored by the special command and recommenda- 
 tion of Her Majesty and by an Act of Parliament 
 passed without a dissentient voice ; and accord- 
 ingly he is now fourteenth Earl of Perth in the 
 peerage of Scotland, and sixth Duke of Melfort 
 in France. 
 
 This dukedom is not a sham one, like that 
 of the apocryphal and soi-disanl "Due de 
 Roussillon," but a real and substantial title,
 
 THE DRUMMONDS, EARLS OF PERTH. 145 
 
 regularly bestowed and regularly transmitted 
 from its first grantee, John Druinmond a grand- 
 son of the third Earl of Perth. Like his kinsman, 
 Lord Perth followed King James to St. Germain, 
 where on 17th April, 1692, he was raised to the 
 dukedom by his sovereign, and the title was 
 confirmed to him in France by Le Grand 
 Monarque. He was, however, attainted in Scot- 
 land by the Parliament of that kingdom in 1695, 
 expressly for having been seen at St. Germain. 
 
 Thus, for some six or seven generations have 
 the ancient and loyal Drummonds been obliged 
 to live as exiles from their native land, admitted 
 to the courts of the Tuileries and Versailles, but 
 banished from that of St. James's. Thus, under 
 the stupid and senseless penal laws of the last 
 century has Scottish energy, capacity, and in- 
 tegrity been added to the capital of France, and 
 deducted from that of Great Britain, the loss of 
 this country being precisely the gain of our 
 neighbours. When the Drummonds fled into 
 exile in 1688, Le Grand Monarque was graciously 
 pleased to reward them not only with titles, but 
 with a residence in the Royal Chateau at St. 
 Germain, where they lived without intermission 
 for a century or more ; and I believe that I am 
 not exceeding the liberty which has been allowed 
 me when I add that Lady Clementina Davies, 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 146 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 to whom I owe some of the intelligence contained 
 in these pages, was the very last person born 
 within the Chateau of St. Germain in October 
 1795, just before the necessities of the first 
 French Revolution drove back the Drummonds to 
 the shores which they had left for exile and 
 comparative poverty in the cause of loyalty. 
 Aymez loyaulte, is the motto of the Paulets, 
 Marquisses of Winchester; but there is no need 
 to write those words on the banners of the 
 Drummonds, for they are already engraven 
 upon their hearts. If not, they never will be 
 now.
 
 147. 
 
 THE THREE MISS WALPOLES. 
 
 MY READERS no doubt will all remember 
 the Miss Gunnings, the Court beauties 
 about whom the whole fashionable world indeed, 
 I may say all the island from the Land's End to 
 John o' Groat's House ran mad some century 
 and a quarter ago, and one of whom a con- 
 temporary writer styles the " Double Duchessed," 
 in allusion to her having married two dukes in 
 succession. Their story is somewhat strange in 
 its way ; but it is equalled, if not surpassed, in 
 romance by the tale of the births, marriages, and 
 ultimate fortunes of three beautiful Miss Wai- 
 poles, the daughters of Horace Walpole's brother 
 Edward by a certain "left-handed" union, the 
 details of which are to be seen in the " Memoirs 
 of Horace Walpole and his Contemporaries," 
 edited in 1845 by Eliot Warburton. 
 
 L 2
 
 148 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 Sir Robert Walpole, who was for so many 
 years Prime Minister under Kings George I. and 
 II., and who was created Earl of Orford on 
 retiring from public, or at all events ministerial, 
 life, left three sons. The eldest was Robert, 
 who succeeded as second earl ; the youngest was 
 Horace, the wit and antiquary of Strawberry 
 Hill ; and between them in the family tree stood 
 the great stateman's second son Edward, (some 
 time a Member of Parliament and Chief Secretary 
 for Ireland), who, though he never himself wore 
 a peer's coronet, became eventually the grand- 
 father of one Royal Duke and of one Royal 
 Princess, and the great-grandfather of at least 
 one Duke and one Marquis in the Peerage of 
 Great Britain. 
 
 Good looks were a heritage in the Walpole 
 family. We are told that when the great Sir 
 Robert Walpole was a young man about town he 
 was one of the handsomest of a very handsome 
 set ; and a full share of his good looks appear to 
 have passed to his son P]Jward, who was born in 
 or about 1710. When he was only eighteen his 
 appearance was so much in his favour that the 
 ladies in Italy and Paris with one consent gave 
 him the name of " the handsome Englishman.' 5 
 Having completed his education by going what 
 was known as the " Grand Tour," without which
 
 THE THREE MISS WALPOLES. 149 
 
 no man of " quality" could be regarded as fit for 
 society, he resolved to settle down in London, 
 leading an easy, self-indulgent life as a bachelor, 
 lodging at the West-end, and belonging to half a 
 dozen clubs, where high play and Whig politics 
 prevailed. In the year 1730 he occupied first- 
 floor apartments over the shop of a certain tailor, 
 in Pall Mall, named Rennie, who, we are told, 
 made children's coats. As he passed daily by 
 the shop, in order to get to his apartments, his 
 notice was frequently attracted by one of the 
 youthful apprentices a fair girl with blue eyes 
 and bright Saxon complexion who worked in the 
 shop, cutting out patterns and sewing small 
 clothes. Her name was Mary Clement. Her 
 family, though respectable, were too reduced in 
 circumstances to give her any better education 
 than such as she could pick up in Mr. Rennie's 
 establishment ; but though poor, they were anxious 
 that she should maintain a good reputation. Mr. 
 Edward Walpole somehow or other contrived to 
 have frequent interviews with her when Rennie's 
 back was turned, and to give her many little 
 presents ; but not so secretly as to escape the 
 more penetrating eye of Mine. Rennie, who 
 rated her soundly, and even sent for her father, 
 in order to take her into the country out of the 
 way of temptation. No doubt she lectured her
 
 150 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 pretty sharply on the great impropriety of her 
 receiving presents and other attentions from so 
 " fine" a gentleman as their lodger on the first 
 floor, and tried hard to convince her how much 
 more it would be to the advantage of " such a 
 girl as plain Mary Clement to become the wife of 
 a respectable tradesman in her own rank of life, 
 rather than carry on a flirtation with one so 
 much above her as Mr. Edward Walpole." 
 Somehow or other, however, Mary Clement 
 failed to see the matter from her mistress's point 
 of view, though she appeared to be ready to 
 listen to her disinterested advice, and even began 
 to make ready for her departure. Indeed, it is 
 said by one fussy chronicler of minute details 
 that she " went upstairs and began to pack up 
 her boxes," as apprentices and servant-girls usually 
 do in snch cases. 
 
 Be this, however, as it may, one thing is 
 certain, namely, that the next morning, when 
 Mr. Rennie opened his shop, there was no Mary 
 Clement to be seen or found ; and that as the day 
 wore on she never returned to her needle. It 
 appears that immediately on leaving Mrs. Rennie's 
 presence she had rushed upstairs to the apartments 
 of the "handsome Englishman; when" to use 
 the words of the biographer of the Walpoles 
 " he received her with open arms ; she vowed
 
 THE THREE MISS WALPOLES. 151 
 
 that she would never leave him ; and she kept 
 her word." It is to be hoped, however, that Mr. 
 Walpole, when he thus " received her with open 
 arms," really meant only to wait for her father's 
 death in order to give the poor girl who had thus 
 thrown herself wholly on his honour, that 
 position of a wife to which her beauty, her 
 affection for him, and her then unsullied good 
 name, conspired to entitle her. 
 
 By Mary Clement he had five children, two 
 sons and three daughters ; and it is due to his 
 memory to add that he took every care which 
 the fondest of fathers could take of their education. 
 As children they were all remarkably handsome, 
 like their parents. Her first boy appears to have 
 died in childhood, having been probably carried 
 off by the measles or the small-pox, which at 
 that time claimed its annual tribute of victims 
 from every house of " the upper ten thousand ;" 
 but of the three girls, as they grew up to woman- 
 hood, a contemporary writer of gossip avows his 
 firm belief that, if the three Graces of the 
 heathen poets returned to earth, it was doubtful 
 whether they would be more afraid of the fair 
 Walpoles or of the fair Gunnings (whom I have 
 already mentioned) as rivals. After the birth of 
 her fifth child, the poor devoted Mary Clement 
 herself died, at the age of only four-and-twenty,
 
 152 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 her little son soon following her to the grave. 
 Deep was the grief of the father of her children 5 
 and, although no plain gold ring had symbolised 
 and blessed their union, he mourned her early 
 death as any fond husband would have mourned 
 the loss of the best and most affectionate of wives. 
 But I must hasten on. 
 
 Mr. Edward Walpole was now not only a Mem- 
 ber of Parliament, but the holder of more than one 
 lucrative appointment under the Crown, arid his 
 father was in the zenith of his power as Prime 
 Minister. Free from all the ties which the life 
 of Mary Clement might have imposed upon him, 
 still young and handsome, and with as brilliant 
 prospects before him as any young man of his 
 day, his position would have entitled him to 
 think of marrying into any of the best families 
 in the kingdom, with whom doubtless his three 
 handsome daughters would not have been serious 
 impediments : but he never would think or talk 
 of marriage : his love was buried in the grave of 
 Mary Clement, and his only thought was for his 
 children. At all events, if at any time he enter- 
 tained any ambitious desire of elevating himself, 
 it was only with a view to their elevation that he 
 coveted the distinction. He was installed a 
 Knight of the Bath in 1753; and when the Duke 
 of Devonshire became Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland,
 
 THE THREE MISS WALPOLES. 153 
 
 Sir Edward Walpole was appointed Chief 
 Secretary, and sworn a member of the Privy 
 Council. He subsequently returned to England, 
 and became Joint- Secretary of the Treasury a 
 post which no doubt he preferred to his splendid 
 exile in Dublin, as it brought him back to that 
 London life which he loved as well as did his 
 brother Horace.* 
 
 The three daughters of Sir Edward were 
 respectively named Laura, Maria, and Charlotte; 
 they were elegant, lively, and highly accomplished, 
 and of good temper and wit they had their full 
 share. The portraits of Laura and Charlotte were 
 painted in a single picture by Ramsay, and that 
 of Maria by Sir Joshua Reynolds. At the 
 Strawberry Hill sale these pictures fetched 
 respectively fifty and seven hundred guineas. 
 Indeed, they were already reckoned among the 
 chief beauties of their time, and they excited the 
 admiration of everyone who had the happiness of 
 enjoying their society. Grand-daughters of the 
 Prime Minister, and as amiable as they were 
 lovely, they might fairly have appeared worthy of 
 the affection of the proudest nobles of the land. 
 
 * It is said of Horace Walpole that he once whimsically 
 declared at Strawberry Hill that he would like to be a doctor if 
 only for one reason that he might continually write for his 
 patients one grand recipe for all complaints : " R. Haustus 
 ccclxv. auroj Londin. in diem sumendos."
 
 154 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 To any such idea, however, their left-handed 
 birth opposed what strange to say in a day 
 when the King's German mistresses were raised 
 wholesale to the peerage of England appeared 
 at the time an insuperable bar. They were 
 known, not as Misses Clement, but by their 
 father's name ; but, by the prudish rules of St. 
 James's they could not be presented at that 
 Court where ladies by no means respectable were 
 received wholesale ; and so of course " those Miss 
 Walpoles," as no doubt the Duchess of Kendal 
 and Lady Walsingham snubbingly styled them, 
 were never recognised by persons who could 
 boast of an unsullied descent so far as appears 
 in the records of the Heralds' College. 
 
 On the other hand, Horace Walpole himself, be 
 it said to his credit, was very partial to his brother's 
 daughters, and constantly invited them to Straw- 
 berry Hill. Indeed, as might have been expected 
 from one who combined as much as he did of the 
 republican with the courtier, he was very proud of 
 them one and all, notwithstanding the bend- 
 sinister which marked their escutcheons, or, if I 
 must speak heraldically, their " lozenges." His 
 friends and correspondents record that he would 
 gladly leave any of his favourite occupations, even 
 his collections of old china, in order to attend 
 upon his favourite nieces ; and it was almost always
 
 THE THREE MISS WALPOLES. 155 
 
 a grand and festive day when the Lord of Straw- 
 berry Hill announced that he was to welcome the 
 Wai pole beauties within its Gothic walls. But 
 there were also younger men than "Dear 
 Uncle Horace," who were ready to leave their 
 pursuits and professional studies in town in order 
 to pass an afternoon in their charming society ; 
 and the lesser court of King Horace at Twicken- 
 ham proved no contemptible rival to the greater 
 court of King George and his Queen at St. 
 James's. 
 
 In fact, the beauty and real goodness and 
 worth of the Walpole girls conspired with the lax 
 code of morality in the highest circles to break 
 down the barriers which as yet stood in their 
 way. Added to this, the prejudices which had 
 hitherto kept members of aristocratic families 
 from matching with young women of plain and 
 untitled families were gradually passing out of 
 date. Had not plain Sarah Jennings worn the 
 ducal coronet of Marlborough, and ruled as a queen 
 of society, even over kings and queens and courts "? 
 And were the grand-daughters of Sir Robert 
 Walpole, though not born in wedlock, to be de- 
 barred from the outer circle of a court where even 
 the marriage of a lady was no guarantee of her 
 correct conduct? 
 
 The first young man of good birth and high
 
 156 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 prospects be it said to his credit who resolved 
 to set this code at defiance, was the Hon. and Rev. 
 Frederick Keppel, a younger brother of the Earl 
 of Albemarle. He was a clergyman of good 
 character and fair position, already holding pre- 
 ferment in the Established Church, and one who 
 not unreasonably might look forward to the pros- 
 pect of further promotion. He much admired 
 Laura, the eldest of the three, and he thought 
 he saw in her those qualities which would make a 
 good wife for a clergyman. He knew the history 
 of Mary Clement, and in spite of it he resolved to 
 propose for her daughter. Horace Walpole thus 
 writes on the subject : 
 
 " I have forgot to tell you of a wedding in our 
 family ; my brother's eldest daughter is to be 
 married to-morrow to Lord Albemarle's brother, 
 a canon of Windsor. We are very happy with 
 the match. The bride is very agreeable, sensible, 
 and good, though not so handsome, perhaps, as 
 her sisters. . . . The second, Maria, is beauty 
 itself. Her face, bloom, eyes, hair, teeth, and 
 person are all perfect. You may image how 
 charming she is when I tell you that her only 
 fault, if one must find one, is that her face is 
 rather too round. She has a great deal of wit 
 and vivacity, with perfect modesty." 
 
 Mr. Keppel, already canon of Windsor, my
 
 THE THREE MISS WALPOLES. 157 
 
 readers may be glad to learn, lived to mount the 
 ladder of further promotion, and died Bishop of 
 Exeter ; nor did I ever hear that he found cause 
 to regret the choice that he made when he married 
 the daughter of plain Mary Clement. As the un- 
 titled daughter of that uiititled lady, the doors of 
 St. James's had been closed against her ; but as 
 " the Hon. Mrs Keppel" she at once appeared at 
 court, and was duly presented to the King and 
 Queen "on her marriage," as is written in the 
 book of the chronicles of the Court Circular of 
 the day. 
 
 It is needless to state that after this marriage 
 of the elder sister, the chances in favour of the 
 beautiful Maria and of Charlotte making " good 
 matches" increased wonderfully, and that they 
 soon found as good a market to carry their matri- 
 monial wares to as they could have found at the 
 " drawing-room " of royalty. In fact, the sisters- 
 in-law of the Keppels appear to have been sisters- 
 in-love as well as sisters-in-law ; and in general 
 society the prejudices which for a time had stood 
 in the way of the young ladies' advancement soon 
 began to crumble away. Introduced into general 
 society by the Keppels, they were received every- 
 where among the Suffolk county families, Maria, 
 the beauty of the family, creating a marked sensa- 
 tion wherever she appeared.
 
 158 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 Among the numerous admirers of the belle of 
 the season was a certain noble earl, of high and 
 noble descent, who, though not quite young, nor 
 yet quite advanced in years, thought himself not 
 too old to take a young wife. Maria Walpole, he 
 thought, was by far the most lovely woman that 
 he had ever seen, at all events that he knew ; but 
 then it was the old story, " There were objec- 
 tions," strong, though possibly not insurmountable. 
 His lordship, who was no other than James, 
 second Earl Waldegrave, had held the highly 
 respectable post of Governor and Privy Purse to 
 the Prince of Wales ; he was also Privy Councillor, 
 a Knight of the Garter, and a Teller of the 
 Exchequer ; and it would scarcely be becoming, he 
 thought, to fly in the face of his royal master, and 
 offend courtly propriety by marrying a lady whom 
 the King and Queen could not possibly recognise, 
 even though that lady was a Walpole. But 
 while Lord Waldegrave was striving to digest his 
 scruples, and to weigh his interest against his 
 inclinations, he found the prize within his reach 
 was daily becoming more and more precious 
 in the eyes of several persons of distinction 
 who had similar opportunities with himself of 
 observing how much more lustre the matchless 
 face of Maria Walpole would add to a coronet 
 than a coronet would add to her face. The earl
 
 THE THREE MISS WALPOLES. 159 
 
 also could not but remember that he was already 
 four-and-forty, and that there were plenty of 
 younger rivals in the field who would be likely 
 to take advantage of any indecision on his part. 
 Indeed he was given to understand by one of 
 those kind lady friends who love to have a 
 finger in the pie of every match-making arrange- 
 ment, that with his lordship it was a question 
 of "now or never," and it was no season for 
 shilly-shallying. 
 
 The result was, as might have been expected, 
 that the Prince's Governor and Privy Purse, Earl, 
 Privy Councillor, Knight of the Garter, and Teller 
 of the Exchequer though he was, came to a de- 
 cision to follow the example of Mr. Keppel, and lay 
 his honours and coronet at the feet of the daughter 
 of the poor tailor's apprentice. Accordingly, in the 
 year 1759, Maria Wai pole became Countess 
 Waldegrave, and, like her elder sister, was duly 
 " presented at Court " Lord Waldegrave, it may 
 be remarked, had some pretensions to unite 
 himself with so intellectual and literary a family 
 as the Walpoles, as being one of the " noble 
 authors " of his day. He had composed a volume 
 of " Historical Memoirs," extending from 1754 to 
 1758 ; a work with respect to which it is remarked 
 with some naivete by Mr. Eliot Warburton, that 
 " it is true he was the historian of rather a short
 
 160 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 period ; but then it must be remembered that in 
 four years much may be done, and, therefore 
 much may be written about it." His lordship, 
 I believe, never found reason to regret his choice ; 
 and he had three daughters by his countess, who 
 proved as good a mother as wife. Four years 
 after her marriage, and just after the birth of her 
 last child, the Earl was struck with the small- 
 pox, of which he died. She nursed him, however, 
 through his illness with all care and affection, and 
 regardless of all consequences to herself, as I 
 learn on the testimony of her uncle Horace ; and 
 she deeply lamented his loss ; indeed, for many a 
 long month she was inconsolable. To her own 
 prospects, apparently, the loss of Lord Waldegrave 
 was a severe blow, as only a few days before his 
 last illness he had been offered the choice of two 
 splendid appointments the Ambassadorship at 
 Paris or the Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland. 
 
 It was long before the widowed countess 
 would venture again into society; but society 
 felt that it had a claim upon her, and was not 
 slow to enforce its claim. More lovely than ever 
 on her reappearance in fashionable circles, the 
 youthful widow drew on herself more admiring 
 eyes, if possible, than she had done in her early 
 maiden days. Her three little girls engrossed all 
 her attentions and affections. Many of the first
 
 THE THREE MISS WALPOLES. 161 
 
 and highest nobles in the land sought to share 
 their honours and possessions with the charming 
 relict; but the Countess was obdurate, and a 
 long train of rejected suitors, with the Duke of 
 Portland at their head, passed away from her 
 doors. 
 
 But the whirligig of time brings round its 
 revenges. A few years of widowhood passed by 
 when another pretender to the widow's hand 
 entered the field, and the very lady against 
 whom only seven brief years before the doors of 
 "our Palace of St. James's were closed and 
 barred was now sought in marriage by the King's 
 own brother. " A singular union indeed," as Mr 
 Eliot Warburton remarks, " of the two extreme 
 links of the social chain took place when H.R.H. 
 William Henry, Duke of Gloucester, in 1766, es- 
 poused the daughter of the unfortunate Mary 
 Clement a marriage in virtue of which it was 
 not only possible*, but quite probable, that a de- 
 scendant of the tailor's apprentice might in course 
 of time take his or her seat upon that very throne 
 to which her own daughters had been denied all 
 approach." The issue of this second marriage 
 was (1) a son, Prince William Frederick, Duke 
 
 * What is known as the Royal Marriage Act, passed at the 
 instance of George III., was one of the consequences of this 
 union. 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 162 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 of Gloucester, who married the Princess Mary, 
 daughter of King George III., and died in 1834 ; 
 and (2) a daughter, the Princess Sophia, who 
 died unmarried in 1844. It may be interesting 
 here to record the fact that Maria's three little 
 girls by her first husband all lived to grow up 
 and married well ; the eldest becoming the wife 
 of her cousin George, fourth Earl Waldegrave, 
 and eventually the owner of Strawberry Hill ; 
 the second marrying George Henry, fourth Duke 
 of Grafton ; while the third married Admiral 
 Lord Hugh Seymour, the grandfather of the 
 present Marquis of Hertford. 
 
 And do my readers wish to know the matri- 
 monial fate of Charlotte, the youngest of the 
 three of the Walpole beauties ? She was married 
 in 1760 to Lionel, Lord Huntingtower, afterwards 
 fourth Earl of Dysart in the Scottish peerage. 
 But they shall hear the story in the words of her 
 uncle Horace. He writes under date Oct. 2, 
 1760: 
 
 "I announce to you my Lady Huntiugtower. 
 I hope you will approve the match .... I 
 suppose my Lord Dysart will, as he does not yet 
 know, though they have been married these two 
 hours, that at ten o'clock this morning his son 
 married my niece Charlotte at St. James's Church. 
 The moment my Lord Dysart is dead, I will
 
 THE THREE MISS WALPOLES. 163 
 
 carry you to see Ham House. It is pleasant to 
 call neighbours cousins, with a charming pros- 
 pect over against one. And now, if you want to 
 know the detail, there was none. It is not the 
 style of our little court to have long negotiations ; 
 and we do not fatigue the town with exhibiting 
 the betrothed parties for six months together in 
 public places. Venit, vidit, vicit. The young lord 
 has liked her for some time ; on Saturday sen'night 
 he came to my brother and made his demand. 
 The princess did not know him by sight, and did 
 not dislike him when she did ; she consented, and 
 they were to be married this morning : My Lord 
 Dysart is such a fool that nobody will pity him. 
 He has kept his son till six and twenty, and 
 would never make the least settlement on him. 
 " Sure," said the young man, " if my father will 
 do nothing for me, I may please myself; he can- 
 not hinder me of 10,000 a year, and ,60,000 
 more that are in the funds, all entailed on me on 
 a reversion," which one does not wonder that the 
 bride did not refuse, as there is present posses- 
 sion too of a very handsome person, the only 
 thing his father has ever given him." 
 
 "In another letter the chatty and communicative 
 old uncle thus tells the story in its full details, 
 which are too amusing to be lost to my readers : 
 
 " My brother's last daughter, Charlotte, is 
 
 M 2
 
 164 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 married, and though their story is too 
 
 short for a romance, it will make a very pretty 
 novel ; nay, it is almost brief enough for a 
 play, coming very nearly within one of the unities, 
 the space of twenty-four hours. There is in the 
 world .... and he lives directly over against 
 me, across the water, a strange brute called the 
 the Earl of Dysart. Don't be frightened, he is 
 not the bridegroom. His son, Lord Hunting- 
 tower, to whom he gives but .400 a year, is a 
 comely young gentleman of six-and-twenty, who 
 has often had thoughts of trying whether his 
 father would not like grandchildren better than 
 
 he does his own children All the answer 
 
 he could ever get was that, as he had five younger 
 children, the Earl could not afford to make any 
 settlement; but he offered, as a proof at once 
 of his inability and his kindness, to lend his son 
 a large sum of money at a low interest. This 
 indigent earl has thirteen thousand a year and 
 sixty thousand pounds in the funds. This money, 
 and ten out of the thirteen thousand, are entailed 
 upon Lord Huntingtower. The young Lord, it 
 appears, had been in love with Charlotte for 
 some months, but thought so little of inflaming 
 her that yesterday fortnight she did not know 
 him by sight. On that day he proposed himself 
 as a son-in-law to my brother, who with much
 
 THE THREE MISS WALPOLES. 165 
 
 surprise heard his story, but excused himself 
 from giving an answer. He said he would never 
 force the inclinations of his children ; he did not 
 believe his daughter Charlotte had any engage- 
 ment or attachment, but she might have ; he 
 would send for her and know her mind. She was 
 with her sister Maria, to whom she said very 
 sensibly, 'If I were but nineteen, I would refuse 
 point blank, for I don't like to be married in a 
 week to a man I never saw. But I am two-and- 
 twenty. Some people say I am handsome, and 
 some say I am not ; but I believe the truth is that 
 I am likely to be at large and to go off soon. It 
 is dangerous to refuse so great a match.' Take 
 notice of the words 'married in a week.' The 
 love that was so many months in ripening could 
 not stay above a week. She came and saw the 
 impetuous lover, and I believe she was glad that 
 she had not " refused point blank," for they were 
 married last Thursday. I tremble a little for the 
 poor girl ; not to mention the oddness of the 
 father and twenty disagreeable things that may 
 be in the young man, who has been kept and has 
 lived entirely out of the world. He takes her 
 fortune, and cannot settle another shilling upon 
 her till his father dies, and then promises only a 
 thousand a year. Would one venture one's 
 happiness, and one's whole fortune too, for the
 
 166 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 chance of living to be Lady Dysart? If Lord 
 Huntingtower dies before his father she will not 
 have a sixpence. Surely my brother has risked 
 too much !" 
 
 In a letter of subsequent date the gossiping old 
 uncle follows up the subject with a story too good 
 to be omitted here : 
 
 " Lord Huntingtower wrote to offer his father 
 eight thousand pounds of Charlotte's fortune if he 
 would give them a thousand a year at present 
 and settle a jointure on her. The Earl returned 
 this truly laconic .... answer : ' Lord Hunting- 
 tower. Sir, I answer your letter as soon as I 
 receive it. I wish you joy. I hear your wife 
 is very accomplished. Yours, DYSART.' 
 
 " I believe my Lady Huntingtower must make 
 it convenient that Lord Dysart should die, and 
 then he will. For myself, I expect to be a very 
 respectable personage in time, and to have my 
 tomb set forth like the Lady Margaret Douglas, 
 that I had four earls for my nephews, though 1 
 never was one myself. Adieu." 
 
 The "strange brute" of an earl died in 1770, 
 and Charlotte Lady Huntiugtower thereon became 
 Countess of Dysart. She died, however, issue- 
 less. Horace Walpole's prophecy, however, was 
 never quite fulfilled ; it is true that his nephew, 
 George, a queer, eccentric, and half-cracked
 
 THE THREE MISS WALPOLES. 167 
 
 creature, became third Earl of Orford, and that 
 two of his three nieces wore the coronets of 
 countesses, namely, those of Waldegrave and 
 Dysart; but Maria was obliged to be content 
 with seeing her husband hold a spiritual peerage, 
 which gave no coronet to herself. Horace 
 Walpole, however, made up for this deficiency 
 in two ways ; first by his second niece becoming 
 a princess of the blood royal, and secondly by 
 succeeding, though late in life, to his nephew's 
 earldom, a title which became extinct at his 
 death, though revived subsequently in another 
 branch of the family. 
 
 In conclusion, I must add that Sir Edward 
 Walpole's only son, Edward, the brother of the 
 beauties whose stories I have attempted to tell, 
 entered the army, and distinguished himself while 
 a subaltern by an act of gallantry which will be 
 found duly recorded in the Walpole Letters. His 
 name is not mentioned in the " Peerages" along 
 with those of his sisters ; but it is satisfactory 
 to know that he rose to the rank of lieutenant- 
 colonel. Of his ultimate fate I have been able 
 to learn nothing.
 
 108 
 
 THE WOOING OF SIR HENEAGE FINCH.* 
 
 THE name of Heneage Finch is one which 
 for nearly two centuries has held a 
 foremost place both in the pages of the peerage, 
 and also among those Englishmen who have 
 gained distinction as " learned in the law," or as 
 leaders in affairs of state. Every Earl of Ayles- 
 ford in succession, from the first peer, who was 
 Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in the 
 reign of George I., down to the present holder 
 of the title, representing no less than seven 
 generations, has borne that name ; and the first 
 Lord Aylesford himself was the distinguished 
 son of an even more distinguished father, 
 Heneage Finch, who, having been one of the, 
 
 * It may be desirable to state that this was written before I 
 had seen an article on the same subject in Temple Bar for 
 July, 1872.
 
 THE WOOING OF SIR HENEAGE FINCH. 169 
 
 leading members of the Parliament which restored 
 King Charles II., became successively Solicitor 
 and Attorney-General, Lord Keeper of the Great 
 Seal, and ultimately was advanced to the wool- 
 sack and created Earl of Nottingham. This Sir 
 Heneage Finch, while in the prime of manhood, 
 was not only Treasurer of the Inner Temple, but 
 also " Autumn or Summer Reader" of that society, 
 and in that capacity he gained a high reputation 
 for his practical and common-sense application of 
 the general principles of the law a subject which 
 as yet had not been taken in hand by Judge 
 Blackstone. His "readings" in the Temple, we 
 are told, were very popular and quite the fashion 
 of the day : so that we must not be surprised 
 to find that they were attended by many members 
 of other professions and the wits and courtiers of 
 the second Charles ; and that he brought them to 
 a conclusion by a grand entertainment which he 
 gave to the King and his Court in the great hall 
 of the Temple, where a play or ' masque' was 
 performed by the students in the presence of his 
 Majesty. 
 
 But if we go yet another generation back, 
 we shall find that this Lord Chancellor's father 
 was also a Sir Heneage Finch, and a man of 
 some note in his day at all events, he was 
 serjeant-at-law, Recorder of London, and Speaker
 
 170 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 of the House of Commons under King Charles I. 
 in 1626. 
 
 It is this Sir Heneage Finch the story of whose 
 second wooing I propose to tell. By his first wife, 
 a daughter of Sir Edmund Bell, of Beaupre 
 Hall, Norfolk, he had a family of seven sons and 
 four daughters, so that he must have been well 
 forward in years or at all events, as they say, 
 no chicken when he first set his eyes on a rich 
 and charming widow, one Mistress Elizabeth 
 Bennett, the daughter of a Staffordshire gentleman 
 named Cradock, and whom the recent death of 
 her husband, Richard Bennett, a citizen of London, 
 and a parishioner of St. Olave's, Jewry, had 
 left at her own disposal, together with a good 
 round sum of money and other property. 
 
 By the custom of London, and by the will of 
 her departed lord, it appears that she was in 
 actual possession of two-thirds of her husband's 
 goods and chattels, besides jewels and chains of 
 pearl and gold, and some splendid diamond and 
 other rings, to say nothing of the family plate, 
 the family coach, with four "grey coach mares 
 and geldings," and other good things to boot. In 
 addition to these substantial recommendations, 
 she seems to have had no small share of personal 
 attractions with a full consciousness of their 
 value, no doubt and no more drawbacks and
 
 THE WOOTNG OF SIR HENEAGE FINCH. 171 
 
 incurabrance than one little boy. In those days, 
 although the " Duke of Roussillon". was not born 
 or thought of, it was scarcely necessary for a 
 pretty widow to advertise for a husband ; and the 
 fair Mistress Bennett accordingly had no lack of 
 suitors for her hand and heart. 
 
 Much to the amusement of the wits who moved 
 about in London society at that time, three of 
 the most conspicuous among the rival candidates 
 bore the names of birds Sir Sackville Crow, a 
 physician named Raven, and the Sir Heneage 
 Finch whom we have already introduced to our 
 readers ; and besides these we have on record a 
 fourth suitor, Sir Edward Bering, of Stirrenden 
 Dering, in Kent, and sundry other titled arid 
 untitled individuals, whose names we shall have 
 occasion to mention presently. 
 
 The course of true love, in the case of Sir 
 Heneage, appears to have given the lie to the old 
 proverb by " running" tolerably k ' smoothly." It is 
 true that he had no lack of rivals ; and, though 
 it might be supposed that the chances were in 
 favour of a man, like himself, who had filled the 
 Speaker's chair, and must therefore have been 
 of courtly and commanding presence, and who 
 had the still more substantial endowments of a 
 town house, and also an estate and mansion at
 
 172 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 Kensington,* with high Court connections to boot, 
 yet for several months it seemed as if he was not 
 unlikely to be distanced in the race by one of the 
 aforesaid birds, and still more by the Kentish 
 squire, Sir Edward Dering, whose efforts to win 
 the hand and heart of the pretty widow were 
 equally artful and persistent. It is from one of 
 the old manuscripts preserved among the archives 
 of Surrenden Dering, and given to the world 
 under the auspices of the Camden Society,f that 
 I may gather such information on the subject 
 as I am enabled to lay before my readers. 
 
 The lady's first husband had died only in the 
 April of 1628, but by the end of that year she 
 was already besieged by a host of worshippers, 
 all more or less bent, we may believe, on securing 
 a share of her money ; 
 
 " Juventus 
 Non tantum veneris quantum studiosa culinae ;" 
 
 for it was publicly reported at the time that she 
 was " a twenty thousand pound widow." The 
 
 * The house is said to have stood very nearly on the site 
 now occupied by Kensington Palace, and part of Kensington 
 Palace Gardens formed part of Sir H. Finch's handed estate. 
 
 t Proceedings in the County of Kent ; from certain MSS. in 
 the possession of Sir E. Dering, Bart., at Surrender Dering. 
 Edited by the Rev. L. B. Larking ; published by the Cambridge 
 Camden Society, 1862.
 
 THE WOOIXG OF SIR HENEAGE FINCH. 173 
 
 first bird who flew citywards to find her out 
 was apparently a wise specimen of his kind; 
 at all events, Sir Sackville Crow, for such was 
 his title, was making a desperate effort at that 
 time to relieve himself from the consequences of a 
 serious deficit in his public accounts, which 
 shortly afterwards compelled him to retire from 
 his office of Treasurer of the Navy. He came, 
 he saw, he proposed, and he did not conquer. 
 The widow, though amorously inclined, was not 
 to be easily caught; he had to return to his 
 nest discomfited, and we do not hear of him again 
 eastwards of Temple Bar. 
 
 The next person who tried his luck with the 
 widow was determined not to be so easily baffled, 
 and accordingly resolved to take her literally by 
 assault. This was Dr. Raven, a fashionable and 
 successful physician of the day. In despair of 
 other and gentler means, this foolish man thought 
 that Mrs. Bennett could be won by a coup de main, 
 if the bold stroke could be made with sufficient 
 vigour. Accordingly, by tampering with her 
 servants, so as to silence her personal attendant 
 or get her out of the way, he made his entry into 
 the lady's chamber after she had retired to rest 
 on the 19th of November, in the year already 
 mentioned. His reception was such as might 
 have been imagined. The lady screamed
 
 174 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 " Thieves !" and " Murder !" so as to be heard 
 by the " Charleys " in Cheapside ; the servants, 
 male and female, rushed to the rescue ; the 
 doctor was secured, and handed over to the 
 constable, who next day brought the intruder 
 before " Mr. Recorder." As Mr. Recorder in 
 other words, Sir Heneage Finch was himself 
 one of the rival suitors for the lady's hand, we 
 may imagine the pleasure with which he signed 
 the order for committing Dr. Raven to durance 
 vile until he could be brought to trial. The 
 Court refused to allow him to be bailed. He 
 was ultimately tried, fined, and imprisoned for 
 the affair ; but the loss of his professional guineas 
 no doubt was a still severer penalty. 
 
 On the next'day Sir Edward Dering, as he tells 
 us, was in the field. His tale is told with much 
 nalvet^ and shows us that servants were as 
 accessible to golden arguments as they were in 
 the days of Jupiter and Danae, or as they can 
 be now. "Nov. 20, Edmund the King. I 
 adventured, but was denied. Sent tip a letter, 
 which was returned after she had read it." 
 
 This repulse rendered it necessary to resort 
 to other, and we fear that we must add crooked, 
 means. Servants are amenable to bribes ; and 
 accordingly Sir Edmund's diary continues: "Nov. 
 21. I inveigled G. Newman with 20s. Nov.
 
 THE WOOING OF SIR HENEAGE FINCH. 175 
 
 24. I did re-engage him (20s). I did also oil the 
 cash keeper (20s). Nov. 26. I gave Edmund 
 Aspull (the cash keeper) another 20s." 
 
 This looks unpromising, but it appears as if 
 Sir Edward did not readily lose courage along 
 with his cash. The next entry, consequently, 
 shows a faint glimmer of hope: "Nov. 27. I 
 sent a second letter, which was kept." 
 
 But in spite of his rising hopes, the worthy 
 knight feels that he must not relax his efforts. 
 Accordingly he writes, the same day : " I set 
 Sir John Skeffington upon Matthew Cradock." 
 
 This Matthew, we may remark, was a cousin of 
 the widow, and her trusty adviser in matters of 
 business. The diary continues, under the same 
 day's date : " The cash keeper supped with 
 me." 
 
 Neither Sir John Skeffington, however, nor 
 the "cash keeper" appears to have been of 
 much practical use, or possibly they did not do 
 their best on his behalf. Accordingly Sir Edward 
 begins to act seriously for himself: "Nov. 30. 
 I was at the Old Jewry Church, and saw her, 
 both forenoon and afternoon. Dec. 1. I sent 
 her a third letter, which was likewise kept." 
 
 On the following Sunday Sir Edward, "true 
 to his tryste," went to St. Olave's, when, on 
 coming out of church, George Newman whispered
 
 176 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 in his ear, " Good news, good news !" Sir 
 Edward who had taken a lodging in sight of 
 the widow's house, pressed his informant to come 
 in. George Newman the same who had 
 been " inveigled" and " oiled" quietly and con- 
 fidentially told Sir Edward that his lady " liked 
 well his carriage, and that if his lands were not 
 already settled on his eldest son, there was good 
 hope for him." The bearer of such good news 
 certainly deserved a repetition of the oiling 
 process, and accordingly, says Sir Edward, " I 
 gladly gave him another twenty shillings." 
 
 Elated and hopeful. Sir Edward, in the course 
 of the evening, proceeded to call on the Recorder. 
 Sir Edward, being a man of Kent, very naturally 
 stayed to supper, and as naturally grew very 
 confidential as he drank the worthy knight's wine. 
 Sir Heneage, too, grew confidential in his turn, 
 gave him to understand that he quite despaired 
 of success himself, and, indeed, meant gradually 
 and quietly to withdraw ; in fact, he went so far 
 as to promise his aid to Sir Edward's cause. 
 So in the course of the evening the two suitors 
 frankly and freely chatted over the widow and 
 her affairs, and the Recorder put Sir Edward 
 wholly off his guard. Good easy Kentish 
 baronet ! you are no match for a lawyer like Sir 
 Heneage Finch, let alone a wily and wary
 
 THE WOOING OF SIR HENEAGE FINCH. Ml 
 
 widow, whose choice in the matter is well 
 known to him, as he carries the game in his 
 hands. 
 
 It so happened that one great obstacle in the 
 way of the widow's remarriage was the wardship 
 of her little boy, which belonged to a certain 
 Mr. Steward, but which he was willing to 
 relinquish for a money payment. The widow 
 offered what she (and Sir Heneage too) thought 
 a fair sum ; but he refused, and raised his price 
 to so extortionate an amount that the widow 
 refused to see him or speak to him again. 
 
 Sir Edward thought that this was the juncture 
 to push his suit. It appears from the narrative 
 that for a few days the lady, like many others, 
 did not quite know her own mind, and would 
 neither say ' yes ' nor ' no ;' so, weary of waiting, 
 on the 1st of January he wrote and demanded 
 the return of his letters and billets-doux. His 
 cause was now irretrievably lost ; for, in spite 
 of all arguments and recommendations in his 
 favour from the lady's " companion," Mrs. Norton, 
 and his friend, the celebrated angler and man- 
 milliner of Fleet-street, Izaak Walton, and the 
 clever machinery of some dreams, real or fictitious, 
 which were told to the lady in one of her softer 
 moods by cousins and friends of the baronet, and 
 the (of course) accidental waylaying of her 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 178 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 little boy and his nurse in the fields of Finsbury 
 and plying them with cakes, wine, and money, 
 the widow stood to her guns, and positively 
 refused to think of him any more as a suitor. In 
 fact (so she gave it out),' she never meant to 
 marry again at all. Suitors came and weot. 
 Great ladies from the Court the cream of 
 " carnage folk" visited the mansion in St. 
 Olave's in shoals, and set forth the merits of 
 .sundry knights and gentlemen and lords, but all 
 without effect. Lady Skinner called to plead 
 the cause of one Mr. Butler ; but her description 
 of him as a " dark, blunt-nosed gentleman" 
 extinguished his hopes and ended his suit. Sir 
 Peter Temple, of Stowe, a man of high birth, 
 and the owner of lands which have since enriched 
 the ducal house of Buckingham, came forward, 
 backed by the aid of a dashing countess, but 
 found only a cold reception, being told to go 
 back to Buckinghamshire. The Countess of 
 Bridgwater introduced the battered old sailor Sir 
 Henry Maiuwaring, who, in spite of his Cheshire 
 pedigree, was steeped in poverty to the very lips, 
 and he and another knight had an interview of an 
 hour with the lady, but neither of them was 
 suffered to call again. Lord Bruce the head 
 of the Braces of Tottenham, now Earls and 
 Marquises of Ailesbury put in a claim for
 
 THE WOOING OF SIR HENEAGE FINCH. 179 
 
 himself; but he too very soon retired. More 
 persevering than the rest of the candidates for 
 this very prudent Penelope, and, indeed, the 
 only dangerous rival of Sir Heneage, was the 
 newly-made Lord Lumle}% whose chances were 
 all the better as he came backed by one Loe, 
 or Lowe, a brother-in-law of the lady herself. 
 
 The latter, it must be owned, lost no oppor- 
 tunity of prosecuting his suit by overt attentions 
 to the widow. As being one of " the devout 
 female sex," it appears she went to daily prayers 
 at St. Olave's Church ; and accordingly five times 
 in one week did the coach of Lord Lumley stop 
 the way at the door of the church in Old Jewry, 
 its owner being intent on worshipping there, 
 though possibly the rich widow may have been 
 one object of his worship. His suit was backed 
 by no less a person than the Earl of Dorset, Lord 
 Chamberlain to the Queen, an influential person 
 in the political world, and especially at the Admi- 
 ralty. But all was in vain ; weeks and weeks 
 drew on, yet the lady was still obdurate; she 
 would not listen, she said, to any proposal of 
 matrimony ; her mind had been long made up. 
 Isaak Walton now again appears upon the scene, 
 to plead once more the cause of his old friend, 
 Sir Edward; but her answer was the same. 
 Lord Lumley had even proceeded so far at one 
 
 N 2
 
 180 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 time as to present her with a ring, which she 
 accepted at his hands ; but it was not a plain 
 gold one, and on the 14th of February his hopes 
 were crushed by the return of the pledge of 
 attachment. 
 
 And so it was : the widow all along, at all 
 events from the preceding Christmas, had made 
 up her own mind ; but, like most rich and pretty 
 widows, not at all in the direction of a life-long 
 celibacy. She did not use the deepest of black- 
 bordered note paper, or mount a long flowing 
 white widow's cap on a rope of black silk, talk of 
 herself as a "wreck," and of her life as a vie 
 manquee, and carry on private flirtations in a 
 dark room with charlatans and adventurers. But 
 she kept her own counsel, and had her own way 
 in the end; and having contrived to delude Sir 
 Edward into an idea that the resumption of his 
 place as a suitor was not absolutely a fruitless 
 and hopeless task, one fine morning she surprised 
 both him and the fashionable world, and every- 
 body else except the worthy Recorder of London , 
 by going quietly on the 16th of April, 1629 
 after exactly twelve months of widowhood to 
 the Church of St. Clement Danes, where she was 
 married, no doubt by special licence, to Sir 
 Heneage Finch, with whom the affair no doubt 
 had been pre-arranged ever since the previous
 
 THE WOOING OF SIR HENEAGE FINCH. 181 
 
 Christmas. It may interest our lady friends to 
 learn that Sir Edward Bering took his defeat in 
 good part, and soon set about retrieving his 
 lost ground, time, and trouble by electing as his 
 third wife he had already buried two a 
 daughter of Sir Ralph Gibbes, of Honington, 
 Warwickshire, with whom, no doubt, he "lived 
 happy ever afterwards." 
 
 Before we dismiss our notice of the pretty 
 widow, it may be well to add that her son Simon 
 whom Sir Edward Bering treated with cakes 
 in Finsbury Fields became in the end a man of 
 great wealth, which was carried by three 
 daughters, his coheiresses, into several noble 
 families, and that his uncle, Richard Bennett, or 
 Bennet as the name is now spelt, was the 
 ancestor of the Earls of Arlington and Tanker- 
 ville. Of Mrs. Bennett's second manage all that 
 we know is bright and fortunate, except its brief 
 continuance ; and it is probable that among the 
 many suitors, both bachelors and widowers, who 
 sought her hand, she really chose the best, or one 
 of the best. Of the issue of Sir Heneage Finch's 
 first marriage, three sons and one daughter lived 
 to grow up ; and the eldest of these, named as his 
 father, became Lord Chancellor of England and 
 Earl of Nottingham, a title with which his 
 descendants and representatives have joined the
 
 182 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 Earldom of Winchelsea. By the pretty and 
 wealthy widow, Sir Hen cage had two daughters, 
 Elizabeth, wife of Edward Maddison, Esq., and 
 Anne, married to Edward, third Viscount and 
 first Earl of Conway, ancestor of the present 
 Marquis of Hertford. Sir Heneage Finch sur- 
 vived his marriage little more than two years, as 
 he died on the 5th of December, 1631.
 
 THE DUCAL HOUSE OF LEEDS. 
 
 OUT of all the great families who have at- 
 tained to the honour of a ducal coronet in 
 England, most owe their existence either to the 
 accident of being sprung from . royalty by a 
 left-hand marriage, or from successful statesman- 
 ship subsidised by a run of luck in the way of 
 alliances with well-endowed heiresses. Some few 
 dukedoms, I am aware those of Wellington 
 and Marlborough, for instance have been 
 purchased by a series of brillant achievements 
 in the field ; one, and one only so far as I know 
 that of Norfolk is sprung out of the success- 
 ful career of an able lawyer ; but there is one 
 house, namely, that of the Osbornes, Dukes ol 
 Leeds, in whose early history is to be found an 
 episode of city life so strange and so singular
 
 184 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 that I need scarcely ask the pardon of my readers 
 for introducing it to them here. 
 
 The romance to which I allude is nearly three 
 centuries old, though it reads like an affair of 
 yesterday. But before I come to tell it, I will 
 beg my readers' patience while I sum up in a few 
 words all that is known of the earlier history of 
 the Osborne family. It is agreed among the 
 heralds and the peerage makers that the Os- 
 bornes were of considerable antiquity in Kent 
 long before they attained to the honours of the 
 peerage, or even to a title at all. We are told 
 that one John Osborne, esquire and landholder, 
 was seated at Ashford in that county as far back 
 as the reign of King Henry VI., when his name 
 is returned in a list of the local gentry, as sub- 
 scribing to the oath of allegiance. His lineal 
 descendant, Richard Osborne, married a Kentish 
 lady, Elizabeth Fylden or (more probably) Tylden; 
 and his son, also Richard, marrying a Broughton 
 of Westmorland, became the father of a certain 
 Edward Osborne, who, entering early upon a 
 commercial life, served as one of the Sheriffs of 
 London and Middlesex in the seventeenth year of 
 Elizabeth's reign, and eight years later was 
 chosen in due course Lord Mayor of London. 
 He received the honour of knighthood at West- 
 minster in 1584, and not long afterwards was
 
 THE DUCAL HOUSE OF LEEDS. 185 
 
 chosen one of the representatives of the City of 
 London in Parliament. He died in the year 
 1591, and was buried in the church of St. Dionis 
 Backchurch, where a monument recorded, and 
 perhaps still records, .his public and private 
 virtues. Collins, in his elaborate "Peerage," 
 simply says of him that " he married Anne, 
 daughter and heiress of Sir William Hewitt, also 
 in his time Lord Mayor of London," adding 
 incidentally also that " Sir William died in the 
 year 1566, when his said daughter, Anne, was 
 just twenty-three years of age." 
 
 Sir William Hewitt appears to have been a 
 charitable and benevolent person. He was a 
 benefactor to several of the hospitals of London, 
 and to the poor of more than one parish. Thus 
 he left to the poor in the hospital of St. Thomas's, 
 Southwark (of which he was a vice-president), 
 .20 ; and 4s. 8d. to every poor maiden that 
 should be married within a year of his decease 
 in two parishes in Yorkshire, with which it may 
 be presumed that he was connected by family 
 ties. The disposal of the rest of his property is 
 already incidentally recorded in the present 
 paper. By his will, dated Jan. 3, 1566, I find he 
 ordered his body to be buried in the church of 
 St. Martin's, in Candlewick Ward (of which he
 
 186 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 was a parishioner), near to the place where his 
 late beloved wife Alice was interred. 
 
 But, for the sake of my lady readers, I must not 
 pass quite so rapidly over a marriage out of 
 which such important consequences flowed to the 
 Osbornes. Respectable and even ancient as the 
 family might have been at Ashford, in Kent, it 
 is pretty clear that they must have suffered 
 severely in purse and pocket when, in the reign 
 of Mary or of Elizabeth, Richard Osborne sent 
 his eldest son, no doubt the eldest of a large 
 family up to London to fight for himself the 
 battle of life. And doubtless either a special 
 Providence or a very lucky star looked down 
 with more than a kind smile on young Edward 
 Osborne, when the latter, at the age of eighteen 
 or nineteen summers, reached London from 
 Ashford, and entered the family of Sir William 
 Hewitt and of Dame Alice Hewitt, of Philpot 
 Lane, as an " apprentice " to learn his trade. At 
 that time youthful apprentices were not left to 
 pass their time in suburban lodgings, walking 
 backwards and forwards to their daily work, and> 
 when the day's task was over, enlivening their 
 evenings at theatres and music halls. When 
 they were bound as apprentices, they became 
 inmates of their master's household, and were 
 expected, as members of his family, to conform
 
 THE DUCAL HOUSE OF LEEDS. 187 
 
 to the rules and regulations of the homes of which 
 which they formed a part. Of course, if their 
 masters happened to have grown-up or growing 
 daughters, the young fellows had so many more 
 attractions to keep them at home and out of 
 mischief; and equally of course was it a matter 
 of constant occurrence that the best and the 
 worthiest of such apprentices were enabled to 
 climb the first rung of the ladder of commercial 
 advancement by securing the affections of one of 
 the pretty and well-endowed daughters of their 
 master. And it was only the old old story after 
 all that was enacted in the family of Sir William 
 Hewitt, that I have to tell. It appears that, 
 having no other incumbrance but his daughter, 
 and having made a fair fortune in business, Sir 
 William and Lady Hewitt, with " Mistress " 
 Anne and their Kentish apprentice, had removed 
 from the worthy knight's place of business in 
 Philpot Lane, and were occupying a fashionable 
 residence on old London Bridge, every arch of 
 which, as shown in old pictures, was at that time 
 crowded with houses. The windows on one side 
 at least looked down upon the never-ceasing ebb 
 and flow of the Thames ; and, as bad (or good) 
 luck would have it, one day while fair Mistress 
 Anne was hanging her favourite bird in its cage 
 outside the parlour window, she lost her balance
 
 188 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 and fell out into the river. It was fortunately 
 just high water, so that she had not many feet 
 to fall, and the tide was running very slackly ; 
 but the river was deep, and in a few minutes 
 more she would have been drowned, had not the 
 young gentleman from Kent, who counted 
 swimming among the other accomplishments 
 which he had learned at his native Ashford, 
 thrown off his shoes and surcoat, and leaped 
 into the water after her. It was the work of an 
 instant. He caught by her hair the struggling 
 maiden, and dragged her towards a barge which 
 was passing through the bridge ; the crew hove 
 to, and took on board the half-drowned lady and 
 her preserver ; and the latter being landed at the 
 steps between the bridge and Fish-street-hill, 
 brought back his prize with no small joy and 
 triumph to her father's house, where doubtless 
 every attention was paid to them both. It was 
 fortunately Summer, and so they both escaped 
 with no further bad results than a sound ducking, 
 and possibly a slight cold. 
 
 Perhaps it was scarcely a priori probable that 
 the matter would end there. Mistress Anne, 
 as I have reason for believing, had long secretly 
 admired the young gentleman of good family 
 from Kent, who had been for so many months 
 an inmate of her parents' house, and who in all
 
 THE DUCAL HOUSE OF LEEDS. 189 
 
 matters, great and small, had shown himself 
 a thorough gentleman in deed as he was by birth. 
 He shot well with the long bow, whenever the 
 young apprentices of the city went out to what 
 is now Moorfields and Clerkenwell in order to try 
 their skill. In Winter time he was the best 
 skater and curler among all the city-youths ; 
 he could sing a loyal song with spirit ; and was 
 always in the best of tempers. In fact, if the 
 truth must be told, she admired him above all the 
 young men whom she had seen east of what is 
 now Temple Bar; and into the far western 
 region of the mansions of the Strand and of 
 Westminster it had not been her fortune to have 
 often entered, except on one day in the year 
 when she went regularly with her papa and 
 mamma in the family coach to visit an 'old aunt 
 at St. Giles-in-the-Fields, "from whom she had 
 expectations." 
 
 Edward Osborne also had long admired in 
 silence the young lady whose cage-bird had 
 given rise to this unexpected adventure, and the 
 keen eyes of Dame Alice Hewitt had not been 
 inattentive to the fact. The old people too were 
 rich and without a son. What arrangement more 
 simple, obvious, and easy than that Edward 
 Osborne should become their son-in-law ? The 
 young people, for their part, took the same view
 
 190 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 of the matter as their elders ; interest and 
 inclination for once ran in the same direction; 
 and within a fortnight from the day of the 
 apprentice's bold leap into the Thames it was 
 arranged that the banns of " Edward Osborne, 
 bachelor, and Anne Hewitt, spinster," should be 
 put up in their parish church. 
 
 As neither Sir William nor Dame Hewitt was 
 at all disposed to forbid the banns, everything 
 was sooii settled ; and one fine morning in 
 August, 1559, the church bells of St. Magnus 
 and the neighbouring parishes rang out a merry 
 peal in honour of Edward Osborne and his fair 
 young bride. 
 
 Sir William Hewitt, before his death, which 
 happened at no very distant date, constituted 
 his son-in-law Osborne executor of his will, 
 along with two members of his own family ; and 
 while he left to his brother and nephews the 
 place of business in Philpot Lane above men- 
 tioned, he bequeathed the bulk of his money to 
 his only child Anne Hewitt, now Anne Osborne. 
 
 The accession of the money of the Hewitts 
 to the exchequer of the Osbornes appears to have 
 come just at a favourable moment, and to have 
 given to that ancient house a chance of rising in 
 the world a change of which its members were 
 not slow to take advantage. Edward Osborne
 
 THE DUCAL HOUSE OF LEEDS. 191 
 
 was wise enough not to play the fine-gentleman, 
 or to turn his back upon the city where his 
 fortune had been and was still being made. He 
 persevered in the mercantile career which he had 
 chosen when a lad, and he resolved to stick to 
 it faithfully to the last. Accordingly we find 
 him filling the civic chair as Lord Mayor and 
 receiving the honour of knighthood ; aud when 
 he died, in 1591, Sir Edward Osborne was 
 lamented as a good and upright citizen, and one 
 of the worthiest magistrates of the city of 
 London. 
 
 His wife brought him a son and two daughters. 
 The latter married into the OiHey and Peyton 
 families respectively ; while his son, entering the 
 army, and fighting under the banner of the Earl 
 of Essex in quelling a rebellion in Ireland in the 
 year 1599, received from that nobleman the 
 accolade of military knighthood. Sir Hewitt 
 Osborne in his turn married Joyce, daughter of 
 Thomas Fleetwood, Master of the Mint, and 
 sister of Sir William Fleetwood, of Cranford, in 
 Middlesex, who is styled by Collins " Receiver of 
 the Court of Wards." By this lady he had a 
 son, Edward, successively knighted aud created 
 a baronet by Charles I., who constituted him 
 Vice-President of the Council for the North of 
 England, and on the breaking out of the Great
 
 192 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 Rebellion appointed him Lientenant-General of 
 the Royal Forces in the North. His son and 
 successor, Sir Thomas, having taken a leading 
 part in bringing about the Restoration, was made 
 by Charles II. Treasurer of the Navy and Lord 
 High Treasurer of the Kingdom, and was also 
 raised to the English and Scottish Peerage as 
 Lord Kiveton, Viscount Dunblane, and Earl of 
 Dan by. His lordship took a leading part as 
 chairman of the committee of the House of Peers 
 which, on the abdication of James II., in 1688, 
 declared the throne vacant, and in that capacity 
 warmly advocated the bestowal of the crown on 
 the Prince and Princess of Orange conjointly ; 
 he was consequently raised in 1689 to the Mar- 
 quisate of Carmarthen, and five years later to 
 the Dukedom of Leeds, which thus crowned the 
 fortunes of the lineal descendants and repre- 
 sentatives of that Edward Osborne who, just a 
 century before, had left his native town of Ash- 
 ford to enter as an " apprentice " the household 
 of Sir William Hewitt. 
 
 The ducal house of Leeds still continues to 
 thrive and flourish, and its members to this day 
 hold that the adventure of Edward Osborne on 
 London Bridge was the first of a series of successes 
 which retrieved the at one time doubtful pro- 
 spects of the old Kentish family whom I
 
 TIJE DUCAL HOUSE OF LEEDS. 193 
 
 mentioned at the beginning of this paper. Since 
 that day, as generation after generation has 
 succeeded, the Dukes of Leeds have absorbed 
 into their line the representation, in part or 
 entire, of the noble houses of Conyers, D'Arcy, 
 and Godolphiu, to say nothing of more than one 
 descent from the royal house of Plantagenet. 
 But who shall say that the honest and brave 
 apprentice who saved fair Mistress Anne Hewitt 
 from a watery grave is not well worthy to be 
 mentioned in the roll of the house of Osborne, 
 side by side with all and any of them, as one of 
 those ancestors of whom its members have good 
 reason still to be most proud ? 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 194 
 
 AN EPISODE IN THE HISTORY OF THE 
 CATHCARTS. 
 
 IF any of my readers will turn to the Cathcart 
 title in the pages of " Bnrke's Peerage," he 
 will see that the grandfather of the first Earl Oath- 
 cart, who was comraander-in-chief of the expedi- 
 tion to Copenhagen in 1807, stands recorded as 
 having been Charles, the eighth holder of the 
 ancient Scottish Barony of Cathcart. This barony 
 was conferred in 1447 by James II , of Scotland, 
 on Sir Alan Cathcart. great-great-grandson of 
 another Sir Alan whose valour at the battle of 
 Loudoun Hill, in 1307, is thus immortalised in 
 the ballad : 
 
 " A knight that then was in his route, 
 Worthy and widht, stalwart and stout, 
 Courteous and fair, and of good fame, 
 Sir Ala i Cathcart was his name."
 
 EPISODE IN THE HOUSE OF CATHCART. 195 
 
 Several of this Sir Alan Cathcart's descendants 
 fell on the battle field; for instance, one at 
 Flodden, and another at Pinkie, both of whom 
 were named Alan. In fact the first of the line 
 for four hundred years who was not named Alan 
 by his godfather and godmother at the font, was 
 Charles, the eighth baron, who died in 1740, in the 
 West Indies, whilst acting as commander-in-chief 
 of the British forces. Sir Bernard Burke tells us 
 that this nobleman was twice married ; but he is 
 very uncommunicative about his second matri- 
 monial union, saying merely that he "married 
 secondly no date is given Mrs Sabine, widow 
 of Joseph Sabine, Esq., of Tring, but by that lady 
 (who married after his decease Lieut. Col. 
 Maguire), he had no issue." In a foot-note he adds 
 " This is the lady of whom the extraordinary 
 story is told of her having been confined for 
 many years by her last husband, Col. Maguire, in 
 a lonely castle in the fastnesses of Ireland." The 
 details of this romantic story I am able to supply, 
 and I trust they will act as a warning to charm- 
 ing widows not to think of marrying more than 
 twice or thrice. 
 
 Lady Cathcart's Christian name I am unable 
 to give, but she was one of the four daughters of 
 a certain Mr. Malyn, or Malin, of Southwark, ap- 
 parently a prosperous tradesman, who had a 
 
 2
 
 196 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 country villa at Battersea. I have ascertained 
 that she made no less than four adventures on 
 the stormy sea of matrimony, but still she rather 
 outwitted herself in one of her ventures. Her 
 first husband was a certain Mr. James Fleet, of 
 the City of London, who is generally thought to 
 have been the son and heir of Sir John Fleet, 
 the same who filled the civic chair as Lord Mayor 
 in 1693. All that I know about him is that he 
 was lord of the manor of Tewing or Tewin, in 
 Hertfordshire probably confused by Burke with 
 Tring, in the same county; and that on his 
 death, while still young, she took as her second 
 " lord and master " one of his and her own near 
 neighbours, a Capt. Sabine, younger brother to 
 Gen. Joseph Sabine, of Queenhoo Hall, in Tewin. 
 In 1738 I find her left again a widow, and quite at 
 her own disposal ; for she had no children or 
 other incumbrances ; and, as both of her husbands 
 had been fairly well off, it is clear that the widow 
 was not a bad speculation, even for 
 
 " A lord, with a coronet of gold 
 And garter below the knee." 
 
 Accordingly, in 1739, she accepted the proposals 
 of Lord Cathcart, who died, as I have said, before 
 the end of the following year whilst in command 
 of our troops in Dominica. It would have been
 
 EPISODE IN THE HOUSE OF CATHCART. 197 
 
 well indeed for her if on his death she had re- 
 solved to give up all further thoughts of conjugal 
 felicity. 
 
 But this was not to be. For three long years 
 she wore widow's weeds, and no doubt wore them 
 very becomingly, added to which she was only a 
 little over five and thirty; and, as everybody 
 knows, few women will own to that being " any 
 age at all." But at the end of three years she 
 met with a certain Irish gentleman, who so far 
 captivated her fancy that, although he held, or 
 said he held, a commission in the army of the 
 Queen of Hungary, she bought for him a commis- 
 sion as Lieutenant-Colonel in the British service. 
 
 I am able to record her motives for entering into 
 these four successive connections. Her first mar- 
 riage she contracted in order to please her 
 parents, the second for money, and the third for 
 a coronet and title. As for the fourth marriage, 
 she would often say late in life, when she could 
 afford to jest on such a subject, that she supposed 
 that " the devil owed her a grudge, and wished 
 to punish her for her sins." It may be pre- 
 sumed from what follows that in this supposition 
 she was not very far wrong. It was also said 
 that she managed to rule Lord Cathcart, but that 
 in Colonel Hugh Maguire she at last met with her 
 match, and perhaps something more. The
 
 198 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 Hibernian fortune-hunter, like others of our 
 own day, wanted only her money. She had 
 not been married to him many weeks when she 
 found out that he cared not a straw for her, but 
 only for her purse, her jointure, and her dia- 
 monds. Apprehending that he had made a plan 
 for carrying her off forcibly, or to put her into a 
 madhouse in order to possess himself of her 
 property, she resolved to be " on the safe side," 
 and accordingly contrived to secret some of her 
 jewels in the tresses of her long dark hair, which 
 she plaited rather carefully. Others she, "quilted" 
 in the lining of her petticoats, and constantly 
 wore them on her body, though in daily danger 
 of losing them thereby. The colonel had a 
 clever friend at hand to help him, a chdre amie of 
 tender years, whom he had trained for his own 
 purposes ; and this young lady contrived so far to 
 insinuate herself into the lady's confidence as to 
 discover where her will was kept, and to reveal 
 its whereabouts to the colonel, who of course got 
 a sight of it, and, finding that it was not wholly in 
 his own favour, drew out a pistol and threatened 
 once and again to shoot her. 
 
 She now lived in constant fear and dread of 
 her caro sposo, though she does not seem to have 
 plucked up enough courage to bolt off from him, 
 and to appeal to her relatives for protection.
 
 EPISODE IN THE HOUSE OF CA.THCART. 199 
 
 In fact, she grew awfully nervous whenever 
 he approached her presence, and life began to be 
 a burden to her. 
 
 One day her apprehensions proved not to be 
 altogether groundless, for when the loving pair 
 went out to take their daily airing in the family 
 coach, and she proposed that the coachman should 
 turn the horses' heads homewards, her husband 
 showed his dissent in a rather demonstrative 
 manner, and desired John to drive on further. 
 On and on the coachman drove, and the horses 
 trotted ; and in vain she remonstrated that they 
 should never be back at Tewin for dinner, though 
 she had a lady coming to dine. At length the 
 colonel, pulling out a pocket pistol, told her that 
 she might make herself quite easy about dining 
 at home ; for " My dear, we are on our way to 
 Chester, and to Chester you shall go with me, 
 whether you like or no." Her expostulations 
 were in vain, and vain too were her efforts, for 
 the servants were in league with their master, 
 who had bribed them with some of her gold. 
 
 Day after day passed by, and neither coach 
 nor horses, nor the colonel, nor his lady appeared 
 at Tewin. The neighbours began to suspect 
 that something was wrong, and made inquiry. 
 It was ascertained that on the evening of the day 
 when they were missed, the colonel and his wife
 
 200 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 were seen twelve or fifteen miles from home, 
 with the horses' heads turned to the north, and 
 the colonel gesticulating as if in a passion with 
 his wife. So they consulted a magistrate in the 
 neighbourhood, who advised that an attorney 
 should be sent after him, armed with one of 
 those legal weapons known as writs of "Habeas 
 corpus," and "Xe exeat regno." The attorney, 
 accompanied by his clerk, was soon upon their 
 track ; and as they had travelled with their own 
 horses and by easy stages, he came up with the 
 fugitives before they reached Chester. At a 
 wayside inn, where they were baiting their 
 horses, he presented himself to the landlord, and 
 asked for the room where the runaway couple 
 were lunching. But the colonel was not deficient 
 in expedients. The attorney was admitted by 
 the gentleman, who at first refused to let him see 
 his lady, and threatened him with personal 
 violence. But soon cooling down, on finding 
 that the man of law did not know the lady by 
 sight, he said that if he waited a few minutes 
 he should see her and speak to her, adding 
 " she is going to Ireland with me with her free 
 consent." It did not take many minutes for the 
 colonel to tutor the pretty chambermaid of the 
 inn to personate his wife. On coming into the 
 room, she bowed graciously, and inquired what
 
 EPISODE IN THE HOUSE OF CATHCART. 201 
 
 the lawyer wanted of her. The attorney, as 
 instructed by his employers, asked the supposed 
 captive whether she was going off to Ireland of 
 her own free will ? " Perfectly so," said the 
 woman, "what more do you want ?" "Nothing, 
 madam," was the answer of the limb of the law, 
 who was glad enough to escape from the room, 
 and beg and obtain her pardon for making such 
 a mistake ; and in another half hour he was off 
 on his way back to Hertfordshire, if not having 
 done his business, at all events having earned his 
 pay. So at least he thought. 
 
 But the colonel was not so easily satisfied. It 
 struck him that possibly the attorney might re- 
 cover his senses and find out how he had been 
 deceived, and so turn up again " like a bad 
 penny," and perhaps delay or even stop his 
 progress towards the sister isle ; so, in order to 
 make assurance doubly sure, he sent after him 
 two or three stout fellows armed with bludgeons, 
 telling them at the same time to plunder him not 
 only of his purse, but also, above all, of the 
 papers in his pocket. They followed Mr. 
 Attorney, caught him up in a lonety part of the 
 road, and faithfully executed their commission, 
 for they knocked him about severely, and with 
 threats of further injury carried off in triumph
 
 202 TALES OP OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 the pieces of parchment, which they speedily 
 brought back to the inn. 
 
 When the colonel found the two writs actually 
 in his possession, he knew that at length he was 
 safe ; and so he pursued his journey, not to 
 Gretna. but to Ireland, the lady not daring to 
 open her lips or show any further sign of an 
 untractable nature. 
 
 Poor woman. At Holyhead she was taken on 
 board a fishing smack, and landed after a stormy 
 passage in one of the lesser Irish seaports, where 
 there were no police or Custom House officers to 
 make awkward inquiries or to take notes; and 
 as there were no telegraphs or newspapers, or 
 other means of rapid communication between 
 the two sides of the Channel, the colonel had no 
 difficulty in completing his journey and bringing 
 the lady to the abode which he had destined for 
 her reception. This was a lonely and moated 
 mansion, far away from a town, and well out of 
 the reach of inquisitive and inconvenient neigh- 
 bours. Indeed it is said that except the 
 butcher's cart, which visited the place about once 
 in ten days, nothing on feet or on wheels ever 
 entered its gates, and that the grass grew thick 
 upon the drive leading up to the front door. 
 Two trusty keepers, a man and his wife, kept 
 watch and ward night and day, upon the un-
 
 EPISODE IN THE HOUSE OF CATHCART. 203 
 
 fortunate lady, who was regarded by them as 
 a sort of amiable lunatic, and treated according! 3% 
 though with extreme politeness. 
 
 That she was not, however, quite a lunatic 
 Lady Cathcart showed in a very marked way ; or, 
 if she was insane, there was " method " and some- 
 thing more " in her madness." Whilst in this 
 state of confinement she was occasionally allowed 
 to walk about the grounds, though the park gates 
 were closed upon her, and she could not scale the 
 park walls. One poor old woman came once a 
 week to dig up the weeds which grew along the 
 garden path ; and of her she contrived to make 
 a friend. Through this crone she managed to 
 send the jewels which she had worn in her hair 
 and in the quilting of her petticoats to an 
 acquaintance of former years, by whom they were 
 carefully and honestly preserved. 
 
 At last after several years, namely, in 1764, 
 a release came to the unhappy prisoner. The 
 colonel had a fit in the night, and was found at 
 daybreak dead in his bed. That morning saw her 
 a free woman. It was necessary to communicate 
 his death to his kith and kin in order that ar- 
 rangements might be made for his funeral. They 
 came to the house, and found his widow anxious 
 and ready to quit the spot where she had been so 
 long immured ; and they, on their part, were
 
 204 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 glad to come into a bit of property, even if it 
 were only the lease of a lonely and tumble-down 
 old grange. So she found her way to Dublin, 
 where her jewels were restored to her, and the 
 sale of one of them was sufficient to pay the 
 expense of her journey by ship and the " stage 
 waggon " back to Hertfordshire. She made her 
 way to her former residence at Tewin ; but the 
 dinner to which she and her husband were to 
 have sat down on the eventful day of their flight 
 was, of course, no longer on the table ; indeed 
 during her forced absence in Ireland the place 
 had been let on lease by the colonel to a " re- 
 sponsible" tenant; arid this gentleman declined 
 to turn out until forced to do so by a writ of 
 ejectment, which she brought at the next Hert- 
 fordshire assizes. She attended these assizes in 
 person, and the news of the success of her suit 
 was greeted with cheers by large crowds of the 
 good people of Tewin, who insisted on taking 
 the horses out of her carriage and drawing 
 her in triumph through the streets of Hert- 
 ford. 
 
 She lived on for many years at Tewin, where 
 she kept, open house for her neighbours, and 
 played a rubber at whist with all and any of them. 
 Late in life she wore a sort of turban, which, 
 though eccentric in its make, suited her features
 
 EPISODE IN THE HOUSE OF CATHCART. 205 
 
 well ; and it is among the traditions of the county 
 that when long upwards of eighty, she danced a 
 minuet at the Assembly Rooms at Welwyu with 
 the spirit of a young woman of a quarter of that 
 age. What is better authenticated is that, in 
 1783, Lady Cathcart gave an annuity of 5 to 
 Tewin School, and that she died in 1780 in 
 the ninety-ninth year of her age. She lies 
 buried in Tewin Church, and the property, 
 which once was her own, now belongs to Lord 
 Cowper. 
 
 It will be remembered by readers of Miss 
 Edgworth's novels, that the story of Lady Oath- 
 cart's imprisonment is introduced by her under 
 another name, into her humorous Irish tale of 
 "Castle Rackrent." They will not forget how 
 the scapegrace, Sir Kit Rackrent, marries a 
 yonng English lady for the sake of her fortune, 
 and brings her to Ireland, where he affects to 
 quarrel with her because she professes to dislike 
 sausages, and cannot endure to see pork on the 
 table : the real cause of offence, however, being 
 that she refuses to let him have possession of a 
 diamond trinket, which she keeps about her per- 
 son. In his well-feigned rage on the score of 
 the sausages, he locks the lady up in her room, 
 and keeps her in close confinement, until one 
 day Sir Kit is brought home dead on a barrow,
 
 206 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 having been killed in a duel, when the lady re- 
 gains her liberty. 
 
 The story of Lady Cathcart has also been 
 told by Dr. W. Chambers, in a little topogra- 
 phical book, entitled " A Week at Welwyn."
 
 207 
 
 AN EPISODE IN THE NOBLE HOUSE 
 OF HASTINGS. 
 
 IN the whole compass of the history of the 
 British aristocracy it would be a difficult task 
 to find a more strange and eccentric personage than 
 the Hon. Henry Hastings hermit, sportsman, 
 and centenarian in one the second son of George, 
 fourth Earl of Huntingdon, a cotemporary of 
 Elizabeth, James I., and Charles I. The main 
 facts of his life, and the leading features of his 
 character were for a long time to be found only 
 among the musty manuscripts of Anthony 
 Ashley Cooper, the celebrated Earl of Shaftes- 
 bury, in the British Museum. Some of them, 
 however, are pourtrayed in the " Biographia 
 Britannica," and others are to be found in the 
 " Fragment of an Autobiography " by Lord 
 Shaftesbury, published a few years since by Mr.
 
 208 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 W. D. Christie ; while for the rest, again, we 
 must have recourse to the pages of that scarce 
 aud curious book, " The Eccentric." 
 
 Mr. Hastings is described by Lord Shaftes- 
 bury as being "of Woodlands," a mansion and 
 estate in Dorsetshire, which he appears to have 
 owned. But, instead of residing like a gentle- 
 man, on his own property, he preferred, as I have 
 already hinted, the life of a hermit, combining 
 with it that of a sportsman, and accordingly fixed 
 his abode in the New Forest, over which King 
 James gave him a forester's rights, assigning him 
 also a lodge in its green glades to dwell in. In 
 all probability the reason of his strange hermit 
 life was a disappointmeut in love, which had 
 thrown a dark shadow over his early years. As 
 he died in A.D. IGoi), he must have first seen the 
 light of day in 1529, if there be any truth in the 
 assertion that he was a hundred and ten years 
 old at the date of his decease. Of this fact, how- 
 ever, there is no certain proof, for the parish 
 registers in the days of our Stuart sovereigns 
 were kept but carelessly at best ; and I have no 
 wish to take up the cudgels and fight over again 
 the vexed question of " centenarianisin." 
 
 It may be supposed that, singing as he did the 
 good old song, " A life in the woods for me," 
 Henry Hastings kept clear of politics, and blessed
 
 EPISODE IN THE HOUSE OF HASTINGS. 209 
 
 his stars that he had not been born an eldest son, 
 and so forced to wear a coronet. His business 
 and tactics lay in quite another direction ; and 
 Lord Shaftesbury gives us an amusing peep into 
 the interior of the Hampshire forester's lodge. 
 He says : " His home was of the old fashion, in 
 the midst of a park well-stocked with deer, and 
 near the house rabbits to serve his kitchen ; many 
 fish ponds too, and a great store of wood and 
 timber. ... He kept all manner of sport-hounds 
 that ran buck, fox, hare, otter, and badger ; and 
 hawks, long and short-winged ; he had also all 
 sorts of nets for fishing ; he had a walk in the 
 New Forest, and the manor of Christ Church. 
 This last supplied him with red deer and river 
 fish, but all his neighbours' grounds and royalties 
 were free to him." In fact, he seems pretty well 
 to have realised in his person Pope's idea of the 
 " noble savage" ranging free " in the woods." We 
 are sorry to add, however, that, in spite of his 
 lonely life, he did not bear the very best of cha- 
 racters. 
 
 His hall was strewn with marrow-bones, full of 
 hawks' perches, hounds, spaniels, and terriers, 
 and his walls were hung around with the skins 
 of foxes, polecats, rats, and other vermin, which 
 he nailed to the panels. There always stood two 
 large arm-chairs near his fire-place, and it was 
 
 VOL. i. p
 
 210 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 seldom that they were not occupied with litters 
 of puppies and kittens, which he would on no 
 account allow to be disturbed while in possession. 
 At table he always took a very spare and frugal 
 meal, limiting himself to a single glass of beer 
 or wine. But he never dined unattended by 
 his dogs and cats, to keep which in order he 
 always had laid before his "trencher" a little 
 white stick or wand some fourteen inches long. 
 The windows and corners of his room, Lord 
 Shaftesbury tells us, were filled up with arrows, 
 cross-bows, hunting poles, hawks' hoods and 
 bells, and last (not least) with rows of old green 
 and greasy hats, with their crowns thrust in so 
 as to hold ten or a dozen pheasants' eggs. He 
 made it a point of duty and honour to have 
 at dinner daily all the year round a plate of 
 oysters, which came to him from the neighbouring 
 town of Poole. At the end of the apartment, 
 which served as his parlour and primitive dining 
 hall, there were two doors, the one of which led 
 to his beer and wine closet, and the other into a 
 a room which had been designed as a chapel. 
 But, although a fine Bible, and Foxe's " Book 
 of Martyrs " both lay there in due form, he did 
 not use the place for the purposes of devotion; 
 indeed, if the truth must be told, it was no un- 
 common thing to find a hen turkey sitting in
 
 EPISODE IN THE HOUSE OF HASTINGS. 211 
 
 what ought to have served as a pulpit. When 
 the pulpit was not required for the hen turkey's 
 wants, he would use it as a storehouse for a gam- 
 mon of bacon, a venison past) 7 , or a baked apple- 
 pie, of which he was particularly fond. 
 
 The rest of the furniture of the house was as 
 old and as strange as its master ; and, as he kept 
 no wife or servants, he could " do as he pleased 
 with his own." He liked, however, a friend of 
 his own sphere and rank of life to "drop in" 
 upon him occasionally, especially on a Friday, 
 when " he had the best of sea and fresh water 
 fish," and a " London pudding " by way of cheer. 
 Occasionally, too, he would leave his solitude and 
 go over to Hanley to play bowls with Lord 
 Shaftesbury and other Dorsetshire gentlemen. 
 This, however, did not often happen ; for, nearly 
 related though he was to him, Lord Shaftesbury 
 held principles quite opposed to his own, so that 
 they seldom met except to quarrel. In fact, as a 
 writer in the " Eccentric" remarks, " two men 
 could not be more opposite in their dispositions 
 and pursuits ; for Henry Hastings, though king- 
 appointed, was an independent character to the 
 backbone, and Lord Shaftesbury used to declare 
 that he never could bear the brutality of his 
 manners, for he was fit only to live by himself 
 as a hopeless misanthrope." 
 
 P 2
 
 212 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 In the inclosure which he fenced off from the 
 surrounding park and forest, though he lived so 
 solitary a life, he contrived to make a bowling- 
 green, where he would play for hours by himself, 
 chalking up the scores of " right against left ;" 
 and he must have kept himself au courant with 
 the fashions of the day, if it be true that his 
 footpaths were strown with the fragments of old 
 tobacco pipes, since the " noxious weed" was 
 scarcely known in England when he was a boy. 
 To keep up the pleasant delusion that he had 
 company with him, he built in his garden a 
 banqueting room, where, seated by himself, he 
 would give out imaginary toasts, and drink 
 glasses of real wine to imaginary beauties. At 
 times, however, when the fit took him, he would 
 deck up this banqueting room like a booth at a 
 fair, and entertain some of the skilled poachers 
 of the neighbourhood, from whom, though Ranger 
 by the King's appointment, he did not object to 
 receive stray gifts in kind, or hints of a practical 
 nature. And, hermit as he was, he was so far 
 from hating games and diversions, that he would 
 entertain his rough and plebeian guests with 
 cards and dice, giving each of them one glass of 
 " mum " or beer, and no more. 
 
 In the evening, by way of supper, we are told 
 that he would take a single glass of sack, seasoned
 
 EPISODE IN THE HOUSE OF HASTINGS. 213 
 
 with the syrup of gillyflowers, which he stirred 
 with a sprig of rosemary. The troubles of the 
 times never touched or disturbed him ; safe in 
 the glades of his Hampshire forest, he had 
 forgotten the King, and the Court had forgotten 
 him. A short time before his death he rode on 
 horseback, and went a day's journey in order to 
 hear an old huntsman, who was himself turned 
 ninety, relate the death of a stag that was said 
 to be older than either of the pair. If so, the 
 united ages of huntsman, stag, and Hastings 
 must have been as near as possible three hundred 
 years. There is a portrait of this Henry Hastings 
 at St. Giles's House, near Wimborne, Dorsetshire, 
 the seat of Lord Shaftesbury, and an engraving 
 from the portrait will be found in the second 
 volume of Hutchins' "History of Dorset." 
 Tradition still records the fact, that, in spite of 
 his lonely life and patched dress, he showed in 
 his manners the breeding of a regular gentleman, 
 except in the one matter of swearing. Altogether 
 Henry Hastings must be pronounced to have 
 been an original, such a man as you would not 
 be likely to meet twice in a lifetime. Lord 
 Shaftesbury describes him as having been " low 
 of stature, very strong and very active, with 
 reddish flaxen hair." He tells us that "his 
 clothes were always made of green cloth,"
 
 214 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 possibly in allusion to the fabled connection of 
 his ancestor with Robin Hood and Little John, 
 with Sherwood Forest and suits of "Lincoln 
 green;" and he adds with a spice of sly 
 satire, which he seems thoroughly to enjoy, 
 that "all of the latter, even when new, were 
 never worth five pounds." 
 
 Had Mr. Hastings married and had sons, it is 
 more than probable that the present century 
 would never have heard of the celebrated peerage 
 case which gave the earldom of Huntingdon to 
 the grandfather of the present head of the 
 house.
 
 215 
 
 THOMAS PITT, LORD CAMELFORD. 
 
 THE sad story of the wasted life and tragical 
 end of Thomas, second Lord Camelford, is 
 one which cannot fail to awaken interest in 
 readers of every rank, as an instance of a man who, 
 though largely gifted with good natural qualities, 
 and placed in a situation of life where, with good 
 sense and right principles to gnide him, he might 
 have attained a high position in the State, chose 
 to sacrifice all his prospects to the waywardness 
 of his disposition, and fell a martyr to his own 
 folly. 
 
 Lord Camelford was the great-grandson of 
 Robert Pitt, the famous governor of Madras, who 
 acquired a large fortune in India the best part of 
 two centuries ago by the advantageous purchase 
 of a certain diamond, which he brought back 
 with him to England, and eventually sold at a
 
 216 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 great profit to the Duke of Orleans, at that time 
 Regent of France. His lordship not only held a 
 seat in the House of Peers, but he was extensively 
 connected with some of the first families in the 
 kingdom. His grandfather's brother was the 
 "great commoner," William Pitt, and after- 
 wards first Earl of Chatham. His father was 
 consequently first cousin to William Pitt the 
 younger and to the second Earl of Chatham ; and 
 his own sister, Anne Pitt, was the wife of Lord 
 Grenville, who, a few years after the date of 
 which 1 write, became first Lord of the Treasury 
 and head of the Ministry of "all the talents." 
 The father, Thomas Pitt, the first Lord Camelford 
 (so created in 1784) owned the fine family estate 
 of Boconnoc, in Cornwall, which devolved upon 
 his son, together with the coronet, while he was 
 still in his minority. 
 
 Born in 1775, he received the first rudiments 
 of his education under a tutor in the Canton of 
 Berne, in Switzerland, where even as a child he 
 showed a spirit and temper which, though manly 
 and vigorous, was peculiarly moody, wayward, 
 and untractable. He did not bear the character 
 of a manageable boy at the Charterhouse, (then 
 under Dr. Berdmore), to which he was removed 
 when about ten or twelve years old, and where he 
 did not stay long, having shown an early taste
 
 THOMAS PITT, LORD CAMELFORD. 217 
 
 for the roving and adventurous life of a sailor. 
 It was not a difficult matter for a cousin of the 
 premier to obtain a commission in the Royal 
 Navy, and accordingly in 1789 we find him join- 
 ing, as a midshipman, the frigate " Guardian " 
 commanded by the gallant Capt. Riou, and laden 
 with stores for the then infant colony of convicts 
 which was settled at Botany Bay. The calamity 
 which befell that ship was well calculated to inure 
 the young seaman to the perils of the sea ; and 
 even at that time he showed the same contempt 
 for danger which marked his career throughout, 
 and which often partook rather of the nature of 
 recklessness than of bravery. I need only say 
 here that when all endeavours to save the 
 " Guardian" seemed hopeless, and her commander 
 gave leave to such of her crew as chose to take to 
 the boats, young Pitt was one of those who to 
 the number of ninety resolved to stand by the 
 ship and to share her fate with her gallant com- 
 mander. In the end, after an escape little short of 
 miraculous, the ship made the Cape of Good Hope, 
 in the condition of a wreck, and in September, 
 1790, the survivors found their way to England. 
 Undaunted by the dangers which he had en- 
 countered in the " Guardian," young Pitt on reach- 
 ing London went straight to the Admiralty, and 
 bringing such family influence as he could to
 
 218 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 bear upon " My Lords," obtained an appointment 
 to join an exploring voyage which was fitting 
 out under Capt. Vancouver. He accompanied 
 that officer in the ship " Discovery " during part of 
 his distant voyage ; but through his refractoriness 
 and disobedience of orders, the result of his 
 wayward and obstinate temper, he provoked 
 his commanding officer to treat him with a 
 severity which he would not endure. 
 
 Accordingly, quitting the " Discovery" in the 
 Indian seas, he joined the " Resistance," com- 
 manded by Sir E. Pakenham, and soon gained the 
 rank of lieutenant. It was while serving on board 
 this ship that he heard the news of his father's 
 death, and of his accession to the honours of 
 the peerage. On returning home in 1796, the 
 finst thing he did was to send a challenge to his 
 late commanding officer, Captain Vancouver, 
 which that gentleman, on professional grounds, 
 was obliged to decline. The wound, however, 
 rankled deep in the breast of Lord Camelford, 
 who threatened to chastise his superior officer. 
 Doubtless, had he been a plain, untitled lieut- 
 enant Brown, Jones, or Robinson he would 
 have been cashiered for disrespect ; but then he 
 was a Pitt, and cousin to the First Lord of the 
 Treasury, so what could poor Captain Vancouver 
 do I He did the only thing possible, namely,
 
 THOMAS PITT, LORD CAMELFORD. 219 
 
 to sit down and digest his wrath ; and the end 
 was that he died of grief and pain, instead of a 
 pistol-shot. 
 
 Having attained the rank of commander, when 
 he had yet to learn how to command himself, 
 though he had reached the " age of discretion," 
 Lord Camelford was appointed next to the sloop 
 "Favourite," on the West Indian station. We 
 next hear of him at Antigua, where, on Jan. 13, 
 1798, the "Favourite" and the " Perdrix" 
 (Captain Fahie) were lying at anchor in harbour. 
 Captain Fahie, it so happened, was absent at St. 
 Kitts, and had left his lieutenant, Mr. Peterson, 
 in charge of the " Perdrix." Lord Camelford, 
 whether in the discharge of his duty or in mere 
 wantonness, as being the senior officer, and 
 consequently in command, issued some trifling 
 order which the lieutenant did not feel bound to 
 obey. Lord Camelford must have been a 
 summary disciplinarian, for he called out his 
 marines, and, asking Peterson if he meant to 
 obey his order, and obtaining no answer or a 
 refusal, he shot him dead on the spot. Lieutenant 
 Peterson was much beloved in Antigua ; and the 
 excited populace were hardly restrained from 
 dealing summary and probably fatal chastisement 
 on his lordship ; but they were calmed by an 
 assurance that an inquiry into the matter should
 
 220 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 be made by court-martial. But the coroner's 
 jury having brought in a verdict to the effect 
 that Peterson had " lost his life in a mutiny," and 
 the court-martial having " honourably" acquitted 
 his lordship, the Admiralty at home let the affair 
 pass into oblivion. Again it was not a Brown, 
 Jones, or Robinson, but a Pitt who had shot the 
 lieutenant ; and the Pitts were a " heaven-born" 
 race. Some say, I know, that " sin is not sin 
 in a duchess," and possibly the saying may be 
 true ; probably it is equally true that " killing is 
 (or was) no murder" when wrought by the hand 
 of a peer of the realm. I doubt if the same law 
 would hold good now, as that which appears to 
 have prevailed some four score years back in the 
 history of the British navy. 
 
 After his acquittal, Lord Camelford resumed 
 for a time the command of his ship, but soon 
 threw it up, at the same time quitting the 
 profession in which he had earned such a 
 character for daring and for discipline. " While 
 in the service, " says a writer of the time," his 
 personal appearance was distinguished by the 
 same eccentricity which marked his conduct 
 through life. His dress consisted of a lieutenant's 
 plain coat, without shoulder knots, and its 
 buttons were as green with verdigris as the ship's 
 bottom itself. His head was shaved close, and
 
 THOMAS PITT, LORD CAMELFORD. 221 
 
 he wore an enormous gold-laced cocked hat." It 
 deserves to be remembered to his credit, that, 
 though he was so severe a disciplinarian, he 
 showed himself particularly attentive to the 
 comfort and relief of the sick. 
 
 He had not long returned to London when he 
 took it into his head to plan a mad freak, which if 
 he had been allowed to put it into execution, 
 would probably have cost him his life, and have 
 added seriously to the complications of the war 
 with France, which just then was at its fiercest. 
 His plan was to repair to Paris, and there, in the 
 midst of that city, to attack personally and kill 
 the rulers of the Republic. With this object in 
 view, he took coach to Dover, where he arranged 
 with a boatman to convey him across the Channel 
 for twelve guineas, though the law at that time 
 was so stringent as to make the very act of 
 embarkation for France a capital offence. The 
 compact, however, was betrayed to a local 
 collector of the revenue, who accompanied his 
 lordship to the boat, and arrested him in the act 
 of stepping into it. The triumphant " collector" 
 lost no time in carrying his lordship back to 
 London in a post-chaise, under a strong guard, 
 and conveying him to the office of the Duke of 
 Portland, at Whitehall. A meeting of the Privy 
 Council was summoned, and I read in the account
 
 222 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 which I have already quoted, that " after several 
 examinations his lordship was discharged from 
 custody, the Lords of the Council being satisfied 
 that, however irregular his conduct, his intentions 
 were only such as he had represented them 
 to be, and that he had no other object in 
 view except that of rendering a service to 
 the country. His Majesty's pardon, therefore, 
 was issued under the Great Seal of the Kingdom, 
 discharging his lordship from all the penalties 
 which he had incurred under an Act recently 
 passed, which, without reference to motive, 
 made the mere act of embarking for France a 
 capital crime." 
 
 This was in January, 1799 ; and at least two 
 months appear to have elapsed before Lord Camel- 
 ford's name was again brought in any marked 
 manner before the public, though he continued to 
 live on in London, indulging by day and night 
 too in a series of practical and sometimes offen- 
 sive jokes, such as those for which the late Lord 
 Waterford in our own day made himself so noto- 
 rious. At one time I find him causing a riot at 
 the box office of Drury Lane (April 2, 1799), and 
 insulting and assaulting one of the audience a 
 freak for which his lordship was tried before 
 Lord Kenyon and a special jury, and sentenced 
 to pay a fine of 500, though he had for his
 
 THOMAS PITT, LORD CAMELFORD. 223 
 
 counsel that consummate advocate, Mr. Thomas 
 Erskine, afterwards Lord Chancellor Erskine. 
 On another occasion, when he and his boon 
 companion, Captain Barrie, were returning home 
 late at night, or rather early in the morning 
 as they passed through Cavendish Square, they 
 found the " Charleys " asleep. Of course it did 
 not take a minute to wake them up which was 
 all very right and to thrash them which was 
 all very wrong. At last the " Charleys " sprang 
 their rattles, and other more vigilant guardians of 
 the West End streets rushed up ; but it was not 
 till they were overpowered by ten to two that 
 Lord Camelford and his comrade were led off 
 to the station-house. Next morning, as a matter 
 of course, they were brought up to the Marl- 
 borough Street office, where a present of a guinea 
 a-piece to the injured "Charleys" enabled the 
 sitting magistrate to declare the offenders dis- 
 charged, with a warning not to repeat such con- 
 duct. 
 
 There was nothing in which Lord Camelford 
 took greater delight than in standing out in 
 direct contrast to the general public, and finding 
 himself in a minority of one. Had he frequented 
 the House of Lords, he would, no doubt, have 
 often been able to gratify this whim: but his 
 tastes led him to associate not with his " peers,"
 
 224 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 in either sense of the term, but with the " ignobile 
 vulgus " of the London streets. For instance, 
 though he had wished to go to Paris in order to 
 end the war by a single blow, yet in 1801, when 
 all London was lit up by a general illumination, 
 no persuasion of his friends or of his landlord 
 could induce Lord Camelford to suffer lights to 
 be placed in the windows of his rooms. He 
 lodged over a grocer's shop in New Bond Street ; 
 and in vain did the grocer and his wife protest ; 
 he remained firm to his silly and wayward re- 
 solve. The mob, of course, attacked the house 
 and saluted his windows with showers of stones. 
 Irritated at the assault, Lord Camelford rushed 
 out among the crowd with a pistol in his hand, 
 and it seemed as if the festive day was doomed to 
 be marked with blood. At last, however, his 
 friend Barrie induced him to exchange the pistol 
 for a stout cudgel, with which he laid about him 
 right and left, until at length, overpowered by 
 numbers, he was rolled over and over in the 
 gutter, and was glad at last to beat a retreat in- 
 doors, filthy and crest-fallen. 
 
 In general, Lord Camelford was not one of 
 that amiable class of young men who return to 
 their nests at the end of the business of the day 
 and " dine at home " quietly and respectably. 
 On the contrary, he lived chiefly at clubs and
 
 THOMAS PITT, LORD CAMELFORU. 225 
 
 coffee houses, where his presence had at least one 
 advantage, namely, that of holding in check the 
 insolence of the young puppies who haunted such 
 rendezvous and gave themselves airs and graces. 
 Indeed, whoever was brought into contact with 
 his lordship in those days when pistols were 
 often carried, and duelling was in vogue, was 
 speedily made to feel that he had better be care- 
 ful as to what passed his lips, lest in an un- 
 guarded moment he should have to expiate with 
 his blood the slightest slip of the tongue. 
 
 His irritable disposition and obstinate temper 
 not only led him to quarrels and encounters 
 beyond all number, but in the end paved the 
 way for the final catastrophe of his tragical 
 death. It appears that for some time Lord 
 Camelford had been acquainted with a certain 
 lady named Simmons. Some officious person, 
 either from a silly habit of talking, or out of sheer 
 malice, represented to the touchy nobleman that 
 a friend of his named Best had said to the lady 
 something to his disadvantage. This ill-timed 
 piece of information nettled his lordship, and 
 rankled in his breast so much that on the 6th of 
 March, 1804, on meeting Mr. Best at the Prince 
 of Wales's Coffee-house, he went up to him and 
 said aloud, and in a tone to be heard by the by- 
 standers, " I find, Sir, that you have been speaking 
 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 226 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 of me in the most unwarrantable terms." Mr. 
 Best simply replied that he was quite unconscious 
 of having done anything to deserve such a charge. 
 Lord Camelford declared that he well knew what 
 he had said to Mrs. Simmons, and called him a 
 " liar, a scoundrel, and ruffian." 
 
 The use of epithets such as these, according to 
 the established code of laws then current in 
 society, left but one course open to Mr. Best, and 
 a hostile meeting was at once arranged for the 
 following morning, Each of the parties having 
 appointed his " second," it was left, as usual, to 
 the latter to fix the time and place. These were 
 seven o'clock in the morning, and the fields be- 
 hind Holland House at Kensington. 
 
 Meantime every means was being put in motion 
 to supersede the necessity of a duel, or to prevent 
 its occurrence, or at all events to stop it before a 
 fatal result should ensue; and I regret to add 
 that it seems to have been wholly Lord Camel- 
 ford's fault that these efforts proved unavailing. 
 Later in the evening, Mr. Best, though he had 
 been so grossly and wantonly insulted, sent to 
 his lordship a strong assurance that the informa- 
 tion which he had received was quite groundless, 
 and that, as he had acted under a false impres- 
 sion, he should be quite satisfied if his lordship 
 would withdraw the strong epithets which he had
 
 THOMAS PITT, LORD CAMELFORD. 227 
 
 applied to him. But Lord Camclford refused to 
 accept this kindly and sensible offer. Mr. Best 
 then left the coffee house, and some mutual 
 friends or witnesses among the bystanders lodged 
 an information at Marlborough Street. 
 
 Notwithstanding the magistrates were thus 
 early let into the secret, it appears that no steps 
 were taken to prevent the hostile encounter until 
 nearly two o'clock in the morning, by which time 
 his lordship, who had gained a fair stock of expe- 
 rience in " matters of honour " by this time, had 
 of course taken good care to be " off," having 
 ordered a bed at a tavern near Oxford Street. 
 
 During the night he made his will, bequeathing 
 his estates to his sister, Lady Grenville. In this 
 he inserted a clause in which, to do him justice, 
 he wholly acquits his antagonist of blame in the 
 affair, expressly declares that the quarrel was of 
 his own seeking, and desires that in the event of 
 his own death, and the law being put into force 
 against Mr. Best, the King may be petitioned 
 and requested in his (Lord C.'s) name to extend 
 to him the royal pardon. 
 
 Early on the following morning, at the coffee- 
 house in Oxford Street, Mr. Best made another 
 effort to prevail on his lordship to retract the 
 expressions which he had used. "Camelford," 
 said he, " we have been friends, and I know the 
 
 Q 2
 
 228 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 generosity and the unsuspiciousness of your na- 
 ture. Upon my honour you have been imposed 
 upon by Mrs. Simmons ; do not insist on using 
 expressions which in the end must cause the 
 death of either you or me." To this Lord Camel- 
 ford merely replied dryly, " Best, all this is mere 
 child's play ; the matter must go on." 
 
 Unable to come to terms at the coffee house in 
 Oxford Street, the two principals mounted their 
 horses, and rode along the Uxbridge Road, past 
 the wall which then bounded Kensington Gar- 
 dens, as far as the " Horse and Groom," a little 
 beyond Notting Hill turnpike-gate. At the "Horse 
 and Groom" they dismount, cross the road, and 
 proceed at a quick pace along the path leading to 
 the fields behind Holland House. The seconds 
 measure the ground, and Lord Camelford and Mr. 
 Best take up their positions at thirty paces. The 
 sun has lately risen, and one or two of the out- 
 door servants of Holland House are about the 
 grounds; but while they wonder and stare the 
 signal is given, and Lord Camelford fires. Either 
 designedly or not, he fires without effect, and Mr. 
 Best is a living man. A quarter of a minute 
 elapses, the signal is repeated, and Lord Camel- 
 ford falls forward on the ground. He is not dead, 
 but he is mortally wouuded : and oh, irony of 
 ironies! he declares that he "is satisfied." He
 
 THOMAS PITT, LORD CAMELFORD. 229 
 
 shakes hands with his antagonist, who runs to 
 pick him up : " Best, I am a dead man, and you 
 have killed me ; but I freely forgive you the 
 fault was mine." 
 
 It was now time for Mr. Best to beat a retreat, 
 and one of Lord Holland's gardeners was de- 
 spatched for a surgeon. A chair was soon pro- 
 cured ; and seated in it, and supported by the by- 
 standers, Lord Camelford was carried off to Little 
 Holland House, the residence of Mr. Otty, where 
 he was attended by two surgeons, Mr. Thompson 
 and Mr. Knight, of Kensington. In an hour more 
 his faithful friend Captain Barrie was beside his 
 bed, and so was his cousin, the Rev. Mr. Cock- 
 burn. 
 
 From the first the surgeons gave little or no 
 hope that the wound would prove anything other 
 than mortal. The ball could not be extracted, 
 and he lingered in great agony for nearly three 
 days, when death put an end to his sufferings. 
 So died Thomas Lord Camelford, at the early age 
 of twenty-nine, by a death which, though not ac- 
 tually self-inflicted, was brought on by his own 
 wayward obstinacy. 
 
 The estimate formed by Mr. Cockburn as to 
 Lord Camelford's real character, and his testimony 
 to the sincerity of the penitence of his deathbed, 
 are alike striking. He writes :
 
 230 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 " Lord Camelford was a man whose real cha- 
 racter was but little known to the world ; his 
 imperfections and his follies were often brought 
 before the public, but the counterbalancing vir- 
 tues he manifested were but little heard of. 
 Though violent to those whom he imagined to 
 have wronged him, yet to his acquaintances he 
 was mild, affable, and courteous : a stern adver- 
 sary, but the kindest and most generous of friends. 
 Slow and cautious in determining upon any im- 
 portant step while deliberating, he was most at- 
 tentive to the advice of others, and easily brought 
 over to their opinion ; when, however, his resolu- 
 tions were once taken, it was almost impossible to 
 turn him from his purpose. That warmth of dis- 
 position which prompted him so unhappily to 
 great improprieties, prompted him also to the 
 most lively efforts of active benevolence. From 
 the many prisons in the metropolis, from the 
 various receptacles of human misery, he received 
 numberless petitions, and no petition ever came 
 in vain. He was often the dupe of the designing 
 and crafty supplicant, but he was more often the 
 reliever of real sorrow, and the soother of un- 
 merited woe. Constantly would he make use of 
 that influence which rank and fortune gave him 
 with the Government, to interfere in the behalf of 
 those malefactors whose crimes had subjected
 
 THOMAS PITT, LORD CAMELFORD. 231 
 
 them to punishment, but in whose cases ap- 
 peared circumstances of alleviation. He was pas- 
 sionately fond of science, and though his mind 
 while a young seaman had been little cultivated, 
 yet in later years he had acquired a prodigious 
 fund of information upon almost every subject 
 connected with literature. In early life he had 
 gloried much in puzzling the chaplains of ships 
 in which he served, and to enable him to gain 
 such triumphs he had read all the sceptical books 
 he could procure ; and thus his mind became in- 
 voluntarily tainted with infidelity. As his judg- 
 ment grew more matured, he discovered of himself 
 the fallacy of his own reasonings, he became con- 
 vinced of the importance of religion, and Christ- 
 ianity was the constant subject of his reflections, 
 his reading and conversation. ... I wish with 
 all my soul that the unthinking votaries of dissi- 
 pation and infidelity could have been present at 
 the deathbed of this poor man ; could have heard 
 his expressions of contrition after misconduct, 
 and of his reliance on the mercy of his Creator : 
 could have heard his dying exhortation to one of 
 his intimate friends to live in future a life of 
 peace and virtue: I think it would have made 
 impressions on their minds, as it did on mine, not 
 easily to be effaced." 
 
 On the day after his death an inquest was held
 
 232 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 on the body of his lordship, when, strange as it 
 may sound to the ears of those who have read 
 this brief story, twelve wise and enlightened in- 
 habitants of the country village of Kensington, 
 for such it then was, brought in a verdict of 
 " wilful murder against some person or persons 
 unknown." 
 
 It is evident that Lord Camelford had in him 
 the elements of a good naval officer, if his proud, 
 obstinate, and wayward spirit could only have 
 bent itself to the rules and requirements of the 
 service. But from a child he would never obey, 
 or fall in with even the reasonable wishes of 
 parents and tutors. At school the same head- 
 strong and wilful nature cropped out which he 
 exhibited in the navy ; and he was true to it to 
 the very end. In the codicil to his will, which he 
 dictated whilst writhing in his mortal agony, he 
 declared that, while other individuals desired to 
 be buried in their native land, he wished to be 
 interred " in a country far distant in a spot not 
 near to the haunts of men, but where the sur- 
 rounding scenery might smile upon his remains." 
 
 But in this matter he was not destined to have 
 his own way. Lord Camelford's body was 
 brought back from Kensington to Camelford 
 House, at the top of Park Lane, nominally his 
 town residence, though he preferred his bachelor
 
 THOMAS PITT, LORD CAMELFORD. 233 
 
 quarters in Bond Street ; and thence it was taken 
 and deposited in the vaults of St. Anne's, Soho. 
 Owing to the war, effect could not be given to 
 his desire for interment in the soil of Switzer- 
 land, and his body still lies where it was first 
 interred, in a magnificent coffin, covered with 
 gorgeous red velvet, and surmounted by a 
 coronet. It is perhaps the more necessary for me 
 to record this fact, as the contrary has been 
 asserted by Mr. Charles Reade, in an article on 
 Lord Cameiford in " Belgravia " for May, 1876, 
 who says that the body was wrapped up in a 
 common fish-basket, and that it is not known 
 now what became of it. But the mystery is no 
 mystery at all ; for I saw the coffin, or at all 
 events what the verger told me was the coffin of 
 Lord Cameiford, in the vaults under St. Anne's, 
 Soho, about the year 1860 ; and the coffin might 
 or might not have contained a fish-basket in the 
 place of a " shell." I may add that a letter from 
 the courteous owner of his Lordship's seat in 
 Cornwall, the Hon. George M. Fortescue, assures 
 me that he never heard of any attempt, or even 
 desire, on the part of the relations of the 
 eccentric nobleman, to bring his remains again 
 into the light of day. 
 
 His fine property of Boconnoc Park near Lost- 
 withiel, in Cornwall he left to his sister Anne,
 
 234 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 the wife of Lord Grenville. She outlived him 
 sixty years, dying in the full possession of her 
 faculties, at the age of ninety, in the year 1863. 
 At her death, she bequeathed the estate to her 
 husband's nephew, Mr. Fortescue, the gentleman 
 mentioned above.
 
 235 
 
 AN EPISODE IN THE EARLDOM OF 
 PEMBROKE. 
 
 NEXT to the Howards, who undoubtedly stand 
 first and foremost in the roll of English 
 nobility, with their forty coronets all fairly won 
 by them in four hundred years, no family rises 
 higher in respect of its honours than that of the 
 Herberts. For not only do its male descendants 
 in our day wear the coronets of three earldoms 
 those of Pembroke, Montgomery, and Carnarvon 
 but within a period quite historic they have 
 borne at least two more, namely, those of Powis 
 and Torrington, both now extinct in the male 
 line ; to say nothing of other dignities in the 
 lower grade of barons, as Lords Herbert of 
 Cherbury, Lords Herbert of Cardiff, Lords 
 Herbert of Shurland, and, by recent creation, 
 Lords Herbert of Lea. In addition to this they
 
 236 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 have made alliances with nearly all the greatest 
 and noblest of our titled houses the Talbots, the 
 Greys, Dukes of Suffolk, the Sidneys, the 
 Villierses, the Howards, the Arundells, the 
 Paulets, the Scropes, and the Spencers ; so that 
 the present Lord Pembroke, although not un- 
 disputed head and representative of the house 
 of Herbert, has come, through the intermarriages 
 of his ancestors, to hold four ancient baronies 
 in fee, as Lord Ross of Kendal, Parr, Marrnion, 
 and St. Quentin. How all this comes about 
 it would not be easy to show in detail without 
 drawing out for my readers a long genealogical 
 tree ; and those who wish to examine my state- 
 ment for themselves can verify my words by 
 the authority of Sir Bernard Burke, whose as- 
 sertion of the fact, I own, is sufficient for 
 myself. 
 
 If they will turn to his "Peerage" and his 
 " Landed Gentry," they will find that, in addition 
 to the honours above mentioned, the main stem 
 of the Herberts has produced several untitled 
 branches of high worth and renown, such, for 
 instance, as the Herberts of St. Julian's and 
 of Magor, in Monmouthshire, the Herberts of Lla- 
 narth, in Wales, and of Cahirnane, in Ireland. 
 Above all, with respect to the Herberts of 
 Muckross, near Killarney, my friend " Ulster"
 
 EPISODE IN THE HOUSE OF PEMBROKE. 237 
 
 writes as follows : " Since the merging of the 
 elder branch of the Herberts in the family of 
 Clive, by the marriage of the heiress of the last 
 Herbert, Earl of Powis, with the son of the 
 celebrated general, Lord Clive, the chieftainship 
 of the name seems undoubtedly to rest with the 
 Herberts of Muckross, in the county of Kerry, 
 who are descended from Thomas Herbert of 
 Kilcuagh, who went to Ireland under the care 
 and patronage of his relative, Lord Herbert of 
 Cherbury." And then he proceeds to trace the 
 descent of this Thomas Herbert from the eldest 
 son of Sir Richard Herbert of Colebroke, only 
 brother of William, Earl of Pembroke of the 
 first creation, who as may be read in the pages 
 of Speed and Holinshed suffered largely in 
 purse and pocket for his adherence to the House 
 of York in the Wars of the Roses. 
 
 it should be added that, while one of the earl's 
 coronets belonging to the Herberts namely, 
 that of Powis for a short time blossomed into 
 that of a marquis, one of the fair Countesses of 
 Pembroke was even more highly honoured by 
 the muses ; for to her Sir Philip Sidney 
 dedicated his "Arcadia," while Ben Jonsou im- 
 mortalized her memory in the well-known verses 
 that will live as long as the English tongue :
 
 238 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 " Underneath this marble herse 
 Lies the subject of all verse : 
 Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother. 
 Death, ere thou hast slain another 
 Wise and fair and good as she, 
 Time shall throw a dart at thee." 
 
 Further, it should be recorded that no less 
 than two brothers, successively Earls of Pembroke, 
 were also in succession the " honoured lords and 
 chancellors " of the University of Oxford, where 
 a noble statue of one of them still graces the 
 gallery of the Bodleian Library ; and the reader 
 will need scarcely to be reminded that the 
 father of the present Earl of Pembroke was the 
 good, the kind, the courteous, and amiable 
 Sidney Herbert, the rising statesman and future 
 premier of England, to whom it was no honour 
 to be created Lord Herbert of Lea, so high did 
 he stand before with Englishmen of all shades of 
 politics. 
 
 When a single house can show so many of its 
 members ennobled both by titles and by the 
 higher dignity of personal merit, it is scarcely 
 worth while to record such facts as that one 
 Lord Pembroke was Lord Chamberlain to the 
 Household to Charles I., and that another was 
 " chosen to carry the sword called ' curtana ' at 
 the coronation of George I." However, some of my
 
 EPISODE IN THE HOUSE OF PEMBROKE. ,239 
 
 fair readers may possibly like to " make a note " 
 of them. Let me, however, remind them one and 
 all that the surname of the house ennobled by so 
 many creations, and spread through so many 
 branches, is said to be derived from two Anglo- 
 Saxon words, " Her " and " Bert " meaning " il- 
 lustrious lord," a derivation in their case not 
 wholly false in fact. I suppose too that, in order 
 to do justice to antiquity and to show my respect 
 for " blue blood," I ought to add that, according 
 to the heralds, the Herberts are sprung from one 
 Herbert, Count of Vermandois, who came over to 
 England with the Conqueror, and held the office 
 of Chamberlain to William Rufus. He is men- 
 tioned in the roll of Battle Abbey, as rewarded 
 with a large grant of land in Hampshire, and as 
 having married a daughter of Stephen, Count of 
 Blois, granddaughter of William I. The first of 
 the Herberts born in England, it appears, was 
 his son, Herbert Fitz-Herbert, called Herbert 
 of Winchester, who became Treasurer and Cham- 
 berlain to Henry I. His son held the same office 
 under the second Henry, and his great grandson 
 was summoned to Parliameut as a Baron in A.D. 
 1294. If this be so, in all probability either Mr. 
 Herbert of Muckross, or Lord Pembroke himself, 
 might rightly put in a claim for a barony in fee 
 nearly as old as that of De Roe.
 
 240 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 I must, however, pass by all notice of him, 
 and of his descendant, William Herbert, first 
 Earl of Pembroke, Chief Forester of Snowdon, 
 and Constable of Conway Castle, the staunch 
 adherent of the house of York, who, falling into 
 the hands of the Lancastrians after the battle of 
 Dane's Moor, in 1469, suffered attainder, and 
 was beheaded at Banbury. His grandson, Wil- 
 liam, was installed a Knight of the Garter, and 
 created Lord Herbert of Cardiff, and eventually 
 obtained in his favour a fresh creation of the 
 Earldom of Pembroke. He married a sister of 
 Catharine Parr (the last wife of Henry VIII.), 
 and became one of the most powerful noblemen 
 of his day, taking an active part in public affairs 
 as a soldier and as a statesman. It is recorded 
 of him that " he rode on the 17th of February, 
 1552-3, to his mansion of Baynard Castle, in 
 London, with a retinue of three hundred horse- 
 men, of which one hundred were gentlemen in 
 plain blue cloth, with chains of gold, and badges 
 of a dragon on their sleeves." Dying in 1570, 
 he was buried in Old St. Paul's Cathedral, and 
 with such magnificence that, if we may trust the 
 old chronicler Stow, the mourning given at his 
 funeral cost the large sum, at that time, of 
 .2000. It was this nobleman's son Henry, the 
 second earl of the new creation, and also a
 
 EPISODE IN THE HOUSE OF PEMBROKE. 241 
 
 Knight of the Garter, whose third wife was the 
 lady mentioned above as 
 
 " Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother." 
 
 But from all these brilliant and pleasant 
 reminiscences I must pass to my promised 
 " episode" in the noble house of Pembroke. It is 
 by no means a pleasant one to relate, or, I fear, 
 a creditable one to the otherwise spotless shield 
 of the noble Herberts men almost without 
 exception sans peur et sans reproche. 
 
 It appears that Philip, the seventh wearer of 
 the coronet of Pembroke, who came to the title 
 in the reign of Charles II., stood out with an evil 
 prominence even among the riotous and debauched 
 nobles who hung about the Whitehall and St. 
 James's of that day. In our own time we have 
 seen a Lord Kingston month after month 
 quarrelling at Charing-cross with Hansom-cab 
 drivers, and a Lord Waldegrave and a Lord 
 Waterford getting up rows in the Haymarket, 
 knocking down policemen, and using their fists 
 pretty freely in street brawls at the West-end 
 not always quite defensively. But these were 
 comparatively innocents quite " lambs," as they 
 would be called at Nottingham by the side of 
 Philip, seventh Earl of Pembroke and fourth Earl 
 of Montgomery. Of him we learn a little in a 
 
 VOL. I. R
 
 242 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 certain book of " State Trials" which gives us a 
 peep at his character. Let me only preface my 
 " episode" with one remark, that he was the 
 grandson, not of the great Lord Pembroke, the 
 ornament of the Court of King James I., but of 
 his younger brother, who " began life as one of 
 James's favourites and parasites, was ennobled 
 by the title of Earl of Montgomery, and finished 
 a career in all its parts alike contemptible by 
 being the first member of the peerage after the 
 fall of the monarchy who sought (and obtained) 
 a seat in the House of Commons." 
 
 Philip, this nobleman's grandson, who became 
 Earl of Pembroke as well as of Montgomery, on 
 the death of his half-brother in 1674, according 
 to an entry in the Lord's Journals, Jan. 28, 1678, 
 was committed to the Tower " for uttering such 
 horrid and blasphemous words, and for such other 
 actions proved upon oath, as are not fit to be 
 repeated in any Christian assembly." Bishop 
 Kennet explains at length what these blasphemies 
 were,* and I will not trouble my readers by 
 
 * It is right to add that in consequence of this affair, " to 
 show their lordships' great sense and abhorrency against blas- 
 phemy," it was ordered that a bill be brought into the House 
 " for the severe punishment of all blasphemers for the time to 
 come." Such a bill was brought in, but from some cause or 
 other was allowed to drop. It is almost too good to hope that 
 even in this embryo state it had ga ; ned its end.
 
 EPISODE IN THE HOUSE OF PEMBROKE. 243 
 
 retailing them ; I will only say that in a petition 
 dated from the Tower, which is to be found no 
 doubt in the Journals of the House of Peers, Lord 
 Pembroke " humbly implored pardon of God, 
 the King, and of this House," and accordingly, 
 after a month spent in durance vile, was released, 
 and "had leave to come to his place in 
 Parliament." 
 
 It is remarkable that, among the grounds on 
 which the noble Earl begged for his release, he 
 pleaded the fact that " his health was much 
 impaired by long restraint." Let us see what 
 follows. Such an invalid is he that he has been 
 out of prison only a few days when a complaint 
 is made to the House of Lords by a Mr. Philip 
 Rycaut to the effect that, "he being to visit a 
 friend in the Strand, whilst he was at the door 
 taking his leave, the Earl of Pembroke came up 
 to the door and with his fist, without any 
 provocation, struck the said Philip Rycaut such 
 a blow upon the eye as almost knocked it out, 
 and afterwards knocked him down, and then fell 
 upon him with such violence that he almost 
 stifled him with his grips in the dirt; that his 
 lordship then likewise drew his sword and was 
 in danger of killing him, had he not slipped 
 into the house and the door been shut upon him." 
 The wounded man brings his petition to a close 
 
 R 2
 
 244 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 by humbly begging the House " to be an asylum 
 to him" and give him leave to proceed against 
 the Earl according to law. In the end his 
 lordship vvas bound over in .2000 to keep the 
 peace towards Mr. Rycaut and the rest of His 
 Majesty's subjects for twelve months. 
 
 But unhappily, almost before Mr. Rycaut had 
 been able to invoke the aid of the House of Peers, 
 Lord Pembroke had got into another and far 
 more serious scrape ; for the House of Lords on 
 1st of March following received a petition from 
 Lord Pembroke himself, complaining that at a 
 coroner's inquest held on the body of Nathaniel 
 Cony, gentleman, he had been charged with 
 causing that person's death, evidently implying 
 that he had received an affront which he ought 
 not to brook as a peer. 
 
 Next day a committee of the " Law Lords" 
 was appointed to consider the question thus 
 raised; but so far were they from taking his 
 lordship's view, that on the 6th it was resolved 
 " that a commission of oyer and terminer should 
 be issued under the Great Seal for the indictment 
 of Philip, Earl of Pembroke, for killing and 
 slaying Nathaniel Cony." On the 19th the Lord 
 Chancellor informed the House that the Grand 
 jury had found him guily of " felony and murder," 
 and a Lord High Steward Lord Finch, after-
 
 EPISODE IN THE HOUSE OF PEMBROKE. 245 
 
 wards Earl of Nottingham having been ap- 
 pointed in due form for the purpose, Lord 
 Pembroke was put upon his trial, just as within 
 the memory of most of us the late Lord 
 Cardigan was tried for the murder of Captain 
 Tuckett. 
 
 It is needless here to recount the legal details 
 of the affair ; they may be found at full length by 
 those who are curious in such things in the book 
 of " State Trials." It is enough to say that the 
 indictment charged the noble earl with 
 "feloniously, wilfully, and of malice before- 
 thought, striking, bruising, and kicking, killing 
 and murdering the said Nathaniel Cony, in the 
 parish of St. Martin' s-in-the-Fields, against the 
 peace of our sovereign lord the King, his crown 
 and dignity." It appears that without any 
 provocation, while drinking in Long's Tavern in 
 the Haymarket, Lord Pembroke first insulted 
 and then assaulted Mr. Cony, next knocked him 
 down, and ended by kicking him when prostrate. 
 The poor man died a few days after, in spite of 
 all that the doctors and " chirurgeons" could do 
 The trial, happily, was not dragged out to such 
 a length as that of a certain " claimant" of the 
 present day at Westminster; the case against 
 Lord Pembroke having been opened by Sir Win. 
 Dolben, Recorder of London, in his capacity
 
 24 f) TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 of King's Serjeant-at-Law, the prosecution was 
 conducted by the Attorney-General Sir William 
 Jones, and the witnesses having been examined, 
 and the evidence against him having been 
 summed up by Sir Francis Winnington, in a day 
 or two the turbulent and quarrelsome nobleman 
 who had thus tarnished the shield of the Herberts 
 was found guilty of manslaughter; forty of their 
 lordships finding that verdict, while six were 
 for finding him guilty of the higher offence, and 
 eighteen pronounced him " not guilty." 
 
 It so happened that, although if he had 
 been found guilty of murder that plea would 
 not have saved him (as witness the cases of 
 Lord Stourton and Lord Ferrers), yet as the 
 law then stood it was competent for a member 
 of the Upper House to plead in arrest of 
 judgment for manslaughter " the privilege of his 
 peerage ;" so he got off scot free, and the Lord High 
 Steward put an end to the farce of the trial by 
 breaking his staff according to ancient custom. 
 
 But the danger that he had run on this occa- 
 sion did not cure Lord Pembroke of his fondness 
 for tavern brawls. In the following November a 
 quarrel over their cups arose between his lord- 
 ship and the Earl of Dorset ; and, as usual, the 
 quarrel seemed likely to end in a duel. The 
 matter being happily brought under the notice of
 
 EPISODE Ik THE HOUSE OF PEMBROKE. 247 
 
 the House of Peers, before any blood had been 
 spilt, their lordships resolved that both of the 
 belligerent parties should be " confined to their 
 respective houses or lodgings till further orders ;" 
 and finally, on a full consideration of the whole 
 affair, it was ordered that the confinement of the 
 Earl of Dorset and that of the Earl of Pembroke 
 should be " taken off," and that the latter should 
 have leave given him " to retire himself to his 
 house at Wilton." This was not, one would 
 think, a very severe punishment for such a mis- 
 creant ; and many a man in the humbler ranks of 
 middle life in our own day would be glad to be 
 let off for two serious and one fatal assault by 
 honorary banishment to some pleasant grounds 
 and a park, in Wiltshire or elsewhere. Such an 
 ostracism indeed would be a thing to be envied 
 by most of us, if unaccompanied by a tdche or a 
 stain, but scarcely otherwise. 
 
 Whether the noble Earl took advantage of the 
 kind permission thus given to him to "retire 
 himself" from the temptations of "high life in 
 London," does not appear. It may, however, be 
 presumed that he took the hint, as we do not 
 hear of him playing such mad pranks again in 
 the parish of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. He 
 died in 1683, when his titles, honours, and es- 
 tates passed to a younger and far worthier brother,
 
 248 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 Thomas, who became the eighth Earl. He re- 
 stored the ancient reputation of the family ; for, 
 besides holding several high offices in the State, 
 including that of Lord High Admiral and the 
 Lord Lieutenancy of Ireland, his distinction in 
 the world of literature and science procured for 
 him the chair of the Royal Society. His name too 
 is worthy of remembrance, as the collector of that 
 magnificent gallery of sculptures and other anti- 
 quities which has for two centuries given an en- 
 vied celebrity to the fine old seat of Wilton 
 House, the home and haunt of the English muses, 
 and renowned alike for its pictures and art trea- 
 sures, and as the spot where Sidney wrote the 
 greater part of his " Arcadia." The titles of 
 Pembroke and Montgomery have since descended 
 in his line, and it may well be hoped that the 
 youthful Earl of Pembroke will do no discredit 
 hereafter to the honoured name of his own la- 
 mented father, Sidney Herbert. 
 
 And what about the issue of Philip, the seventh 
 Earl ? Happily, he left no male descendants to 
 carry on the polluted stream, which for centuries 
 had flowed so purely in the veins of the Herberts. 
 He married one of the loose and frail beauties of 
 the Court of Charles the Second, Henriette de 
 Querouaille, a sister of the notorious Duchess of 
 Portsmouth. This lady, who survived her hus-
 
 EPISODE IN THE HOUSE OF PEMBROKE. 249 
 
 band nearly half a century, left a daughter, who 
 married the second Lord Jeffries, son of the infa- 
 mous Judge Jeffries, by whom she became the 
 mother of Henriette Louisa, Countess of Pomfret, 
 a title now extinct.
 
 250 
 
 THE RISE OF THE ROTHSCHILDS. 
 
 AS more than one fair lady of the House of 
 Rothschild has lateiy married into what I 
 suppose may be styled our Christian aristocracy, 
 a short account of the steps of the ladder by 
 which the Rothschilds in less than a century have 
 climbed from poverty to the highest pinnacle of 
 commercial success may not be without interest 
 at the present moment. The main facts are not 
 new to the world, but the details I have reason to 
 believe will be found new by very many, if not 
 most of my readers ; and I will therefore proceed 
 with my story, with only a word of preface 
 namely, that for most of them I am indebted to 
 my worthy friend Mr. Frederick Martin, the au- 
 thor of the "Statesman's Year Book," and of 
 other useful works too numerous to mention. 
 In the centre of the ancient city of Frankfort-
 
 THE RISE OF THE ROTHSCHILDS. 251 
 
 on-the-Maine is a narrow lane not unlike Holywell 
 Street, in the Strand, or Maryleport Street, Bris- 
 tol, but which, a hundred years ago, was not only 
 one of the narrowest, but one of the dirtiest and 
 filthiest in Europe. It was called the " Juden- 
 gasse," or Jews' lane the name denoting the 
 fact that the Jewish population were forced to 
 live in one part of the town, analogous to the 
 " Ghetto " at Rome, and to the " Jewry " of the 
 city of London in the middle ages. In that street, 
 in the year 1743, was born Meyer Amschel Roth- 
 schild, the founder of that great house which holds 
 in its hands the destinies of European nations 
 more truly than the ephemeral emperors and 
 kings of our day. An empire may fall at Sedan ; 
 a king may abdicate at Madrid ; and the imperial 
 and regal glories pass away as a dream ; but 
 Juvenal long ago crowned money as a Queen, 
 saying, " Et genus et formani regina Pecunia 
 donat;" and, looking at the existing state of 
 things around us, we cannot any of us get rid oi 
 the idea that after all money is the great power 
 which rules the world. 
 
 But to return to the Rothschilds. When Meyer 
 Amschel Rothschild first saw the light of day, the 
 Jews, though no longer tied to a single spot in Lon- 
 don, were literally in fetters at Frankfort. In 1743 
 the " Jews' lane " was a prison, guarded at either
 
 252 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 end with heavy chains, which were fastened 
 every evening by the watchmen, and also were 
 kept closed on all Sundays, Feast Days, and Holy 
 Days. Out of this pent-up district, only some 
 300 yards long, the wretched inhabitants were 
 not allowed to stir under penalty of death. " No 
 Jew," says Mr. Martin, " was allowed under any 
 pretence to live beyond the limits of the ' Juden- 
 gasse ;' a rule which compelled the poor outcasts 
 either to raise their dark sunless dwellings higher 
 and higher with each succeeding generation, or 
 else to hide themselves away in deep cellars 
 underground. Such were the early surroundings 
 that greeted the birth of the world- famed banking 
 dynasty." Shame on Christians, indeed, that 
 such should have been the case ; but it only 
 proves the truth of Byron's sneer, 
 
 '' Christians have burnt each other, quite persuaded 
 That all th" Apostles would have done as they did." 
 
 At the age of eleven young Rothschild lost his 
 parents, and had to begin the battle of life single- 
 handed. After a few years' schooling, one fine 
 morning he packed up all his worldly goods on 
 his shoulders, and with a stout stick in his hand 
 walked to Hanover. Here he fortunately found 
 a place as clerk to a small banker and money 
 changer. By dint of extreme parsimony he man-
 
 THE RISE OF THE ROTHSCHILDS. 253 
 
 aged to save a little out of his small salary, and 
 with this capital in hand he returned to Frank- 
 fort in the year of grace 177S, just over a hun- 
 dred years ago. I wonder if the house of Roth- 
 schild remembered to keep in the year 1873 their 
 founder's centenary. 
 
 Meyer Amschel now took to himself a wife, and 
 established himself as a broker and money-lender 
 in the Juden-gasse, joining with his other busi- 
 ness a little money-lending on a small scale. As 
 a skilful collector of, and an honest dealer in old 
 coins and other rarities, he soon gained some 
 local fame, and many a virtuoso would look in 
 upon him at his shop, No. 148, over the door of 
 which he hung out his sign, the " Red Shield," 
 which in allusive heraldry denoted " Roth Schild." 
 
 Among the connoisseurs with whom he was 
 thus brought into connection was William, the 
 Landgrave of Hesse Cassel, afterwards known as 
 William I , Elector of Hesse. In those troubled 
 and dangerous times, when the first Napoleon 
 was making every town in Europe quake, the 
 Landgrave no doubt was often glad to dispose of 
 stray family jewels for a supply of the needful, 
 and possibly to borrow a few hundreds on per- 
 sonal security in order to pay the more pressing 
 of his creditors. Thus intimate relations were 
 established between the Landgrave and the once
 
 254 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 poor clerk of Hanover: and so in 1796, when the 
 French troops inarched on Frankfort, the owner 
 of the "Red Shield" had time to put his "little 
 all" safe within the sheltering walls of the Land- 
 grave's Schloss at Cassel a service which the 
 Jew banker was able to return with interest ten 
 years later. The event is worth noticing, as 
 marking the starting point of the career of the 
 house of Rothschild. 
 
 As a rule, bombardments are not very fortu- 
 nate in their consequences ; but the bombardment 
 of Frankfort by Kleber, in 1796, was not without 
 its ad vantages to the Jews at least. The "Ghetto" 
 of that city was knocked nearly to pieces, and the 
 Jews were thenceforth allowed, as a special favour 
 and privilege, to rent houses among their Chris- 
 tian brethren. The "Red Shield" was trans- 
 ferred to a better part of the city, and its owner 
 was appointed banker to the Landgrave and his 
 court. 
 
 This led to an event which proved the turn- 
 ing point of the fortunes of the Rothschilds. 
 In 1806, the Landgrave was driven from his 
 throne by Napoleon, who wanted the territory 
 in order to consolidate the kingdom of West- 
 phalia, which he had recently conferred on his 
 brother, Jerome. In his hurry to " pack up and 
 be off," William had no time to secure his cash,
 
 THE RISE OF THE ROTHSCHILDS. 255 
 
 which he was only too glad to leave in the hands 
 of his banker, though probably he had his mis- 
 givings as to seeing it again. Safer, however, 
 he thought in the hands of Meyer Amschel, his 
 Hof-agent, than in the hands of the merry King of 
 Westphalia. The sum amounted to just a quarter 
 of million of English pounds. The Hof-agent, 
 however, was equal to the crisis ; he saw how to 
 take care of the mouey, and to make it bring in a 
 good return also ; and at a time when gold was 
 worth from 12 to 20 per cent., and when all who 
 were " hard up " were forced to mortgage their 
 lands and houses, he saw that it only required a 
 cool head and sound judgment to turn the capital 
 over with advantage. The result was that in 
 six years he had nearly quadrupled the original 
 sum in his hands, and when he died, in 1812, he 
 was found to be worth a million sterling. 
 
 Shortly after this event happened the battle 
 of Leipzic, and on the re-establishment of peace 
 the Landgrave was restored to his estates and 
 his petty royalty. He had not been many days 
 at his palace when he received a call from the 
 eldest son of his departed Hof -agent, who handed 
 him the quarter of a million which six years 
 before he had left with Meyer Amschel. The 
 Landgrave was overjoyed at the sight of his cash, 
 and feeling that he could not pay too much
 
 256 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 honour to such honesty and probity, dubbed 
 young Rothschild a knight on the spot. At the Con- 
 gress of Vienna, which he attended shortly after- 
 wards, he was loud in his praises of the Roth- 
 schilds ; and the result was that the other crowned 
 heads of Europe were anxious to secure the 
 services of so trustworthy a banker, who, no 
 doubt, was equally ready to do for any one of 
 them what he had done for the Landgrave, 
 namely, take care of their money and repay it 
 without interest. 
 
 Meyer Amschel Rothschild left ten children 
 five daughters and five sons who by their fa- 
 ther's will were bidden to enter into partnership, 
 binding themselves under the most solemn pro- 
 mises to be true to each other, and to keep the 
 great Hof Agency business in their own hands, 
 without allowing strangers to interfere with it. 
 They were to establish different branches of the 
 central bank at Frankfort, in London, Paris, and 
 the other capitals of Europe, and thus to keep 
 each other well informed as to all the centres of 
 politics and business. 
 
 " Anselm, the eldest son, was to be the head 
 of the firm," says Mr. Martin, " directing all its 
 operations, and, if necessary, controlling the 
 actions of his brothers. However, this arrange- 
 ment was not strictly carried out, for, though
 
 THE RISE OF THE ROTHSCHILDS. 257 
 
 Anselm remained all his life the nominal head, 
 yet his third brother (Nathan) inherited the 
 largest share of his father's spirit, and became 
 the real chief of the house." It was this Nathan 
 Meyer Rothschild, I may here remark, who even- 
 tually settling in London, was naturalised in 
 England, was created a Baron of the Austrian 
 Empire, and became the father of Sir Anthony 
 Rothschild, the first English baronet of the 
 family. I must now pass on to his history. 
 
 Born in September, 1777, he left his home at 
 Frankfort in 1798, at the age of twenty-one, and 
 opened a small place of business as a banker and 
 money-lender at Manchester, which city he is 
 said to have reached with .84- in his pocket 
 after paying his travelling expenses. By dint of 
 shrewdness, perseverance, and self-denial, how- 
 ever, he had so successfully conducted his opera- 
 tions that he came from Manchester to London 
 with a capital of .200,000 at his command. He 
 engaged largely in speculations in the public 
 funds, a safe step considering the supply of in- 
 formation which he received from abroad; and 
 as he realized vast profits, his ,200,000 speedily 
 added a fresh " 0" to it. 
 
 The next part of the story I will leave Mr. 
 Martin to tell in his own words : 
 
 " An instance of young Rothschild's sound cal- 
 
 VOL. I. S
 
 258 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 dilation, and which proved an event of the 
 greatest importance in his successful career, was 
 his first transaction with the British Govern- 
 ment. In 1810, during the period when the 
 fortunes of the Peninsular War seemed most 
 doubtful, some drafts of Wellington, amounting 
 in the aggregate to a considerable sum, came 
 over to this country, and there was no money 
 to meet them in the Exchequer. Nathan Roth- 
 schild, calculating with habitual shrewdness the 
 chances of England's victory in her great con- 
 test against the arms of France, purchased the 
 bills at a considerable discount, and, having 
 made them over to the Government at par, fur- 
 nished the money for redeeming them. It was 
 a splendid speculation in every respect, and, 
 according to Nathan's own confession, one of 
 the best he ever made. Henceforth, the Ministry 
 entered into frequent and intimate relations with 
 the new Hebrew banker, who fully realised the 
 pecuniary advantages which this connection 
 brought him. Every piece of early news which 
 he obtained brought him the gain of thousands 
 at the Stock Exchange, the manipulation of 
 which he had mastered to an unexampled degree. 
 Soon, however, even the information which the 
 resources of the Government furnished him was 
 deemed insufficient by the enterprising specu-
 
 THE RISE OF THE ROTHSCHILDS. 259 
 
 lator, and he set to originate means of his own 
 for obtaining news far more perfect than those 
 at the service of the Government. For this pur- 
 pose he organized a staff of active agents, whose 
 duty it was to follow in the wake of the conti- 
 nental armies, and to send daily, or, if necessary, 
 hourly reports of the most important movements, 
 successes or defeats, in ciphers hidden under 
 the wings of carrier pigeons. To the breed of 
 these pigeons Nathan Rothschild attended with 
 the greatest care, and often paid large sums for 
 birds of superior strength and swiftness." 
 
 But he was not always content with the news 
 sent at second hand through pigeons, a mode 
 of transit always liable to be intercepted by a 
 stray shot from a Cockney's or a schoolboy's 
 gun. Occasionally he would make his way to 
 the Continent himself, in order to note matters 
 with his own eye. For instance, when Napo- 
 leon returned from Elba, his anxiety for the 
 pecuniary prospects of the house led him to Bel- 
 gium, where he followed events, moving in the 
 wake of the army under Wellington. Eager to 
 glean the latest intelligence, he even ventured 
 on the edge of the battle of Waterloo, where he 
 witnessed the defeat of the French from the high 
 ground in front of the chateau of Hougouraont. 
 
 As soon as the fate of the battle was decided, 
 
 s 2
 
 260 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 Nathan Rothschild rode as fast as his horse could 
 carry him to Brussels, where a chaise was in 
 waiting to take him on to Ostend, which he 
 reached at daybreak on June 19th. The sea was 
 rough, and he had therefore some little difficulty 
 in getting a boat across ; but a brave fisherman 
 agreed to peril his life for the sum of .80, and 
 the same night he was safe in Dover harbour. 
 Posting on to London, and sleeping in the chaise, 
 he reached the City early on the 20th, and at 
 ten o'clock was leaning against his accustomed 
 pillar at the Stock Exchange. He looked solemn 
 and anxious ; and whispered to some of his 
 acquaintances a rumour that Marshal Bliicher 
 and Wellington had suffered a defeat, and that 
 Napoleon was master of the field and of the day. 
 The news spread like wildfire; down, of 
 course, went the funds; Nathan Rothschild's 
 known agents sold with the rest, but his unknown 
 and secret agents bought still more largely, 
 picking up every bit of scrip that they could lay 
 hands on till the following day. On the after- 
 noon of that day (the 21st) the real news reached 
 London the news of the fall of Napoleon. 
 Radiant with joy, Nathan Rothschild was the 
 first to inform his friends on the Stock Exchange 
 of the happy event. The funds rose as fast as 
 they had fallen perhaps even a little faster
 
 THE RISE OF THE ROTHSCHILDS. 261 
 
 and no sooner were the official returns of the 
 battle made known to the world, than it was found 
 that the house of Rothschild had netted a 
 million by the transaction. Enough : the 
 foundations of the monetary dynasty of that 
 house were now secure. 
 
 Having thus gained their first couple of millions, 
 the Rothschilds soon found honour and dignities 
 showered thick upon them. The Emperor of 
 Austria raised all the five brothers to the rank of 
 hereditary nobles ; and seven years later granted 
 them patents of dignity as barons. And as 
 for Nathan, his career after Waterloo was 
 as prosperous as it had been before. " He made 
 money," says Mr. Martin, " even by speculations 
 which turned out bad; for instance, by the 
 English loan of twelve millions, for which 
 he became responsible in 1819, and which 
 fell to a discount: but this did not happen 
 until Nathan had relieved himself of all re- 
 sponsibility. His greatest successes, however, 
 were in foreign loans, which he was the first 
 to make popular in England, by introducing 
 the habit of paying in the London market the 
 dividends which previously had been paid abroad, 
 and by fixing the rate in sterling money." 
 
 From about the year 1819 the transactions of 
 the brothers Rothschild came to be spread over
 
 262 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 the whole civilised world, and Nathan negotiated 
 in person or by proxy loans with the Czar of 
 Russia and with the South American Republics, 
 and drove his bargains with the Pope of Rome 
 and the Sultan of Turkey ; and yet, while 
 dealing with these world-wide matters, he could 
 calculate to a sixpence what each of his clerk's 
 wages should amount to ; and he took care that 
 they should never be overpaid a penny, even 
 when he was himself entertaining at his table 
 peers, bishops, and even Princes of the Blood 
 Royal. And yet he was not happy. His utter 
 want of education rendered him quite unfit to 
 enjoy the pleasures of London society, and at the 
 same time exposed him to the shafts of satire. 
 He was constantly made the subject of caricatures, 
 which nettled and pained him to a degree ; and 
 he was constantly in receipt of billets doux, sent 
 by the post anonymously, which contained threats 
 of assassination unless he sent large sums of 
 money to the writers. 
 
 In the year 1831 Nathan Rothschild did a 
 stroke of business which, while it brought him 
 and his house immense profits, also heaped upon 
 them not a little obloquy, freely expressed in 
 many English and foreign newspapers. It is 
 well known that the supply of mercury is 
 exceedingly limited, being almost entirely drawn
 
 THE RISE OF THE ROTHSCHILDS. 263 
 
 from two mines, those of Almaden, in Spain, and 
 of Idria, near Adelsberg, in Illyria. The mines 
 of Almaden, which were known to the Greeks 
 700 years before Christ, and which furnished 
 .700,000 annually to Rome during the Imperial 
 era, fell somewhat into neglect, on account of the 
 Napoleonic wars at the commencement of the 
 present century, so that the Spanish Government 
 derived less profit from them than formerly. 
 Under these circumstances, when the Ministers 
 of His Catholic Majesty were hard up for funds in 
 1831, they entertained the application of Nathan 
 to furnish them with a loan, on condition of the 
 Almaden mines being made over to him for a 
 number of years as security. The bargain was 
 struck, and the House of Rothschild entered into 
 possession of the mines, commencing the business 
 by immediately doubling the price of Almaden 
 mercury. The commercial world, much as- 
 tonished at this step, addressed itself to Idria ; 
 and then it was discovered that the mines of Idria 
 had passed likewise very quietly into the hands 
 of Nathan Rothschild, who had settled of course 
 the price of the mercury on the same scale as 
 that of Almaden. By this little transaction the 
 House of Rothschild obtained a complete monopoly 
 in the sale of mercury, and Nathan was able to 
 fix the price of the article, indispensable for
 
 264 TALES OP OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 many purposes, at his counting-house in St 
 Swithin's-lane. This clever stroke of business 
 as profitable as it was clever had one notable 
 consequence for the sick and suffering of all 
 nations. Mercurial preparations, largely era- 
 ployed in medicine, are at present no more 
 manufactured from the pure metal as obtained 
 from the mines, but from the refuse of other 
 articles containing quicksilver, such as the foil of 
 old mirrors and looking glasses. It would be 
 interesting, if the statistics were to be obtained, 
 to calculate how many pounds sterling the House 
 of Rothschild made by the little mercury business, 
 and how many persons suffered in consequence of 
 bad mercurial medicines. 
 
 The grand secret and guiding principle which 
 has ensured the continuance of the prosperity of 
 the House of Rothschild has been the unity which 
 has attended the co-partnership of its members, 
 so strongly eujoined as a duty on his children by 
 its founder, Meyer Amschel, as he lay on his 
 death-bed. It is, after all, but a realisation of 
 the truth of the fable of the bundle of sticks, a 
 fresh example of the saying that " union is 
 strength." To cement and to continue this 
 bond of union, Nathan conceived the further idea 
 of linking the family still closer together by the 
 intermarriage of the broker's children. Ac-
 
 THE RISE OF THE ROTHSCHILDS. 265 
 
 cordingly in 1836 he summoned a meeting of 
 the family at Frankfort to discuss, and, if possible, 
 to ratify the question. His advice was followed, 
 and the congress broke up with an arrangement 
 for the marriage of the eldest son of Nathan 
 Rothschild with the eldest daughter of his brother 
 Charles. 
 
 Nathan had arrived at Frankfort in the May of 
 that year in perfect health and spirits, and he 
 took part in the religious ceremonies which 
 attended the wedding of his son and his niece on 
 the 15th of June. Next day, however, he was 
 taken ill ; he grew rapidly worse, and it was 
 suggested that his physician in London, Dr. 
 Travers, should be summoned ; but the travelling 
 expenses of a London physician to Germany were 
 too heavy for the purse of a Rothschild, and a 
 cheap medical adviser from the city of Frankfort 
 was called in. Under his hands poor Nathan 
 Rothschild got worse and worse, grew delirious, 
 and talked only of his pounds, his notes, and his 
 thalers, and on the 28th he died. 
 
 Early on the morning of the next day a sports- 
 man, looking out for birds on the downs near 
 Brighton, shot a pigeon, which, when picked up, 
 proved to be one of the well-known carriers of the 
 House of Rothschild. It carried no letter under 
 its wings, but only a small bit of paper on which
 
 266 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 were written the words // est mort, with two 
 initials. Who the it was there could be no doubt. 
 Next day there was almost a panic on the Stock 
 Exchange, and a great fall in the funds greater 
 even than that which occurred on the death of 
 Sir Thomas Baring. 
 
 The remains of Nathan Rothschild were 
 brought over to England, placed in a sumptu- 
 ously gilded coffin, and buried with great pomp 
 and state in the Jewish cemetery at the East- 
 end of London, his hearse being followed by a 
 train of mourning carriages nearly a mile in 
 length, and the cavalcade included not only the 
 Lord Mayor and Sheriffs of London, but also 
 the Austrian, Russian, Prussian, and Neapolitan 
 ambassadors. Verily, if money be not a king, it 
 sometimes has a royal following. 
 
 The fortune left by the head of the family was 
 variously estimated at three, six, and even ten 
 millions. It is probable that the exact sum was 
 never really known, as large sums had been 
 made over to various members of his family in 
 his lifetime. After declaring that he had an in- 
 terest in all the houses conducted by his brothers 
 on the Continent, he ordered that his four sons 
 should join their uncles in carrying on the tran- 
 sactions I suppose I must not call it "business" 
 of the house, and to each of his three daughters
 
 THE RISE OF THE ROTHSCHILDS. 267 
 
 he left a paltry ,100,000, forbidding them to 
 marry without the consent of their mother and 
 brothers. " This," as Mr Martin remarks, " was 
 but a furtherance of the guiding thought of the 
 latter part of his life, when he dreamed that he 
 was destined to elevate his family into a distinct 
 class or caste, equal to that of the Royal families 
 of Europe, and all united in the close ties of 
 blood alliance. Perhaps, at times, he even looked 
 forward to the day when the house of the "Red 
 Shield " should stand far higher than those of 
 Hapsburg and Coburg, by the right of a power 
 far higher and more stable than that of ancestry 
 the power of gold." 
 
 Such a dream, if Nathan Rothschild ever 
 dreamed it, has not come true, nor does it seem 
 likely ever.now to be realized. Another generation 
 has sprung up ; the head of the English house is 
 a baronet, and two of the Rothschilds have seats 
 in Parliament; the Rothschilds now own Gun- 
 nersbury Park in Middlesex and Tring Park in 
 Hertfordshire, and Meutmore in Buckingham- 
 shire ; and some of their handsome Jewish 
 daughters have exchanged their Israelitish 
 maiden names for Christian surnames.* The 
 
 * Hannah, sister of Baron Rothschild and of Sir A. Roth- 
 schild, married in 1839 the late Right Hon. Henry Fitzroy, 
 M.P. for Lewes, brother of the late Lord Southampton ; and
 
 268 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 caste is broken in upon ; the wall of severance is 
 no longer standing ; and Jewish wealth has now 
 become in the matrimonial market an article of 
 exchange for Christian blood and noble titles. 
 May the blending of the two principles be happy 
 in its results! 
 
 more recently a daughter of Baron Rothschild, of Mentmore 
 has entered the bonds of matrimony after the Christian rite 
 with the Hon. Mr. Yorke, a younger son of the Earl of 
 Hardwicke.
 
 269 
 
 AN EPISODE IN THE HOUSE OF 
 HARLEY. 
 
 AMONG our " great families," whose names 
 are coeval with the Norman Conquest, 
 whose heads in the days of the last Stuart sove- 
 reign " held the realm in pawn," are the Harleys, 
 who for a century and a half after the extinction 
 of the heroic House of Vere enjoyed the dignity 
 of Earls of Oxford, and one of the last of whom 
 figured in his day as a merchant, Alderman, and 
 Lord Mayor of London. The old peerage-makers 
 tell us that that the family " can be traced to a 
 period antecedent to the Conquest," at which date 
 its position was so eminent that it forked, like the 
 Harcourts, into two rival branches, one on each 
 side of the English Channel, bearing their original 
 name of Harlai in France. 
 
 We find that in or about the reign of our 
 Edward II., a certain knight, Sir Robert de
 
 270 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 Harley, married Margaret, eldest daughter and 
 co-heiress (with her sister, Elizabeth, wife of Sir 
 Richard de Cornwall, Son of Richard, Earl of 
 Cornwall, King of the Romans, brother of Henry 
 II.) of Sir Bryan de Brampton, in virtue of which 
 marriage he gained the magnificent estate and 
 noble castle of Brampton Bryan, near Ludlow, 
 which has continued down to this "day in the 
 hands of his descendants. And Sir Bernard 
 Burke tells us that his grandson, Sir John Har- 
 ley, of Brampton Bryon, received the honour of 
 knighthood from Edward IV. on the field of 
 battle. From him, eighth or ninth in direct 
 lineal descent, was Sir Robert Harley, of 
 Brampton Bryan, M.P., for Herefordshire, Master 
 of the Mint under Charles I., a man whose 
 name is worthy of remembrance, if for no other 
 reason, because he refused to coin money at the 
 Royal Mint in the Tower with any other die than 
 that of his Royal Master. For this offence he 
 was deposed by the Parliament, and he does not 
 appear to have lived to see the Restoration. His 
 wife, Lady Brilliana Harley, was a niece of 
 Dorothy, daughter of Sir John Tracy, of Tod- 
 dington, Gloucestershire, and sister of Mary, wife 
 of Sir Horace Vere, Lord Vere of Tilbury, through 
 which union the Harleys became allied with the 
 Veres, ancient Earls of Oxford, whose name is
 
 EPISODE IN THE HOUSE OF HARLEY. 271 
 
 or rather was for twenty generations a 
 synonym for the very flower of English nobility > 
 Ludy Brilliana was almost as celebrated for her 
 defence of Brampton Castle, when invested by 
 the Parliamentary forces in 1643, as was Lady 
 Blanche Arundell the Wiltshire heroine of the 
 same period for her defence of Wardour Castle, 
 near Salisbury. Her story is rather a touching 
 one ; for although she had held the place for seven 
 weeks against her assailants, she forced them to 
 raise the siege, yet she died a few weeks after- 
 wards, her end being hastened by her annoyance 
 and grief at the siege. After her death the 
 Roundheads returned to their work, and laid 
 siege a second time to the castle, which they took, 
 and then burned to the ground. A mass of noble 
 ruins still remains to show what the size of the 
 castle must have been in the days of its splendour. 
 The son of the owners of Brampton Castle, Sir 
 Edward Harley, was a member of the Parliament 
 that called back Charles II. to his throne, and 
 was appointed Governor of Dunkirk in reward of 
 his father's services and losses in the Royal cause. 
 His eldest son, Robert Harley, successively 
 Speaker of the House of Commons, Secretary of 
 State, and Chancellor of the Exchequer, was 
 created Earl of Oxford and Mortimer in 1711, 
 and four years later was impeached and com-
 
 272 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 mitted to the Tower. His public trial and his 
 acquittal on the charge of high treason in the 
 reign of George I, are matters well known to 
 every school-boy or school-girl. His son and suc- 
 cessor, the second earl, was the gleaner and editor 
 of the valuable collection of historical docu- 
 ments which is known to scholars as the Harleian 
 Miscellany, and which was purchased from his 
 widow for the British Museum. The third earl 
 was his cousin, also Edward, of whom little more 
 need be said than that he married and had four 
 sons, of whom the eldest reigned as a peer in 
 his stead, the second was Bishop of Hereford, 
 and the fourth a prebendary of Worcester, while his 
 third son Thomas, was sent into the city to make 
 his fortune, or at all events to push his way. The 
 story of this Thomas Harley I now come to tell. 
 
 Athough the son and the brother of an Earl of 
 Oxford, yet this gentleman shared the fate which 
 is so common among the younger sous even of 
 titled parents, namely, that of having to begin 
 the world with but a very small suppty of money. 
 Young Harley was educated at the school at 
 Westminster, but it is not on record that on 
 leaving his father's house at Westminster he 
 walked through Temple Bar and journeyed east- 
 wards into the City of London proper, with only 
 the conventional half-a-crown in his pocket which 
 usually figures on these occasions. Indeed, it is
 
 EPISODE IN THE HOUSE OF HARLEY. 273 
 
 not at all certain that he went through Temple 
 Bar at all, for even at that date there were more 
 ways than one into the heart of London. One 
 way, at all events, was by the river, not in a 
 steamer, but in a hired wherry or his father's 
 private barge. 
 
 It so happened that his father's steward, who 
 had made some pickings out of the Harley estates, 
 was possessed of a very pretty daughter, one 
 Anna or as she was called " Nanny" Bangham, 
 and she became the fair goddess of his destiny. 
 She was her father's heiress, was known to have 
 a good fortune " looming in the future," and her 
 father, plain Edward Bangham, thought that 
 none would have a better right to share it with 
 her than one of his master's sons. The fates 
 were propitious ; young Thomas Harley " popped 
 the question" which has made (or marred) so 
 many men before him and after him. Old Bang- 
 ham was quite as willing as his fair daughter to 
 say " yes ;" so the affair was soon settled, and 
 her money too. He received with "Nanny" a 
 handsome fortune, with which, at the ripe age of 
 twenty-two, the Honourable Thomas Harley com- 
 menced business in the wine trade, and became a 
 citizen of London, resolving mentally, no doubt, 
 to sit one day in the civic chair. 
 
 Time went on. Harley prospered in his busi- 
 VOL I. T
 
 274 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 ness, and the fact of his having a " handle" to 
 his name, we may be sure, did not stand in his 
 way among the good people who worship Mam- 
 mon much, but " blue blood" even more, to the 
 east of Temple Bar. Ten years after his mar- 
 riage, and his start in business, namely, in 1762, 
 we find him chosen an Alderman of London, and 
 in the same year one of the members of the City, 
 having succeeded to the seat vacated by its late 
 respected representative, Sir John Barnard. He 
 served as Sheriff of London in 1764, and became 
 Lord Mayor in 1768. 
 
 During his shrievalty he made himself famous, 
 though not perhaps popular in the City, by seizing 
 the emblems of the " boot" and " petticoat," 
 which the mob were burning in the street oppo- 
 site the Mansion House, in mockery of Lord 
 Bute and the Princess Dowager, while the Sheriffs 
 were busily engaged, on their parts, in burning 
 the North Briton, the paper of John Wilkes. 
 The people in the mob were throwing copies of 
 the paper about in sport and fun, when one of 
 them probably carrying inside of it a handful 
 of dirt or a stone was hurled through the front 
 window of Mr. Sheriff Harley's chariot, shatter- 
 ing the glass. This caused an alarm, and the 
 Sheriffs retired, with sound discretion, to the 
 Mansion House. Some few of the ring-leaders of
 
 EPISODE IN THE HOUSE OF HARLEY. 275 
 
 the mob were arrested, and brought before the 
 Lord Mayor ; but it turned out to be a " storm in 
 a tea-cup," and it appeared that no danger to the 
 Constitution was designed or contemplated by 
 the populace, though angry with the civic mag- 
 nates. 
 
 A proposal being made to offer a vote of thanks 
 to the Sheriffs, for discharging their duty on this 
 not very difficult or critical occasion, was nega- 
 tived by the Lord Mayor himself, who stated 
 publicly that he did not consider the affair as 
 " sufficiently important for a public and solemn 
 acknowledgment, which," he declared with em- 
 phasis, " ought to follow only the most eminent 
 exertions of duty." 
 
 For this refusal it is almost incredible the 
 Duke of Bedford, in his place in the House of 
 Lords moved that the Mayor and Corporation of 
 London should be " ordered to attend at the bar 
 to answer for their conduct ;" while another duke, 
 His Grace of Richmond, in seconding the motion, 
 took to himself and his leader great credit for 
 not moving a formal address to His Majesty, 
 urging him to " deprive the City of its charter." 
 Lord Mansfield, who had, fortunately, enjoyed a 
 legal instead of a ducal education, with great 
 good sense and coolness, explained the matter in 
 all its bearings, to the satisfaction of the House, 
 
 T 2
 
 276 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 and in the end prevailed upon the two dukes to 
 withdraw a motion which conld not be justified 
 upon any principle of reason, law, or liberty. 
 
 For his service on this occasion, however, Mr. 
 Harley was sworn a Privy Councillor, so that he 
 could style himself "Right Honourable" long 
 before he attained the honours of the mayoralty.* 
 But in proportion as he gained favour at Court, 
 he lost it in the City ; and in consequence he 
 was thrown out of Parliament at the next elec- 
 tion, and was afterwards unsuccessful in his 
 candidature for Herefordshire, in which county 
 it might be thought the Harley interest would 
 have been all-powerful. At length, in 1775, on 
 the occasion of Mr. Foley being raised to the 
 peerage, when the memory of his shrievalty had 
 passed away, the farmers and cider-makers of 
 Herefordshire thought better of the affair, and 
 sent him as their representative to St. Stephen's; 
 and he continued to hold his seat for a quarter of 
 a century or more. 
 
 There is little or nothing to say with respect 
 to Mr. Barley's mayoralty, except that it was 
 
 * It is stated by Mr. Sylvanus Urban in the obituary notice 
 of Mr. Harley in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1804, that this 
 honour had never before been conferred on any of his prede- 
 cessors in the mayoralty from the days of Sir William 
 Walworth.
 
 EPISODE IN THE HOUSE OF HARLEY. 277 
 
 uneventful, and that at the close of it he had won 
 back part at least of that capricious and fleeting 
 substance called public favour. 
 
 ' It cannot be denied," observes a writer in 
 the Gentleman's Magazine, who was eminently 
 acquainted with the City politics of seventy years 
 ago, " that in consequence of the peculiar temper 
 of the times, and the imperious duty thence fre- 
 quently imposed on him of firmly resisting the 
 headstrong course of popular licentiousness, the 
 conduct of Mr. Harley was frequently exposed, as 
 might have been expected, to obloquy and mis- 
 representation. A strong instance of this was 
 afforded in the case of the press-warrants in 1770 
 and the following year. As he never wanted 
 popular favour, nor practised those disingenuous 
 artifices by which the fleeting applause of a 
 giddy multitude is too often successfully pursued, 
 it was not in the transient popularity of a day 
 that he sought the reward of his exertions, but 
 in the approbation of his own conscience, and, 
 next to that, in the well-founded and permanent 
 praise of those whose praise he justly valued. 
 Laudari a laudatis was ever the object of his 
 ambition. At this distance of time, however, 
 when the ebullitions of popular fury have, to- 
 gether with their effects, long since happily sub- 
 sided in this kingdom, aud when the lamentable
 
 278 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 consequences of uncou trolled democratic frenzy 
 have been so abundantly exemplified in our eyes 
 in the total ruin and desolation of neighbouring 
 States, it will hardly be thought to derogate 
 from Mr. Harley's public character when we 
 state that, in the vigilant discharge of his official 
 duties he was frequently exposed to insult and 
 opposition from a lawless and irritated mob; 
 that, in burning The North Briton, while he was 
 Sheriff, in 1764, he was violently and tumultu- 
 ously assaulted ; that, on more than one occasion 
 during his mayoralt}' he encountered, with a 
 characteristic coolness, and with the most deter- 
 mined intrepidity, very serious personal danger; 
 and that when afterwards, in 1770, he was going 
 up with a number of fellow-citizens to present a 
 loyal address to his Sovereign on the birth of a 
 princess, he was even forcibly torn from his 
 chariot, and prevented from proceeding to St. 
 James's. It is more pleasant to relate that in 
 later and better times a very different sentiment 
 had universally prevailed in the metropolis ; and, 
 it is a fact that even his former political opponent, 
 Mr. Wilkes himself, who will probably be as 
 little suspected of partiality in this as of want 
 of discernment in any instance, has frequently 
 been heard to bear honourable testimony, in the 
 latter years of his life, to the merits of Mr.
 
 EPISODE IN THE HOUSE OF HARLEY. 279 
 
 Harley's public conduct, declaring it to have 
 been at all times uniform, manly, and consistent/' 
 He also continued to draw a good income from 
 his business as a merchant, to which he eventu- 
 ally added that of a banker, and prospered in 
 his double capacity. In conjunction with another 
 gentleman, named Drummond I believe, his 
 son-in-law he had at one time a contract for 
 supplying the army in America with foreign gold 
 a contract out of which the two are said to 
 have realized a fortune of more than half a mil- 
 lion. With the proceeds of this contract he bought 
 a fine property at Berrington, near Leominster, 
 on which he built a sumptuous residence, in fact 
 a sort of palace. But, partly owing to the extra- 
 vagance of his style of living, and partly in con- 
 sequence of some extensive failures, " there was 
 in his banking-house in 1797," says a contempor- 
 ary writer, " something like a hesitation of pay- 
 ment." With respect to this event, " Sylvanus 
 Urban" says : " At a period when this critical 
 and even awful state of public affairs had given 
 a shock to public credit, which was felt not only 
 by the most respectable commercial houses 
 throughout the kingdom, but also in some mea- 
 sure by the Bank of England itself, Mr. Harley 
 determined at once to relinquish all his commer- 
 cial concerns. The most liberal and friendly
 
 280 TALES OP OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 offers of pecuniary aid, he bad declined in the 
 most disinterested manner ; and having made a 
 voluntary assignment of all his real and personal 
 property (should it be wanting) for the honourable 
 payment of all his partnership demands, he had 
 soon the heartfelt satisfaction of seeing them all 
 discharged in their fullest extent, both as to 
 principal and interest, a proof of his upright- 
 ness and integrity which raised him even higher 
 than before in the 1 estimation of his fellow- 
 citizens." 
 
 Even after this momentary failure, though ad- 
 vanced in years, he was strongly urged to allow 
 himself to be put forward as a candidate for the 
 chamberlainship of the City, when vacant by the 
 death of Mr. Wilkes ; but he declined the pro- 
 posal, in a " manly and feeling address" to the 
 Livery, in which he stated among other reasons 
 that, in event of such a vacancy, he was pledged 
 to support the individual who in point of fact 
 was elected to the post. On quitting the repre- 
 sentation of the City in 1774, he issued another 
 address to the Liverymen of London, " strongly 
 marked by that manly steadiness and consistency 
 of character, that clear discernment and vigour 
 of intellect, by which he was at all times distin- 
 guished in public and private life." Mr. Harley 
 spent the last few years of his life in retirement.
 
 EPISODE IN THE HOUSE OF HARLEY. 281 
 
 He was for some years before his death " the 
 Father of the City," and he drew a salary of 
 .300 a-year from the civic funds as governor of 
 the Irish Society. His wife died in 1798, and 
 he followed her to the grave in 1804. His bio- 
 grapher, in the columns of the Gentleman's Maga- 
 zine, records the fact that, down to near the end 
 of his life, he continued the vigilant and active 
 discharge of his civic duties in the metropolis, 
 retaining to the time of his death his alderman's 
 gown, and having become by the death of Mr. 
 Alsop, in 1785, the " Senior or Father of the 
 City." He left five daughters, his co-heirs two 
 of whom married peers but no son to succeed 
 him ; and, though the earldom of Oxford lived 
 on till 1853, yet the male line of the ancient and 
 noble House of Harley is now extinct ; its memory, 
 however, is embalmed in the name of Harley 
 Street, so named after the celebrated author of 
 the Harleian Miscellany, who is mentioned above 
 as the second earl.
 
 282 
 
 THE BAD LORD STOURTON. 
 
 THE noble House of Stourton is of great an- 
 tiquity in Wiltshire, deriving its name 
 from the village of Stourton the town or ville 
 upon the Stour where its head held broad acres 
 from a date before the Conquest down to the 
 beginning of the Georgian era. That the 
 Stourtons were men of note and of power at 
 that early date is proved by the fact that Botolph 
 de Stourton was one of the chief opponents of 
 the Norman invader in the west, disputing every 
 inch of ground against him, breaking down the 
 sea walls of the Severn, guarding the land pas- 
 sages, and securing Glastonbury, so that he was 
 able to dictate even to William the Conqueror the 
 terms on which he would yield possession of the 
 soil. From him descended a long line of knights, 
 who fought for the Holy Sepulchre in their gene-
 
 THE BAD LORD STOURTON. 283 
 
 rations, and sought their mates among the Bassets, 
 the Vernons, and the Berkeleys. One of this 
 line, Sir John Stourton, a gallant warrior, and 
 also a statesman, in the reign of Henry VI., was 
 raised to the peerage in A.D. 1455 as Lord Stour- 
 ton. His great-great-grandson, Charles, the 
 seventh baron, however, sadly tarnished the 
 family escutcheon by a deed of murder, which he 
 expiated in the market-place at Salisbury. 
 
 This deed of violence took its origin in a strife 
 arising out of those Forest Laws which were so 
 cruel a source of oppression of our poorer classes 
 in the Middle Ages. As Mrs. Crosse writes in 
 " Once a Week :" " Every schoolboy knows that 
 the tyranny of the early Norman kings was 
 felt most keenly in their cruel exactions for the 
 preservation of game. To kill beasts of the chase 
 was as penal as the murder of a man. We can 
 easily understand how stoutly our ancestors bat- 
 tled for the " Charta de Foresta," which was 
 extorted with as much reluctance as the Magna 
 Charta itself. Even when the laws had under- 
 gone a considerable amelioration, common per- 
 sons keeping dogs within the limits of the forest 
 were obliged to cut away the balls of their fore- 
 feet, to render them incapable of pursuing game 
 or of hunting the deer. Great dissatisfaction 
 arose from time to time in respect to the encroach-
 
 284 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 ments of the limits of the royal hunting grounds, 
 and bad blood was produced between the great 
 landowners and the yeomanry and tenantry on the 
 other." 
 
 In order to see an example of the sad effects of 
 the laws, I will ask my readers to accompany 
 me to the forest of Selwood, which lies on the 
 borders of Wiltshire and Somersetshire, in the di- 
 rection between Salisbury and Bath. 
 
 This tract of laud, pleasantly diversified by a 
 succession of hills and valleys, must have been 
 very picturesque in the days when as yet it was 
 not cut up by modern " improvements," and 
 what is known as " high farming." These fair 
 lands, some twelve miles long by five in breadth, 
 were in due course of time " disafforested," 
 not, however, without a great deal of opposition 
 from those who were directly interested in keep- 
 ing them up as a " chase," and who preferred the 
 interests of their horses and dogs to those of a 
 prosperous and contented peasantry. But there 
 are two sides to every question ; and the whirligig 
 of time brought it about in the course of a couple 
 of centuries I do not stop here to explain how 
 that the yeomen and cottagers obtained a pre- 
 scriptive right to pasture their cattle on the out- 
 lying parts of the forest of Selwood ; and of course 
 the lower orders had a personal interest in pre-
 
 THE BAD LORD STOURTON. 285 
 
 serving its glades from encroachment by lords and 
 squires. Again to quote the words of Mrs Crosse : 
 " Towards the close of the reign of Henry the 
 Eighth the nobles began to slice off pieces of the 
 outlying wastes and commons, inclosing them for 
 their own pastures and parks. A belief in the 
 rights of the soil is so inherent in human nature 
 that it is not surprising that the people rose and 
 resisted to the very death this encroachment on 
 their privileges. They were first despoiled of 
 their lands by the king, and, now that the forest 
 laws had fallen into desuetude, they were robbed 
 of their pasturage by the nobles. The evil had 
 attained to such a height that in 1549, a pro- 
 clamation was issued by Edward VI. to restrain 
 certain nobles and gentry from inclosing the 
 commons and converting them into their own 
 pastures and parks, and commanding that all 
 ground that had been thus inclosed should be 
 thrown open on a certain day, under heavy 
 penalties." But the good intentions of this order 
 were disregarded by the great landowners ; and 
 the result was that the cottagers assembled and 
 raised tumults throughout the district, breaking 
 down the fences which inclosed the parks which 
 Lord Herbert and Lord Stourton had carved out 
 from the lands which, though illegally, they had 
 looked upon as " waste." The Crown on more
 
 286 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 than one occasion sent down a commission to 
 quell these disturbances ; but one of these at all 
 events was not destined to pass away without 
 bloodshed. 
 
 In the district of which I write is a parish 
 called Kilmington, and in it lived a yeoman 
 family named Hartgill, between whom and Lord 
 Stourton there was evidently " no love lost." In 
 fact, both the father and the son had taken active 
 measures to oppose his lordship's arbitrary at- 
 tempts to inclose the adjacent lands ; but Lord 
 Stourton would not yield, and no doubt felt all 
 the more sorely wounded because his opponent 
 was a man of only middle class birth and parent- 
 age. The Hartgills sent up a memorial to the 
 Privy Council, and in the course of a week or 
 two a royal mandate came from London, a 
 scarlet-coated messenger from Whitehall, desiring 
 his lordship to desist from an inclosure he had 
 commenced, and to avoid giving occasion for 
 further " misliking *' among his neighbours. 
 
 At this time his lordship, who had married a 
 sister of the Duke of Northumberland, happened 
 to die ; but the quarrel between the Stourtons and 
 the Hartgills was not buried in his grave it was 
 taken up with all possible bitterness by his son 
 and successor Charles, the seventh lord, the in- 
 dividual already mentioned.
 
 THE BAD LORD STOURTON. 285 
 
 A few years passed on, but apparently the 
 strife between the lord of the great house and the 
 yeoman's family was as lively as ever. At Whit- 
 suntide, 1556, it appears that Lord Stourton came 
 over from Stourton to Kilmington, with the pre- 
 tended grievance that the Hartgills had been hunt- 
 ing with horses and dogs in his park. With him 
 came a large band of retainers, armed with guns 
 and bows, and evidently bent on mischief. We 
 catch a glimpse of the rough manners of the fore- 
 fathers of the yeomen of Wilts and Somerset when 
 we read that the Hartgills, on hearing of his lord- 
 ship's approach, retreated into the parish church 
 of Kilmington for safety. One of the old man's 
 sons, however, John by name, ran back to his 
 father's homestead, in order to fetch some staves, 
 some bows and arrows, and other weapons of 
 offence and defence. As he ran across, several 
 arrows were shot at him by Lord Stourton's men, 
 but these happily missed their aim. Several of 
 the villagers now came up to aid the Hartgills, 
 and actually drove the Stourtonites from the 
 churchyard and its precincts, while the old people 
 with their servants took refuge in the tower of 
 the church, and laid in a supply of bread and 
 meat in order to stand a siege. 
 
 One can easily imagine the face of the elder 
 Hartgill as he peered warily out of the church
 
 288 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 window, and, after thanking his son for the supply 
 of food, bade him go up with all speed to London, 
 to lay the facts of the case before the Queen and 
 her Council at Whitehall. 
 
 Scarce was young John Hartgill out of sight, 
 when Lord Stourton and his " men of war" re- 
 turned to the churchyard, keeping the old people 
 shut up in the dark belfry of the tower in a pretty 
 state of nervous alarm. One of them, however, 
 went off to the yeoman's defenceless farm-house, 
 and took out of the stables old Hartgill's favourite 
 riding horse, valued at eight pounds, and shot 
 him with a cross-bow, in sight of his owner, 
 giving out that the latter had been seen on it 
 hunting in his lordship's park. 
 
 Meantime the son returned from London, 
 having so far succeeded in his mission that at 
 his request the Lords of the Council sent down a 
 commission, with the high sheriff of Somerset at 
 its head, ordering Lord Stourton to appear before 
 them. His lordship was, therefore, obliged to 
 swallow his rage, and make a journey to London 
 in custody of the sheriff. On reaching Whitehall 
 he was committed to the Fleet Prison, to which 
 no doubt he was conveyed by the old " silent 
 highway" of the river Thames. In all proba- 
 bility, however, as being the brother-in-law of 
 the Duke of Northumberland, he speedily found
 
 THE BAD LORD STOURTON. 289 
 
 a means of escape perhaps by the use of a 
 " silver key ;" for, if I may believe the account 
 of this affair as given by the antiquary Strype, 
 he was soon back at Kilmington, harassing the 
 Hartgills with all the malice of which he was 
 capable. 
 
 And so matters stood for a year or two, during 
 which I suppose that the Hartgills came down 
 from their fastness in the church tower, and went 
 about their business as if nothing strange had 
 happened. But it is clear that the Stourtons 
 would not let them remain in quiet. On the ac- 
 cession of Mary, the Hartgills and their fellow- 
 yeomen appear to have presented a fresh petition, 
 asking either for protection from their tyranny, 
 or redress against their violence, for the Council 
 at Whitehall again called the brawlers before 
 them. Lord Stourton now made all sorts of 
 promises of good behaviour, vowing that if any 
 of the Hartgills' cattle or horses had been de- 
 tained at Stourton House, they had only to 
 come and fetch them, and they should have them 
 freely and readily. But they soon learnt not 
 to " put their trust in princes ;" for as they were 
 going to the great house they were attacked by 
 several of his lordship's men, who attacked and 
 wounded John Hartgill, and left him for dead in 
 the road. 
 
 VOL. i. u
 
 290 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 This affair had now grown so serious as to 
 have attracted the attention of the Court of the 
 Star Chamber, to whom, we read, " the matter 
 appeared so heinously base on the Lord Stourton's 
 side, that he was fined in a certain sum, to be 
 paid over to the Hartgills." Besides this, his 
 lordship was a second time committed as a 
 prisoner to the Fleet. But fines and imprison- 
 ments had no weight with him. By hook or \)j 
 crook he again contrived to effect his escape out 
 of " durance vile," this time, however, giving a 
 bond in 2000 to return when called upon to 
 appear, and expressing a wish to settle the 
 quarrel between himself and his old enemies by 
 a money payment, and desiring the Hartgills to 
 fix upon a place where they should receive the 
 fine. Strype tells us that " the latter received 
 his errand, but were in much doubt to adventure 
 themselves," and not without good reason, as we 
 shall see presently. 
 
 The rest of the story shall be told as con- 
 densed by Mrs. Crosse from old Strype's quaint 
 and circumstantial narrative : " At length a 
 meeting was arranged at Kilmington Church, and 
 at ten of the clock one cold January morning 
 Lord Stourton came, true to his appointment. 
 But there came with him such a conclave of men 
 on horseback and men on foot, that the Hartgills
 
 THE BAD LORD STOURTON. 291 
 
 were in great dread. The open space near the 
 church was nigh filled with this concourse, con- 
 sisting of fifteen of Lord Stourton's own men, 
 sundry of his tenants, besides several gentlemen 
 and justices, to the number of about sixty per- 
 sons in all. His lordship went into the church 
 house, which was about forty paces distant, and 
 thence sent word to the Hartgills, who were 
 sheltering themselves under the sacred roof, 
 ' that they must come out, for the church was no 
 place to talk of worldly matters ;' whereupon they 
 adventured themselves, coming within twenty 
 paces, old Hartgill, after due salutation, saying, 
 ' My lord, I see many of mine enemies about 
 your lordship, therefore I am much afraid to 
 come any nearer.' Upon this the company said, 
 ' they durst promise all they had, they should 
 have no bodily hurt.' Upon this comfort they 
 approached to my lord's person. Lord Stourton 
 then discoursed upon the reason which had 
 brought them together, saying that if they would 
 come into the church house he would pay them 
 the money. But the Hartgills refused to go into 
 any covered place, the church excepted. 
 
 u At this refusal there was much demur and 
 talking, but some one present thought good that 
 a table should be set upon the open green, which 
 was done accordingly. Lord Stourton laid there- 
 
 U 2
 
 292 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 upon a cap-case and a purse, as though he 
 intended to make payment ; and calling unto the 
 two Hartgills, he said that the council had 
 ordered him to pay them a certain sum of money, 
 which they should have every penny ; ' but marry, 
 he would first know them to be true men.' This 
 was the watchword, which was no sooner said 
 than Lord Stourton laid hands on William 
 Hartgill, adding, ' I arrest you of felony.' 
 Immediately ten or twelve of his own men 
 surrounded the Hartgills and thrust them violently 
 into the church house. Here his lordship 
 produced 'two bands of inkle' which he had 
 in readiness, and he caused his men to bind them 
 with the same. He took from them their purses 
 with his own hands, and finding afterwards a 
 turquoise in one, gave it to Lady Stourton. 
 When John Hartgill was bound he gave him a 
 blow on his face, Sir James FitzJames and 
 Chaffin looking on. At this moment young 
 Hartgill's wife, no doubt alarmed at the 
 commotion, rushed into the church house, 
 encountering Lord Stourton at the door. He 
 spurred and kicked at her, making a great rent 
 in her hosen with his spur, and finally gave her 
 such a blow with his sword between the head 
 and neck that she fell backwards as though dead, 
 and for three hours the company had much ado
 
 THE BAD LORD STOURTON. 293 
 
 to keep life in her.' Such is the extraordinary 
 account of the illegal arrest of two unoffending 
 gentlemen, made in the presence of so many 
 persons, that one is surprised that a feeling of 
 common humanity did not come to rescue the 
 oppressed." 
 
 But the worst part of the story remains to be 
 told. Lord Stourton, having kept the Hartgills 
 all day without food or drink, conveyed them 
 bound as his prisoners to a house on his estate, 
 called Bonhams, where he sent for two "justices 
 of the peace" to examine them ! on what ground 
 or charge is not stated. The so-called "justices" 
 were probably creatures of his own, for we find 
 that their examination ended in nothing but 
 an order that they should be " losed of their 
 bonds." The same night the prisoners were 
 fetched away by some of Lord Stourton' s minions, 
 who, as it subsequently appeared in evidence, 
 had orders to dispatch them if they made any 
 resistance. Their destination now was a " close 
 yard," adjoining the great house, where they 
 were made to kneel down with their hands tied 
 behind them, and were beaten till they were 
 thought to be dead, " my lord in the the mean 
 season standing at the gallery door, which was 
 not a coyt's (quoit's) cast from the place." 
 "\Vhen the ruffians had done the job thus far,
 
 294 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 they wrapped up the bodies in their own gowns 
 and carried them through a garden into the 
 gallery, where they were joined by Lord 
 Stourton himself, who carried a candle to show 
 them the way, and who, when one of the dying 
 men showed by a groan that life was not quite 
 extinct, ordered his servant to cut their throats, 
 " lest a French priest, who lay near, should hear 
 them." The bodies were then cast into an 
 underground chamber or dungeon, his lordship 
 standing by with the candle in his hand. 
 
 One of the assassins, apparently with a softer 
 heart than his fellow, said, " Oh, rny lord, this 
 is a pitiful sight. Had I thought what I now 
 think before the thing was done, your whole 
 land would not have won me to such an act." 
 To this his wicked employer answered, " What, 
 faint-hearted fool ! is it any more than ridding 
 the world of two knaves, that living were trouble- 
 some to God's law and man's ? there is no more 
 account to be made of them than the killing of 
 two sheep !" And so they finished their hideous 
 work of death by digging a grave for their victims, 
 covering them first with earth and then with 
 paving stones, while Lord Stourton kept walking 
 up and down on the planks above, oftentimes 
 calling to them to make speed, for that the 
 night went away." But, though the night
 
 THE BAD LORD STOURTON. 295 
 
 passed away and morning came, the hand of 
 justice at length did not fail to overtake the 
 wicked lord, who was arrested and carried to 
 London to be judged for his foul crime. In 
 January, 1556, he was committed to the Tower to 
 await his trial, which took place on February 2K 
 following, before the judges of the Council in 
 Westminster Hall. It appears he entertained 
 a hope that, being an adherent, nominally at 
 least, of " the old religion," he would not be 
 allowed by the Queen to suffer the extreme 
 penalty of the law. But in this hope he was 
 grievously mistaken. " The Queen and her 
 Council," observes a writer of repute, " were 
 greatly displeased at this, and willed process and 
 judgment to proceed against him." 
 
 When called upon to make answer to the 
 charge of wilful murder, he refused to plead, 
 and would not open his mouth until he was 
 threatened with being pressed to death if he 
 remained silent. At last he pleaded guilty, 
 and was sentenced to be hanged; four of his 
 men also were sentenced to be hanged at the 
 same time. 
 
 It may readily be supposed that these four 
 poor wretches were turned off at St. Giles's 
 Pound or at Tyburn tree; but the end of 
 Lord Stourtou himself was to be witnessed
 
 296 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 by the men of his own county. He was 
 accordingly conveyed by easy stages by way 
 of Hounslow, Staines, and Basingstoke to 
 Salisbury, where he was executed on the 6th 
 of March. The only favour shown to him 
 was the permission that, in virtue of his 
 rank, he should be throttled by a silken 
 instead of a hempen cord. The market-place 
 was the scene of his execution ; and it is 
 some comfort to learn that "he made great 
 lamentation at his death for his wilful and 
 impious deeds." 
 
 The memory of such a miscreant might 
 well be allowed to pass aw r ay, and when he 
 was buried in Salisbury Cathedral it would 
 perhaps have been kinder to have erected no 
 monument to mark the spot where he was 
 laid. But in the north transept there is a 
 tomb which is known as that of *' the wicked 
 Lord Stourton" by exhibiting the armorial 
 bearings of the family in the shape of six 
 circular openings, which represent the six springs 
 which rose, and perhaps still rise, in the park 
 at Stourton. The silken cord with which he 
 suffered was suspended over his tomb for 
 many years, till it rotted away and fell to 
 pieces. 
 
 It is scarcely a matter of wonder that the
 
 THE BAD LORD STOURTON. 297 
 
 Stourton family should have long since sold 
 their Wiltshire estates, and emigrated to York- 
 shire, where their name is held deservedly in 
 honour to the present day.
 
 298 
 
 BENJAMIN, LORD BLOOMFIELD. 
 
 VERY many, if not most, of the members of 
 our Peerage, both English and Irish, can 
 boast with truth that they represent families 
 of ancestral wealth and influence, or of historic 
 note, or of brilliant achievements ; and this is 
 true to a far greater extent of the Peerage of 
 Scotland, on the roll of which not a name appears 
 that has not been adorned with a coronet for at 
 least the best part of two centuries, while nearly 
 all the pedigrees can be certified by the " Lyon " 
 King of Arms at Edinburgh to extend back into 
 the ages when the Stuarts had not yet added an 
 English to their Scottish throne. 
 
 A few of the Irish families, however, have at- 
 tained the honours of the peerage without any 
 very great public services on the part of the first 
 grantee, and without being able to boast of great
 
 BENJAMIN, LORD BLOOMFIELD. 299 
 
 wealth or noble ancestry. " My lord," said a 
 wealthy squire arid M.P., who lived in St. James's- 
 place, to Lord Bute, or Lord Shelburne, or to 
 some other Prime Minister of the last century, " I 
 am very much inclined to support your measures 
 in my place in Parliament, and to give you my 
 vote and steady support ; but I should be most 
 glad and most obliged to you if, in return, you 
 would go so far out of your way as to ask for me 
 the permission of the Ranger (one of the royal 
 dukes) to allow me the privilege of a private key 
 which will admit me from my garden in St. 
 James' s-place into the Green Park without going 
 round by way of the Palace." " I am sorry, sir," 
 replied the Premier, with a benevolent smile, 
 " that it is not in my power to oblige you in the 
 precise manner in which you wish. The thing, 
 1 assure you, is an impossibility ; and His Royal 
 Highness has not only refused it to more than 
 one applicant, but has desired me never to ask 
 such a favour again. I will, however, with 
 pleasure recommend you to His Majesty for an 
 Irish peerage, if you feel inclined to accept the 
 honour." 
 
 I do not know for certain whether the proffered 
 
 Irish coronet was accepted by Mr. with the 
 
 same readiness with which it was offered ; but 
 the story which, by the way, is told with some
 
 300 TALES OP OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 variation by that old gossip, Sir Nathaniel Wrax- 
 all may serve to show that Irish peerages were 
 not held of very great account in London even in 
 the good old days ' when George the Third was 
 king," and when the Legislative Union of 1800 
 had not been dreamed of as yet by the younger 
 Pitt. 
 
 I am led into these remarks by way of intro- 
 duction to the story of the rise and advancement 
 of one plain Captain Benjamin Bloomfield of the 
 Royal Artillery, to the dignity of " Lord Bloom- 
 field, of Redwood, in the county of Tipperary, in 
 the peerage of Ireland." It appears that the 
 bestowal of this title was due in a very great 
 measure to the concurrence of two or three fortu- 
 nate accidents. 
 
 It so happened that a plain, untitled gentleman, 
 " descended from an ancient family in Ireland," 
 according to Sir Bernard Burke albeit he omits 
 all mention of his pedigree, " Ulster King of 
 Arms " though he is some sixty 3 r ears ago held 
 a commission in the Royal Artillery ; and 
 secondly, that he was at Brighton with his troop, 
 when the Prince Regent had taken up his resi- 
 dence at the Pavilion, which he had recently 
 built as a palace of pleasure. A third piece of 
 gratuitous good fortune was to be found in the 
 fact that the Captain was well known in Brighton
 
 BENJAMIN, LORD BLOOMFIELD. 301 
 
 as an accomplished player on the violoncello ; and 
 further by way of a fourth bit of luck his Royal 
 Highness, in his idle and leisure hours, wanted 
 some one who could accompany him on that in- 
 strument. Accordingly one day a message was 
 sent to the barracks, requesting, or rather com- 
 manding, the presence of Capt. Bloomfield at 
 the Pavilion. The summons was loyally and 
 dutifully obeyed ; Capt. Bloomfield put in an 
 appearance before " the first gentleman in 
 Europe;" and so far were his musical talents 
 brought to the right market, that from that even- 
 ing commenced an acquaintance between the 
 Prince and the captain which gradually ripened 
 into an intimate friendship, and as Captain Bloom- 
 field had good manners, good sense, and more 
 tact than falls to most men, lasted while the 
 Prince was king. 
 
 For a considerable time the captain was known 
 in fashionable circles as Sir Benjamin Bloomfield, 
 being appointed an Equerry and Gentleman 
 Usher of the Court, and knighted by the Prince 
 in 1815. Two years later, on the retirement of 
 Sir John M'Mahon, he was appointed to the not 
 very laborious offices of Receiver-General of the 
 Duchy of Cornwall, and Private Secretary to the 
 Prince and Keeper of the Privy Purse. 
 
 But he had not yet reached to the summit of
 
 302 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 the -mountain up which his musical talents had 
 led him by an easy ascent. In 1824, as we 
 are told by the Peerages, he was accredited 
 Minister Plenipotentiary and Ambassador Extra- 
 ordinary to the Court of Stockholm," and shortly 
 afterwards was raised to the Irish Peerage as 
 Lord Bloom field. 
 
 Capt. Gronow, in his amusing and entertaining 
 " Anecdotes and Reminiscences," lets us into a 
 little of the secret history of these last two steps 
 of preferment. He says : " A court intrigue, 
 headed by a fashionable and fascinating mar- 
 chionesss, caused Sir Benjamin Bloomfield to be 
 sent into splendid exile, this lady attributing to 
 him the fact that she had been compelled to send 
 back to the donor some jewels which had been 
 presented to her by the Prince Regent, but which, 
 as it was afterwards discovered, could not be 
 alienated from the Crown, to which they, in fact, 
 belonged." This was the true reason, then, why 
 Sir Benjamin was sent off as ambassador to 
 Stockholm and eventually created a peer; and 
 such is the real story of the origin of the title. 
 
 It is only right to add that, although he had 
 received not a diplomatic but only an ordinary 
 education, Lord Bloomfield's good sense, polished 
 tastes, affable manners, and unostentatious
 
 BENJAMIN, LORD BLOOMFIELD. 303 
 
 hospitality rendered him exceedingly popular in 
 that northern capital, and that in his " splendid 
 exile " he became as great a favourite with Ber- 
 nadotte as he had been with the Prince Regent 
 at Windsor, at Brighton, or at Carlton House. 
 The name of Lord Bloomfield (adds Captain 
 Gronow in 1860), is held in great respect even to 
 the present day in Sweden. Eventually he was 
 nominated a Knight Grand Cross of both the 
 Royal Hanoverian Guelphic Order and also of 
 Bath, and promoted to the rank of lieutenant- 
 general in the army and colonel-commandant in 
 the Royal Engineers. 
 
 Lord Bloomfield died in the year 1846, at the 
 age of eighty-four, having been twice married. 
 His only son, his issue by his second wife, is the 
 present Lord Bloomfield, who, having followed the 
 diplomatic profession, and having held for many 
 years the post of Minister at the Court of Berlin, 
 has been rewarded with an English peerage, and 
 the dignity of a Knight Grand Cross of the 
 Order of the Bath. Still, however, it may fairly 
 be asserted, I take it, that, in all human proba- 
 bility, these twin coronets would never have been 
 called into existence if it had not been for the 
 occurrence of the chapter of accidents already 
 referred to ; and if any moral is to be drawn from
 
 304 TALES OF OUR GREAT FAMILIES. 
 
 the story of Benjamin, Lord Bloomfield, it would 
 seem to be that it is occasionally a profitable invest- 
 ment to give our sons, as well as our daughters, a 
 musical education. 
 
 END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. 
 
 London : Printed by A. Scliulze, 13, Poland Street.
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
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