ii.'ivv^jri'^T ^.: -■iJli% XltS^ m 33 .,>^ i;^^ 'F0%, :S. .J, <^ OSANCElfj> i>m -t^Aiivadii i'' T5<')l iJJiWiUl'-' ... t ) ^ — ' \-< ^ \WEUNIVERV/) 'A- Jjlijnv iui i< aME UNIVERS//, 'Jr ^-QlJDNVSUV-^ -< ^IIBRARYQ^ ■au3uvj dO ^OFCAIIFO/?;);^ p* ^ JUJIIVDJO f CALIFO/?^, ^1 I J ^(^Aavagii^ ^^ '^/mMNa-]^'^^ \^my\^ \^m\\^^ ^MEUNIVERV/ ^f'ilJONVSOl^ 1 C-J 'v/ia3AiNn-3UV ^OFCAIIFO/?^ ^.Of-CALIFO/i'4^ ^i^AavaaiH^'^ ^- ce. < ^WE•DNIVERI// I3T ^ILIBRARYO^;^ ^^WE•UNIVER% ^lOSANCElfj-^ ^^illBRARYQ/ d 2 ^^OJUVDJO"^ o % "^AaaAiNniwv '^;^OFCAllF0ff4/ ^ 3 £^ — ^ ^AaaAiNn3v\v ^illBRARYQc^ ^£-llBRARY(9/^ ^^ 5MElJMIVERS/y , .V^OSANCElfx> 3 <^ — - "^ ^/^il3AINa-3Wv ^OFCALIFO/?^ ^.OFCAIIFO;?^ > V I ^ I -a, > \l I />. ^<5Aavjian-i^ ^ * • • • • •• VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES BY SIR BERNARD BURKE, C.B, LL.D, ULSTEE KINa OF AEMS, AUTIIOE OF "the PEEEAGE AND BAEONETAaE," THE "LANDED GENTET," LNCT PEEEAGE," ETC., ETC., ETC. 'DOEMANT and EXTINCT PEEEAGE," "FAMILY EOltANCE,' VOL. II. LONDON: LONGMANS, GREEN, READER, AND DYER. 1869. CONTENTS OF VOLUME 11. Titles — Theie Fobttjnes and Fate Landless Loeds and Baeonets I. The Lobd Eiekctjdbeight . . II. SiE Petes Hetman, Baeonet III. SiE Feedeeick Echein, Baet. IV. NoEWicH, OF Beampton V. The Last Viscount Kingsland VI. Cole op Beancepeth Castle VII. The Reeesbys of Thetbebgh VIII. The Last Of the Leicesteeshiee Bcr IX. The Loeds Umfbetill The Vicissitudes of Bulsteode The Bonapaetes The Laws of Latteiston The De la Poles The Laieds of Callendab . . The Laieds of Westqfaetee Theee Plantagenet Ladies . . I. The Faie IVIaid of Kent n. Elizabeth of .Yobk . . m. Maegaeet of Clarence, Countess of MacCaethy The MacCaethys of Dunmanway . . The Old Countess of Desmond The Smyths of Ashton Couet The Fate of Buimy Paek . . The O'Melaghlins, Kings of Meath The Maltese Knight's Tal-e The Widvilles . . Testamentaby Eccenteioities ETONS Salisbuey page 1 53 57 59 65 70 74 79 82 85 87 91 122 158 180 203 219 240 240 248 262 268 276 284 300 328 336 351 365 384 A orr:«3,^ e\ VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. KJtIcs— tlek Jforfiracs itiii) Jfatt. " — — The jest at which fools laugh the loudest, The downfall of our old nobility — Which may forerun the ruin of a kingdom. I've seen an idiot clap his hands and shout To see a tower like yon stoop to its base In headlong ruin ; while the wise look'd round, And fearful sought a distant stance to watch What fragment of the fabric next should follow ; For when the turrets faU, the walls are tottering." Walter Scott. " Miremur periisse homines ? monumenta fatiscunt. Mors etiam saxis, nomiuibusque venit." — Ausonius. The historic dignities in the English Peerage, which the general reader is most familiar with, and which aiFord the most remarkable instances of the mutabilities of for- tune, are the Royal Dukedoms of Clarence, Cambridge, Gloucester, and York, and the old and illustrious titles of Warwick, Salisbury, Norfolk, Shrewsbury, North- umberland, Westmoreland, Devon, Chfford, Pembroke, Dorset, Kent, Oxford, March, Bedford, Somerset, Leicester, Buckingham, Essex, and Huntingdon. Of these, Norfolk, Shrewsbury, Bedford, Devon, Somerset, 2 B ? 2 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. and Huntingdon derive their chief historical pre-eminence from the famihes of the present actual possessors ; but the glory of Warwick, Pembroke, March, Salisbury, West- moreland, Leicester, Buckingham, and Essex must be mainly attributed to the earlier wearers of those brilliant coronets. Dorset, York, Oxford, Gloucester, Monmouth, Clarence, and Sussex are all extinct or attainted, and at present do not give designations to any existing peers. There are seven of our titles taken from places which were never, like Tankerville, or other Norman baronies, incorporated with the dominions of om- monarchs. Of these, I cannot account for the mtroduction of Amiens. Lovaine has been chosen m memory of the descent of the ancient Percies from the Dukes of Lovaine and Counts of Brabant, fi-om whose ancient city of Lovaine, now Louvain, their ancestor was surnamed De Lovaine, before he wedded the richly portioned heiress of Percy. All the other foreign places which figm^e on our rolls of titles have been the scenes of martial achievements. Mahon commemorates the gallant captm'e of Port Mahon, and with it the conquest of Minorca, in 1708, by James, first Earl Stanhope. It is unnecessary to remind my readers whence Wellington got the title of Douro^ or what claim Jervis, Nelson, and Duncan have to St, Vincent, Trafalgar, or Camperdown. Under the Tudors, and during the latter times of the Plantagcnets, the House of Lords did not comprise more than from fifty' to sixty peers. Courtenay, Howard, and Percy — (Devon, Norfolk, and Northumberland) — were all restored by Queen Mary, who made besides six new crea- tions — the Viscounty of Montagu and the Baronies of North of Kirthling, Howard of Effingham, Williams of TITLES. 3 Tliame, Chanclos of Sudeley, and Hastings of Lough- borough. At the death of Queen EHzabeth the number of the Peers was about sixty, composed of nineteen Earls, one Viscount, and some forty Barons, nearly forty of which titles have since perished. " Queen Elizabeth," says Mr. Hannay, in his " Essays," " was remarkable for keeping the fountain of honour locked up, and the key in her royal pocket." Many of the dignities she did confer were honourably bestowed. Her kinsman, Sackville, the statesman, the scholar, and the poet, was made a peer ; so was Cecil, the ablest of ministers ; and so was Compton, the head of a great feudal family, and the possessor of so vast an estate that, it is said, if it remained undiminished in the present day in the hands of his representative, it would be the greatest in the kingdom. Elizabeth's successor, James I., has, on the contrary, been blamed for his lavish profusion of honours, and a charge brought against him, with too much truth, I fear, of venality in their disposal. Still, however, many a well- known coronet was added by the first English monarch of the Stuarts, especially those of Leicester (Sydney^, Sujffolk, Walhngford, Spencer (Sunderland), Denbigh, Bridgewater, Devonshire, Petre, Gerrard, Denny, and Arundel of Wardour. Charles I. raised to Earldoms several Viscounts and Barons, thus giving to the Peerage Roll, among others, the titles of Berkshire, Danby, Man- chester, Stamford, Winchilsea, Banbmy, Norwich, Peter- borough, Chesterfield, Strafford, and Sunderland. He made also many new peers, generally selected fi-om the most ancient and best descended of the gentry, such as the Savages of Rocksavage, the Tuftons of Tufton, the B 2 4 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. Brudenells of Leicestersliire, the Belasyscs of Yorkshire, the Lovekices of Berkshire, the Pierreponts, of Notting- hamshire, the Gorings of Sussex, and the Byrons of Kochdale. Several of Charles the Second's new creations were of good old English stock, and some, of families which had become enriched or advanced by commerce, professional services, or prosperous alliances. Perhaps the best born was the great-grandson of " Belted Will Howard," by the great hen-ess of the Dacres of the North, — Charles Howard, whom the King made Baron Dacre of Gillesland, Viscount Howard of IMorpcth, and Earl of Carlisle. To the Merry Monarch we owed also the coronets of Cornwallis, Langdale, Halifax, Clifford, of Chudleigh, Dartmontli, &c. James II., in the four troubled years of his reign, restored the Viscounty of Stafford — the most unjustly attainted of titles ; made Catherine Sidley, Countess of Dorchester for life ; created the Dukedom of Berwick (afterwards so celebrated in European warfare), and added five new Baronies — all of which are extinct, save Churchill, conferred on the great general, and Waldegrave, still enjoyed by the represen- tative of that ancient house. It was also from James II. that the liadclyffes derived their luckless title of Der- Aventwater, and the Herberts, their Marquessate of Powis. William III. raised to the peerage twenty-one per- sonages, including his Dutch favourites, Bentinck,Keppel, Nassau, Schomberg, and Auverqucrque ; and several of the leading Whig families, such as Lowther, Somers, Vane, Fermor, and Ashburnham, the last quaintly desig- nated by Old Fuller as of " stupendous antiquity ;" in this reign also each of the three great Whig lords, Bed- ford, Devonslnre, and Carmarthen received a Ducal Coronet. TITLES. 5 Among Queen Anne's new creations were the well- born and well-endowed Granvilles, Pelliams, Cowpers, Harcourts, Harleys, Herveys, Leveson-Gowers, Wil- loughbys, Bathursts, and St. Johns. At the com- mencement of the eighteenth century, the House of Peers reckoned but a hmidred and seventy members, of which nearly one half has passed away. In George the Fu'st's time a less regard began to be paid to birth or hereditary pretension ; the political and legal elements predominating. Still in this reign origmated the Baro- nies of Cobham, Couingsby, Romney, Onslow, Cadogan, and Walpole, and the Viscounties of Torrington and Falmouth. Forty is about the number of GEORGE II.'s peers : but such had been the decay amongst old titles that neither this increase nor that of his predecessor did more than barely counterbalance extinctions, and left the House much in the same position as they found it. Lawyers and statesmen were duly honoured by the house of Hanover ; and the second George chose from the bench no less than five peers, Raymond, Hardwicke' Talbot, Mansfield, and Henley. The present Earldom of Northumberland, the present Earldom of Fitzwilliam, and the late Earldom of Egremont, three very influential titles, were George II.'s creations. The same moderate and discriminating selection marked the first twenty-four years of the reign of George III., and chose for additions to the peerage the great Commoners, Grosvenor of Eaton, Curzon of Kedleston, Eliot of Port Eliot, Vernon of Sudbury, and Bagot of Blithfield. After 1784 a new era, however, commenced in peerage annals. Political purposes, and the consequent lavish bestowal of the highest honours of () VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. the Crown, increased the roll of the Lords to such an extent, that at the death of George IV., new peerages, to the number of two hundred and thii*ty-five, had been added. William IV. raised the Marquesses of Stafford and Cleveland to the rank of Dukes, and gave Earldoms to Col. Fitz-Clarence, Lord George Cavendish, and ]\Ir. Lambton, of Durham, besides elevating to the same grade several peers of lesser degree. He also created one Viscounty, of the United Kingdom, Canterbury, and a goodly array of baronies. Among her present Ma- jesty's creations, in the Peerages of the United Kingdom and of Ireland, occm* warriors, statesmen, and lawyers of great eminence, besides several good old county fami- lies, such as Coke of Norfolk, Wrottesley of Stafford- shire, Methucn of Wilts, Egerton of Tatton ; French of French Park ; Morgan, of Tredegar; Fortescue, of Louth; Somerville of Meath ; O'Neill, of Shane's Castle ; Joliffo of Hylton Castle ; Heathcote of Normanton, and Yarde Bidler of Devon ; and two Peers, Macaulay and Lyttou' for ever illustrious in litcratm-e. Her ]\Iajesty has also added a second Dukedom to the Irish Peerage, by the elevation of the heir male of the House of Hamilton to the Dukedom of Abercoru. Of these creations of the existing and the late Sovereign, eleven have already become extinct, namely, Colbornc, Dinorben, Sydenham, Langdale, Western, Mil ford, Beauvale, Macaulay, Kingsdown, Wensleydale, and Ci-anworth ; the Earldom of Burlington, has merged in the Duke- dom of Devonshire, the Barony of Panmure in the Earldom of Dalhousie, and the Barony of Godolphin iu the Dukedom of Leeds. It may be remarked as a curious fact the recent DUKEDOM OF CLARENCE. 7 disappearance from tlie House of Peers of so many Law Lords. Within a very short period, the famihar titles of Lydliui'st, Brougham, Kingsdown, Wensley- dale, and Cranworth, so constantly and so usefully before the public, have all passed away by extinction. In the case of Lord Brougham, the original creation has ex- pired, though a second patent still perpetuates the name. It would be manifestly impossible, in my limited space, to make an analysis of the vicissitudes of the various titles which have been created in the peerage. Suffice it to indicate a few of the more remarkable instances : — The Dukedom of Clarence, four times conferred, never passed to an heir : it was enjoyed by three Princes of the Royal House of Plantagenet, and by one of the Royal House of Guelph. The first possessor was Lionel Plantagenet, Edward the Third's son, through whose only daughter the house of York derived its right to the Crown. The second was Thomas Plantagenet, Henry the Fifth's brother, who was slain at Beauge, by Sir John Swinton — " And Swinton placed the lance in rest, That humbled erst the sparkling crest Of Clarence's Plantagenet." *o^ And the thu'd was George Plantagenet, K.G., "false, fleeting, perjured Clarence," King Edward IV.'s brother, drowned, according to tradition, in a butt of malmsey. His son, Prmce Edward, Earl of Warwick, the last male Plantagenet, was beheaded on Tower Hill, in 1499. 8 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. AVitli him the White Rose withered and died. The attempts of Perkin Warbeck and Lambert Simnel caused Henry VII, to apprehend that he could never be assured of his Crown while one leaf of the tree of York flourished. Though the adherents of that race of heroes were silent and sorrowing, they were still brooding, watchful, and valiant, and thus it was, that it became the selfish joolicy of the Tudor King to destroy the poor imiocent Prince. From the death of George Plantagenet, in 1477, more than three centm-ies elapsed before the title of Clarence was again used; in was then (1789) conferred by King George III. on liis third son, afterwards King William IV. The Dukedom op Cornwall was made a royal title by King Edward III., in favour of his eldest son, Edward, the Black Prince, with limitation to the first bom (^^Jiliis primogenitis") of the said Prince and of his heirs, Kings of England, in hereditary succession. Under this limitation, Richard, the Black Prince's son, did not succeed to the Dukedom of Cornwall ; and, in the time of Henry VII., on the death of that Monarch's first born son (" primogenitus ") Arthur, Prince of Wales, a question arose as to whether the King's next sou, Prince Henry, took the title as a matter of right. It was then answered affirmatively but in the 3rd year of James I., Lord Chancellor Ellesmere and Coke, Fleming, and Williams, the judges, who consulted "wath him, decided otherwise. They held " that he who sliould inherit the Dukedom of Cornwall ought to be the first begotten son of the heii's of the Black Prince, be he heir general or collateral, but such heir ought to be King of England." But in 1G13, this ruling CORNWALL — CAMBRIDGE. 9 was, after a solemn inquiry before the King and Council set aside, and a resolution passed, that the words of limitation possessed the more extended meaning of filius primogenitus existens. There have been six Dukes of Cornwall, who have not been Princes of Wales : three of these were infants when they died ; the others were Henry of Windsor, afterwards Henry V., Edward Tudor, afterwards Edward VI., and James Francis Edward, son and heir apparent of James II. The title of Cambridge suffered many a vicissitude. Although nine times created, it always, it may be said, kept royal company, and frequently shared royal mis- fortune, for Hamilton was no exception to its royalty, James, Duke of Chatelherault, Earl of Arran (grand- father of James, second Marquess of Hamilton, and first Earl of Cambridge), having been declared heir presump- tive to the Crown of Scotland. As an Earldom, it was first conferred by Edward III. on his broth er-m-law, William Due de Juliers, and sub- sequently by the same monarch on his fifth son, Edmond of Langley. After the Plantagenets, the Scotch Mar- quesses of Hamilton enjoyed the title; but in the time of Charles II. it again became unquestionably Royal. Henry of Oaklands, brother of the King, when made Duke of Gloucester, had the Earldom of Cambridge as his second honour. As a Dukedom, it was first conferred /n succession on the four infant children of James, Duke of York, afterwards James II. ; but they all died in infancy, and the title remained unappropriated until conferred, by Queen Anne, on George, Elector of Hano- ver, and the heirs male of his hochj. 10 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. This creation raises in my mind a curious genealogical question. At the accession of George I., the dignity became vested in the Crown ; but it seems a very doubtful point whether, at the death of King William IV., the Dukedom did not devolve on the Duke of Cumber- and, he becoming then heir male of the body of the original grantee The fact of the same title having been since bestowed on another cannot affect the right of the original heir, for it is not uncommon to see two or more peerages of the same name co-existent. The argument against the Duke of Cumberland's (Ex-King of Hanover's) right, would be that if a dignity once vested in the Crown, the claim of the heir, under the patent by which it was first created, was thereby extinguished ; but it is not at all certain that such an objection would be tenable. The case is a singular, and, I believe, an unprecedented one. The Dukedom of Gloucester seems to have been associated in early times with a peculiar doom, the first five possessors of the title having met with violent deaths. Thomas of Woodstock, sixth son of King- Edward III., was the first avIio ever bore the title ; and the last Plantagenet who held it was " crooked-back" KiCHARD, afterwards King of England. It was again revived in the person of a Royal Prince, when IIenry 8TUART, youngest son of King Charles L, received the honour, and it was borne (though no patent passed the seal) by Prince William, son of George and Anne, Piince and Princess of Denmark. Once again, and for the last time, the Dukedom of Gloucester was con- ferred on Prince William Henry, younger brother of King George III. GLOUCESTER — YORK — KENT. 11 In the time of the Plantagenets, Tudors, aud Stuarts, York conferred the title of Duke on eight Royal Princes ; two of them were killed in battle, one was murdered, and four became Kings of England ; one of whom was beheaded, and another exiled. It was given originally to Edmund of Langley, and borne successively by his descendants imtil it vested in the Crown on the acces- sion of Edward IV., by whom it was bestowed on his second son, one of the ill-fated children said to have been smothered in the Tower. Hemy VIIL, Charles I., and James II., each bore this title, and George I. gave it to his brother, Ernest Augustus, who died without issue in 1728 ; and once again it was resorted to under George III., when His Majesty assigned it to his brother, Prince Edward Augustus, and afterwards to his second son, Prince Frederick, who died, heir presumptive to the throne, in 1827. Kent, rendered famous as an Earldom by the Planta- genets, the Hollands, and the Greys, and associated "with all the varj^ug fortunes of those gallant races, was only twice conferred, as a Dukedom, once on Henry Grey, Marquess of Kent, and once on Prince Edward fourth son of King George III., aud father of Her Most Gracious Majesty. This second creation of the Duke- dom of Kent occurred in 1799, at an auspicious mo- ment — just after that repulse of Bonaparte at Acre by Sir Sidney Smith, which brought the earliest dawn of our future glory over the then darkness of the struggle with France. It was indeed a title big with destiny. It came with the first gleam of victory, and the greatest 12 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. was behind. The Duke died, no son of his succeeding, but he' bequeathed an inestimable boon to the nation — a reign of brightness and a race of princes, on which Enghmd now rests her hope, her fondness, and her pride. In fiHal love, the popular title of Kent has been selected by Her Majesty for the Earldom of His Royal Highness the Duke pf Edinburgh. A chaplet of laurel and of cypress twines round the Coronet of Warwick. Tradition, History, and Romance claim it each for its own. Enthroned when Henry de Beauchamp, Duke of Warwick, was crowned King of the Isle of Wight by Henry the Sixth's own hand, it was rendered most illustrious by Richard Neville, the stout Earl of Warwick, who, though, no King himself, made others Kings ; and most tragic when Edward, Earl of Warwick, the last male descendant of the House of Plantagenet, the innocent victim of royal suspicion, was ruthlessly mm'dered. The story of the Earldom, while held by the Dudleys, fills a romantic chapter in Peerage annals, and has served as materials for the novelist and the poet. Thus, for nearly three centuries and a half, the grand old Earldom of Warwick was associated with the achievements of the Beauchamps, the Nevilles, the Plantagenets, and the Dudleys. Its next appearance was its decadence : in 1()18, James I. conferred, Avith- out rhyme or reason, this most historic of titles on Robert, Lord Rich, whose immediate ancestor, at the very time Henry de Beauchamp was being crowned King of the Isle of Wight, was making a fortune as a mercer in the city of London ! At the extinction, how- WARWICK — SALISBURY. 13 ever, of the Riches m 1759, justice was iu some measure done to the rights of birth : the Earklom of Warwick was then given to the Grevilles, in whom flowed a good deal of the old Beauchamp blood, and in whom had vested Warwick Castle and its dependencies, ever since the Dudleys forfeited that fine inheritance. Warwick's kindi-ed Earldom of SiVLiSBURY passed through fom- families before it was conferred on the an- cestor of its present holder — all famous in the days of chivalry — Devereux, Montacute,Neville, and Plantagenet. The last inheritrix was Margaret Plantagenet, whose tragic story will be told in another chapter. There were eleven Earls of Salisbury before her time, and of them fom' were slain in battle, two beheaded, and one murdered. After these stormy times, nearly a century elapsed before the Earldom of Salisbury was again con- ferred, and then it was given by James I. to the youngest son of the famous Lord Bmieigh. This, the first Earl of Salisbmy, of the house of Cecil, was himself a distin- guished statesman, and attained to the highest honour ; but he seems to have derived little happiness from his earthly advancement. 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, desu'eth to be dissolved." He had some years previously (1603) addressed a letter to Sir James Harington, 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 fau' ground. 'Tis a great task to prove one's honesty and yet not 14 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. mar one's fortune. You have tasted a little thereof in our blessed 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 bringeth little comfort on earth ; and he is, I reckon, no wise man that looketh this way to heaven." Shrewsbury, the first English Earldom, after Arundel, which has merged in the Dukedom of Norfolk, dates from 1442, and is inherited by the present Lord from his direct ancestor, the gallant Talbot, " the great Alcides of the field," than whom "a stouter champion never handled sword." How marvel, romance, and mystery were brought out in the late great Shrewsbury case ! For two hundred years the Earldom never descended fii'om father to son, and, at the death of the late youthful Earl Bertram, his male heir was found in the descendant of a branch that had separated from the parent stem at the time of the wars of the Roses ! In the course of the proceedings, a senior line was traced down to a Talbot, who was living in obscurity in St. Anne's, Soho, and whose representative, had his family not passed away m poverty and oblivion, would have been the senior P]arl of England. Also came in proof, the partially effaced tomb at Bromsgrove of Sir John Talbot, recording the existence of those two sons whose disappearance somewhat resembled that of the Princes in the Tower. One of these was said (but without any evidence of the fact) to have wandered into and to have SHREWSBURY — DERBY — DUDLEY. 15 founded a Talbot branch in Ireland. Then there were the Talbots who died abroad soldiers of fortune : they might have had issue, but there was sign of none. The obscurity of a legend hung on all but the line of the present Earl. Derby, the next in precedence, has, since the Stanleys' acquisition of the Earldom, been transmitted down in an unchequered course, and through a race of distinguished nobles over a space of nearly four hundred years — a remarkable exception to the changeful career of other titles of equal antiquity and eminence. At this moment it is still held by a Stanley, whom liistory hereafter will probably regard as the greatest of his name. " The motto, sans changer, used for so many centuries by the elder line of the noble house of Stanley, seems to have been adopted in a prophetic spirit. Invariably honourable, just, bounteous, hospitable, valiant, and magnificent ; above all, invariably loyal ; that family may perhaps safely challenge history and tradition to show one defective link in its long chain of succession, to point out a single stain on the purity of its public conduct, or on its uniform exercise of the mild and graceful duties of private life."* The Barony of Dudley, created more than five centuries ago, has had many ups and downs in the course of its long career, and now rests in abeyance, partly, in two obscure nooks of England. The family of Sutton, who acquired Dudley Manor and Castle by marriage with * Edmund Lodge. 16 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. the heiress of De Somerie, was ennobled temp. Edward III., and the barony thus acquired, eventually passed, temp. Charles II., tlirough an heiress, Frances, Baroness Dudley, wife of Sir Humble Ward, to the Ward family. Having remained with them for a century or more, it became vested in the Leas, of Halesowen Grange, and on the death, in 1757, of Ferdinando Dudley Lea, four- teenth Baron, it fell into abeyance amongst his Lord- ship's sisters. One of these sisters, Frances, became the ■wife of Walter Woodcock, Esq., "Justice Woodcock," as he was called, to whose descendants Dame Fortune has been most chary in the distribution of her favours. Then- daughter, Anne, became the wife of William Wilmot ; and another daughter, Mary, was married to Benjamin Smart. Some twenty years ago, the traveller on the Dudley road, on reaching the toll-gate of Cooper's Bank, and depositing the usual fees of the pike in the hands of that inflexible personage, the toll-bar-keeper, little di'camt that the poor man following this lowly occupation was next brother of one of the coheirs of the Barony of Dudley ! But so it was : George Wilmot, the toll-bar-keeper of Cooper's Bank, was a descendant of the very Lords Dudley whose proud castle towered in the distance ; and when he died, on Christmas Day, 1846, his remams were borne from the turnpike gate to Dudley, and deposited by the ashes of his kindred. One nephew, Daniel Sinclair Wilmot, filled the office of second clerk of the Customs at Bristol, and another, John K. Wilmot (son of the eldest brother, Pynson), at this moment one of the Co-HEiRS OF the Barony of Dudley, is residing in a humble station at No. 1, Cleveland Grove, Mile End. BARONY OF DUDLEY. 17 At Oatenfields Farm, Halesowen, iu Worcestershire, another and a senior co-heir of the Barony resides — Joseph Smart, a worthy tenant farmer under his cousin Mr. Ferdinando Dudley Lea Smith, of Halesowen Grange ; and at the town of Halesowen, his only brother, Robert Smart, carries on the business and trade of grazier and butcher. Mr. Joseph Smart has in his possession an ancient and curious family record, tracing his descent from the old Lords Dudley, and setting forth his royal line thi-ough the Suttons, the Seymours, the Greys, and the Bran- dons fi'om Henry VH. and Elizabeth of York. After Avhich comes the following curious inventory : — " An account of jewels and gold rings in the possession of Walter Woodcock, Esq., in an oak chest at Dovehouse Fields, in the parish of Salop : 1. a mom-ning ring, with inscription engraved within it, ' Edward Lord Dudley Ward obt. 6 Sept. 1731, aged 27 ;' also three gold ear- rings, apparently diamonds ; another gold ring with large diamonds, supposed to have been his said lord- ship's grandmother's, and by her given to her daughter, Frances AVard, w^ho married with William Lea, of the Grange, Hales Owen, by whom she had issue ;" and then follows the genealogy of her descendants to the present day. AVhere can we find a more striking contrast than this mournful tale of the Barony of Dudley ? The history of that famous title would, in its first chapter, speak of chivalry, warlike achievement, and magnificent hos- pitality in the ancient castle from which the Barony took its name. The last chapter would tell the story of the Halesowen farmer, the custom-house clerk, and 2 18 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. the toll-bar-keeper, all resident within range of that very castle. One of the most extraordinary Peerage Patents on the rolls is that creating the Hon. Sir John Talbot, Baron L'Isle, of Kingston L'Isle, county Berks, in 1444. By it the dignity was limited to John Talbot and his heirs and assigns for ever, being tenants of the manor of Kingston T J Isle. In course of time, this manor of King- ston L'Isle passed by sale to Abraham Atkins, Esq., of Claphara; and, in 1790, that gentleman, Tinder the im- pression that being " tenant of the Manor of Kingston L'Isle," and assignee of John Talbot, Viscount L'Isle, he had a right under the terras of the Talbot patent, to be summoned as a Baron to Parliament, had his Case prepared, but did not, as far as I can ascertain, take any farther proceeding. My interpretation of the limitation of the patent is, that it meant sunply that so soon as John Talbot, or his heirs quitted the seigniory of the Manor of Kingston L'Isle, the Parliamentary Barony was at an end, and could not have passed by sale to a stranger in blood. Peerage Claims are replete with curious and in- teresting revelations, and contain the story of many a Peerage vicissitude. Even within the last half century, the chance perusal of an old patent by an antiquarian barrister, and the casual meeting of the ordnance store- keeper at Enniskillen with a shrewd Irish attorney, restored to the roll of the Lords two of its oldest and most historic titles, Devon and Huntingdon. The earliest case of the discussion m the House of EARLDOM OF BANBURY 19 Lords of a Claim to a Peerage occurred in the eleventh year of the reign of Henry VI. But the right to such titles as were not annexed to manorial or other pos- sessions was formerly determined before the Lord High Constable and Earl Marshal, not according to the rules of common law, but by the regulations and customs of chivaby. From the decision of this court an appeal lay to the Crown ; but on the abolition of the office of High Constable, it became the practice to submit the claims at once to the Sovereign, which course was fii'st adopted about the time of Hemy VHI. In the reign of his successor, commissioners were ap- pointed to decide the claims to peerages ; but the prac- tice of referring them to the House of Lords (as in the time of Henry VI.) being again adopted, it was after- wards generally followed; and since the reign of Charles I. the House of Peers has become the tribunal where such claims are decided, when the Crown does not act upon the report of the Attorney-General only. The claim to the Earldom of Banbury was perhaps the most singular and important in the whole catalogue, whether estimated by the extraordinary length of time — more than a century and a half — it remained unde- cided, or the conflict of opinion to which it gave rise between the first tribunal in the realm, the House of Lords, and the first law judge, the celebrated Lord Chief Justice Holt, regarded by his contemporaries as the profoundest lawyer of his time. Upon the decease of the Earl of Banbury in 1632, there were two inquisi- tions taken in different counties : by one it was found that the Earl had died sine prole, but in the other that C 2 20 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. he had left two sons. His honours were, however, deemed extinct, and his estates passed to his collateral heirs. Within five weeks, however, after her husband's death, the Countess of Banbury married Lord Vaux of HaiTowden, and brought forward two sons, whom she stated were the offspring of her first marriage, born during the lifetime of Lord Banbury. The elder died young ; but the younger took his seat in the Conven- tion Parliament as Earl of Banbury, but Avas not sum- moned in the parliament which met in the following May. The case gave rise to numerous petitions presented to the Crown, and discussed in the House of Lords for more than a hundred and fifty years, in which the main question was, whether the children of Lady Banbury were the issue of Lord Vaux, and not of her first hus- band, the aged Lord Banbury? In the course of the proceedings there arose the cele- brated conflict of authority between the House of Lords and the King's Bench. Charles, claiming to be Lord Banbury, was tried in 1692, for the murder in a duel of his brother-in-law, Captam Lawson. He was arraigned as "Charles Knollys, Esq.," and pleaded in abatement, that it was a misnomer, he bemg Earl of Banbury. The King's Bench quashed the indictment, holding that the prisoner was Earl of Banbury. But the Lords, who had previously decided tlie contrary, required the attendance of the Chief Justice Holt, and asked him *' to give their Lordships an account why the Court of King's Bench had acted as it had done in this affair." To which the Chief Justice made this memorable answer : " I acknow- ledge the thing; there was such a plea, and such a EARLDOM OF DEVON. 21 replication. I gave my judgment according to my conscience. We are trusted with, the law. We are to be protected, not arraigned, and are not to give reasons for our judgment, therefore I deshe to be excused giving any." After much discussion, and many ad- journments, the contest terminated at last in the abandonment by the House of its fruitless struggle with the Com-t of King's Bench. Eventually the Lords, after a prolonged hearing, decided against the claim, 11th March, 1813. The male heir of these dispossessed Earls of Banbmy is General Sir William Knollys, K.C.B. A History of the Earldom of Devon from its first creation, by King Henry I., down to its recovery m 1831, would be a memorial full of romance and vicissi- tude. Conferred though it was, at various periods and by various creations, on the families of De Redvers and CoTU'tenay, there is an mibroken chain of descent con- necting the Earl of Devon of Hemy I.'s time with the Earl of Devon of the reign of Queen Victoria. At present it is the Jifth Earldom on the roll of the Peerage, dating from the creation of 1553, but it would be the Jirst were it not for the attainder of the earlier creations. Even the last Patent was supposed to have expii-ed with Edward, Earl of Devon, and Marquess of Exeter, who died at Padua in 1556. For the long space of two hundred and seventy-five years tliis brilliant coronet was left unclaimed, and so little did its rightful heirs, the Courtenays of Powderham Castle, know of its existence, that Sh William Com-tenay, who was in reality Earl of Devon, sought and obtained fi-om 22 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. George III a simple Viscounty. It was reserved ior the research and skill of my late able and learned friend, Sir Harris Nicolas, to resuscitate one of the most illus- trious titles in the peerage of England : he discovered, while perusing some old records, the Patent of Queen Mary creating the Earldom of Devon, and he at once perceived that the usual addition " de corpore " was omitted, either accidentally or by design. The absence of these two important words extended the limitation to collateral heirs-male, and thus entitled Viscount Courtcnay to assert his right to the Earldom of his ancestors. Sir Harris conducted the case before the Lords, and hved to see the late Earl of Devon, in the full enjoyment of a peerage, the recovery of which was mainly owing to his genealogical ability. I scarcely know of iiny more amusing story than the narrative of the adventures of Mr. Nugent Bell, in quest of evidence to establish the right of his fiiend Captain Hans-Francis Hastings, R.N., to the ancient Earldom OF Huntingdon, which had lain dormant from the death of the tenth Earl, in 1789. The singvilarity about the case is, that it succeeded in despite of the claimant him- self, who, but one brief year before he was installed as fourth earl of the kingdom, had hardly any idea of his >wn position. He was a retired, imassuming naval officer, holding a small official appointment in a remote provincial town, contented with the station of a private gentleman, not dreaming of either purple robes or golden coronets, and was indebted for his success alto- gether to the exertions and perseverance of his pro- fessional adviser, Mr. Nugent Bell, who undertook the EARLDOM OF HUNTINGDON, 23 affair on his own responsibility, and entirely at his own expense. On the back of the letter conveying his acquiescence in the proceedings, Captain Hastings added, as a post- script, " By all things good, you are mad !" so romantic and visionary did the recovery of the Earldom seem to him. Mr. Bell proceeded at once, 17th August, 1817, to England, and entered upon his arduous undertaking, accompanied by his friend, Mr. W. Jameson. His fir;^ visit was to Castle Donnington, where he had a very imsatisfactory interview with a solicitor named Dalby, who had long been concerned for the noble family of Hastings, and who was in communication with the Marchioness of Hastings, then living at Donnington Park. The next day he met with a Mr. Needliam, from whom he acquired much valuable information ; but the most valuable he obtained, and that which put him upon the right road, was from an accidental rencontre with an old domestic of the family. Wliile seated on the out- side of a coach, travelling through Leicestershire, and just, he says, as his " spu'its were about to go to pieces amidst the quicksands of disappointment, a flag hove in sight, which he hastened to hail," and in a few minutes was alongside an old woman in a market-cart, with whom he jocularly made up an acquaintance, and ob- tained leave to accompany her for some distance on the road, in a vacant chair he espied in the vehicle. This old crone turned out, oddly enough, to be an ancient dependent of the Hastings family, and on her garrulity Mr. Bell founded the basis of his future success. This extraordinary adventure having furuished the 24 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. required cine, ]\lr. Bell pursued it indefotigably through churches and churchyards, examining sexton^Ji, consult- ing registers, aud deciphering tombstones, until, at length, he was enabled to draw up such a case as pro- duced from Sir Samuel Romilly a satisfactoiy opinion in favour of the claim, and a Report from Sir Samuel Shepherd, the Attorney-General, to the effect that the claimant had made out his right ; whereupon, on the 7th of January, 1819, just a year and a half after Ctiptain Hastings had, in fear and trembling, given his reluctant consent, and Mr. Bell had started on his apparently Quixotic search in pursuit of a peerage, a writ of summons was issued, commanding the attend- ance in the ensuing parliament of Captain Hastings, by the style, title, and dignity of Earl of Huntingdon. The Barony of WlLLOUGllBY OF Parham was con- fen-ed by letters patent, in 1547, on Sir William Wil- loughby. Knight, and the heirs male of his body, and devolved, at his death, on his son and heir, Charles, second Lord, who had with other children three sons, who all left issue. In the descendants of the eldest son, the barony continued vested until the decease, without issue, of the tenth lord in 1(579. At his Lordship's decease the title ought by right to have gone to the descendant of Sir Ambrose, the second son of the second lord ; but as his branch had emigrated to America, it was presumed to have become extinct, and the Barony of AVilloughby of Parham Avas adjudged erroneously to Thomas Willoughby the eon of tlio second lord's third son, and that personage (who had summons to Parlia- ment, 19th I\Iay, 1G85, by writ adcbessed " Thoma3 AVilloughby de Parham, Chl'r") and his descendants BARONY OF WILLOUGHBY OF PARHAM. 25 continued to sit in Parliament as Lords Willougliby of Parliam. Meanwhile the descendant of Sir Ambrose came back from America, proved his pedigree, and thus created a remarkable state of things. He, the true lord, was excluded from liis rights as a peer, while his cousin, the false lord, sat and voted. In course of time, how- ever, right prevailed. " Dormit aliquando jus, moritur nunqiiam." The male line of the false lord expired, and Hemy Willougliby, Sir Ambrose's representative, claimed his peerage, and had it adjudged to him by a memorable decision of the House of Lords, which ad- mitted that the intermediate lords had " sat contrary to the right and truth of the case," This decision, one should have .supposed, would have ended all perplexity connected with the title of Wil- lougliby of Parham. But it was not so. As the first false Lord was summoned to Parliament under the erro- neous presumption that he was a peer, and took his seat accordingly under the writ, an independent Barony in fee was thereby created, descendible to heirs general. For instance, when the eldest son of an Earl is sum- moned up in the name of a Barony not vested in his father, and it afterwards turns out that the Earl has no such barony, then a substantive bsrony by writ is created; whereas, on the contrary, had the Earl pos- sessed a barony, the effect of the writ to his heir- apparent would only be to accelerate the descent of the dignity, and to make it still descendible accordmg to the origmal limitation. There still being an heir-general of the false Lord Willougliby, is not such heir-general, in this view of the case, entitled to a barony in fee ? 20 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. Attainder o'ershadows many an old and honourable title. But for the forfeiture of Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk, the father of Lady Jane Grey, the Earl of Stamford and Warrington would be Marquess of Dorset, premier of his rank in England ; and but for that of the ill-fated son of Charles II., the Duke of Buccleuch would be Duke of Monmouth. It is probable that if the attainder passed against the ruined Earl of Westmoreland in the time of Queen Elizabeth, were removed, the Earl of Abergavenny might prove himself to be Pjarl of Westmoreland ; and it is not at all impossible that, if forfeiture did not intervene, Mr. Marmion Ferrers, of Baddesley Clinton, Co. Warwick, might establish, to the satisfaction of the House of Lords, that he was male representative of the Ferrers' family, and as such, the possessor of an Earldom of Derby, which would place first amongst Earls, facile princeps ; and would create a curious coincidence ; the premier Earl, and the third Earl on the roll of the Peerage, would be designated by the same title. The disappearance of Irish titles has arisen princi- pally from the attainders and confiscations in that country. But for these causes, the remarkable per- petuation of the male descent among Irish families, would have preserved the ancient nobility in Ireland to a far greater proportionate extent tlian in either England or Scotland. As it is, there remains, com- paratively speaking, a much larger number of the early creations in the Irish peerage than we can find on the roll of the English nobility of the same date. Englisli titles have become, by the complete exhaustion of male IRISH TITLES : KILDARE : ORMONDE. heirs, altogether extinct; while in the sister island even those titles which have passed away from the Irish peerage are probably only dormant, and might be revived if the attainders were removed, or if the power of genealogical research enabled the inqxm-er to discover the existing hens. At the death of Henry VIL, a.d. 1509, the Irish peer- age consisted of four Earls, Kildare, Ormonde, Desmond) and Waterford; of three Viscounts, Buttevant, Gor- manston, and Roche of Fermoy ; and of twelve Barons, Athenry, Kinsale, Kerry, Slane, Delvin, Killeen, Howth, Portlester, Dunsany, Trimleston, Ratoathe, and Rath- wier. Subtracting from these the last two titles, which were both granted to Englishmen, and are extinct, I think I may safely assert that a male descendant of every one of the others still exists. A Bermingham resident in the north of Spain, is, I have reason to believe, the heir male of the Lords Athenry. After centuries of vicissitudes, and many an effort to destroy it, by attainder, decapitation, and exile, the Earldom of Kildare, the oldest earldom in the king- dom, is still enjoyed by the representative of the Geraldines : — " When Capet seized the crown of France, their iron shields were known, And their sabre-dent struck terror on the banks of the Garonne. But never then, nor thence till now, has falsehood or disgrace Been seen to soil FitzGerald's plume or mantle in his face." Only twelve years junior to the Earldom of Kildare, its twin in renown, was its great rival Ormonde, a title equally interwoven with romance and history. The acme of its political importance was in the time of the 28 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. Dukes of Ormonde, the charm of its romance in the fierce period of its conflicts witli the Irish chieftains, and its feuds with the Greraldines of Desmond. One of the pm-est characters of any age was the gallant Earl oi Ossory, at whose untimely death his bereaved father, the great Duke of Ormonde, so pathetically exclaimed, in answer to an expression of condolence, " I would not exchange my dead son for any living son in Christendom." It was tliis same Earl of Ossory who, after Blood's attempt to kill the Duke of Ormonde — an attempt which was generally ascribed to the instigation of Buckingham, addressed the Duke, while standing behind the King's chair, in these emphatic words : " My lord, I know well that you are at the bottom of this late attempt of Blood's upon my father ; and therefore I give you fair warning, if my father come to a violent death by sword or pistol, if he die by the hand of a ruffian, or the more secret way of poison, I shall not be at a loss to know the real author of it ! — I shall consider you as the assassin. I shall treat you as such, and I shall pistol you, though you stood behind the King's chair. And I tell you it in his Majesty's presence, that you may be sure I will keep my word." Ossory's only son was the Duke of Ormonde, under whose attaindei*, by the English par- liament, the Earldom of Ormonde was supposed to have been forfeited; but many a long year afterwards this Avas found to be a false notion. A decision of the TrisJi parliament declared that no proceeding of the English legnslature could affect an Irish dignity, and restored the Earldom of Ormonde and Viscounty of Tliurlcs to John Butler, of Garryricken, the great-grandfather of the present Marquess of Ormonde. EARLDOM OF DESMOND. 29 AlmoBt cotemporaneous witli Kildare and Ormonde was an Earldom which suffered, perhaps more than any other, the severest reverses of fortune, the'famous Geraldme Earldom of Desmond. The rivahy of the FitzGeralds of Desmond and the Butlers of Ormonde, the Irish Guelphs and Ghibelines, forms a memorable episode in the annals of Munster. Once, we are told, a reconciliation was effected, and the hostile chiefs agreed to shake hands, but they took the precaution of doing so through an aperture of an oak door, each fearing to be poignarded by the other ! After the battle of Affane, on the banks of the Blackwater, the FitzGeralds were defeated, and their leader made prisoner. While the victors were bearing him away on their shoulders, Ormonde triumphantly exclaimed, " Where now is the great Earl of Desmond ?" " Here," replied FitzGerald, " still in liis proper place, on the necks of the Butlers." They were a gifted as well as a brave race, these Desmonds. Gerald, the fourth Earl, was called "the poet," and that deep susceptibility of the beautiful, which is the vital spring of the poetic nature, was, unluckily for him, inherited by his grandson, Thomas, the sixth earl. Wearied and benighted, one ill-starred evening, on his return from hunting, he took refuge in the Abbey of Feale in Kerry, the dwelling of a tenant, named William MacCormac. The Earl " came, saw, and," if he " conquered," became no less the conquest of MacCormac's lovely daughter Catherine. He married her, and the consequence was loss of title and estate ; his uncle James, forcibly usurped both, and Desmond, after several fruitless attempts to regain his birthright, died an exile at Kouen, in 1420, and was there buried, 30 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. the King of England, Henry V. himself honouring, it is waid, the funeral obsequies with his presence. Moore has gracefully sung this love story, in his song of " The Desmond," commencing, — " By the Feale's wave benighted." James, the Usurper, Earl of Desmond, Seneschal of Imokilly, was not acknowledged until 1422. He died in 1462, and was buried at Youglial ; from his second son came the FitzGeralds, of Dromana, Lords of the Decies ; and from his eldest son, the subsequent Earls of Desmond ; this eldest son was Thomas, eighth Earl of Desmond, who, from the possession of vast estates, and from the lofty position of Lord Deputy of Ireland, became the inmate of a prison, and ended his life on the block in 1467, leaving a son and heir, James, ninth Earl, another example of the vicissitudes to which his family was doomed. After flourisliing for twenty years in riches, honour, and power, he was basely murdered by his own servant. But the cro^Tiing adversity, as also another instance of the usurpations tolerated by the Sovereign of England in Ireland, is presented by Gerald, the fifteenth Earl, the " Tmjens rehelUhn^ exemplar^ He dispossessed his elder brother of title and inheritance, — an inheritance extending, according to popular tradition, over a space of one hundred and twenty by fifty square miles, and producmg an annual revenue of vast amount. Defeated at the termination of his ten years' rebellion against the English, he became reduced to the greatest distress, " and," says Camden, in his annals of Queen Elizabeth, " in no place safe, shifted from place to place." For a EARLDOM OF DESMOND. 31 considerable period he remained wandering among the bogs and mountains, with the utmost difficulty succeed- ing in warding off actual starvation. On one occasion, at Kilguaigh, near Kilmallock, in the county of Limerick, in the depth of winter, he and his Countess (Eleanor Butler, daughter of Lord Dmiboyne), escaped the search of the royal adlierents by flying from the miserable hovel which served as their place of conceal- ment, and hiding themselves, sunk up to the throat in a " lough " of water. Having at last crept into the rugged wilderness of the Kerry mountains, Desmond was congratulating himself on a comparative security, when hunger compelled some of his followers to steal a few cattle. They were pursued by the owners guided, it is said, by the treacherous son of a woman who had been nurse to the Earl; and the cabin in which the imfortimate Desmond lay, was discovered. The spot was Glanaginty, under Slieve Loghra. Here, in the cold dawn of the 11th of November, 1583, one of the pursuers, first fi-acturing the Earl's arm by a sword cut, dragged the aged nobleman out of the hovel, and severed his head fi'om his body. This bloody trophy was sent to Queen Elizabeth, and set up on the Tower of London, or, as others say, on London Bridge. The Earl's immense estates were parcelled out among " Undertakers " from England. Thus expired the power of the great house of Des- mond ; for though, upon the death of Earl James, the rebel Earl's son, his cousin James Fitzgerald assumed the title and was recognized as such by the Irish, as indeed was his right, his father having never joined in the rebellion so tragically suppressed; the Queen 32 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. rejected his petition for restoration to his honours, pro- bably because the estates had been bestowed upon others. This drove him also into rebellion. From his poverty he was called the " Siigan^ Earl, — the Earl of Straiv. In IGOl, he was captured by the White Knight, and died a prisoner in the Tower of London in 1608. John Fitzgerald, brother of the " Sugan" Earl, entered the service of the King of Spain, by whom he was allowed to live in a position very unbefitting his birth or the magnanimity of a monarch : he died, leaving one son, Gerald, recognized by the Sj)anish King as Conde de Desmond. To this barren honour, however, was the royal favour limited; Desmond pined in poverty, and at length, in disgust, entered the sei-vice of the Emperor of Germany. In that service, he sustained, with honour, the great name he bore ; and gallantly closed a soldier's life in 1632. The subsequent fate of the title of Earl of Desmond was remarkable. After the forfeiture of the FitzGeralds, James I. conferred it first on his favourite, Sii* Richard Preston, Lord Dingwall in Scotland (who had mar- ried Lady Elizabeth Butler, descended in the female line from the original Earls), and next on George Fielding, Viscount Callan, who was in no wise related to, or connected with the Geraldines. Ilis descendant, the Earl of Denbigh, now bears the coronet of Desmond, so long associated, in the olden times, with the glory and misfortunes of Ireland. The last of the Earldoms of Henry VI.'s time is that of Waterford, still existing, which was conferred, in EARLDOM OF WATERFORD : VISCOUNTY OF ROCHE. 33 connexion with the office of Great Seneschal of Ireland,* on Sir John Talbot, the first and most renowned Earl of Shrewsbury, in 1446 : — " Valiant Lord Ttilbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, Created, for his rare success in arms, Great Earl of Washford, Waterford, and Valence." The Earldom of Waterford has followed the fortmies of its twin title of Shrewsbmy, and fi'om the time of Charles 11. up to the time of the late Earl, never passed fi'om father to son. Two of the Viscounties of the next reign have fallen from the peerage roll, Buttevant, and Roche of Fermoy; but, in all probability, male descendants of both exist at this present moment. The representative of the latter Vt^'as living in absolute poverty m 1667. In that year, on the 14th June, the Earl of Orrery writes to the Duke of Ormonde, recommending Lord Roche and his destitute family to his Grace's favour: "It is a grief to me" (these are Orrery's words) " to see a nobleman of so ancient a family left without any mamtenance; and bemg able to do no more than I have done, I could not deny to do for him what I could do, to lament his lamentable case to your Grace." A Viscountess Roche of a later generation Avas seen begging in the streets of Cork. The only other Irish Viscounty of this epoch, Gor- manston, still remains, and gives title to the senior Viscount of Ireland. * As Hereditary Great Seneschal of Ireland, the late Earl of Shrewsbuiy and Waterford officiated at the Installation of the Prince of Wales as a Knight of St. Patrick, in 1868. 2 D 34 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. Seven of the baronies in Henry VII.'s Irish House of Lords are still held by Irish Peers deriving from them. Two others, Athenry and Slane, are claimed, and one, Portlester, is under attainder. Henry VIII. added to his predecessor's scanty Irish Peerage three Earldoms, Tyrone, Thomond, and Clan- ricarde; two Viscounties, Clontarf and Baltinglass ; and eight Baronies, Curraghmore, Dunboyne, Upper Ossory, Louth, Carbrie, Dungannon, Ibrackan, Incliiquin, and Cahir. In this reign, Ulick Bm-ke, chief of his race, •was made Earl of Clanricarde, and the head of the great house of Eustace raised to the Viscounty of Baltinglass, a dignity to which the present Captain Charles Stan- nard Eustace, of Robertstown, county Kildare, has been declared heir, if the attainder were removed. Edward VI. added but one creation, Mountgarret; and all that Queen Mary did, in the peerage of Ireland, Avas to form a precedent of a peerage for life, recently the subject of so much controversy m the Wensleydale case. Her Majesty made Kavanagh, chief of his sept, Baron of Ballyane for life, and his son Maurice, Baron of Cowellelyn, also for life. If the first creation had con- tained the customary limitation to heirs male, Mr. Kava- nagh of Borris, would now be a peer of the realm. The titles were granted for life, hereditary succession, in our view, being unknown, or at least not acted on, amongst the native chieftains, Avho followed the Celtic custom of electing from the members of the family the person best qualified to succeed. Queen Elizabeth made McCarthy, Earl of Claucarr, and created but two Irish barons — both Bm-kes — Lords Castle Connell and Leitrim. Her Majesty also revived, IRISH PEERS. 35 by a new patent in 1583, the Barony of Cahir. The Queen did not, however, feel justified in conferring the barony of Cahir again, though by a new creation, and with only the new precedence, without the consent of the heirs-general. But one of these hens, who had married Mr. Prendergast, of Newcastle, co. Tipperary, dying during the negotiations, the Queen then signed the patent, the release being executed a little later by the son of the deceased lady, though only ten years of age at the time. Queen Elizabeth's successor, with his usual prodigality of honours, raised the number of the Irish peerage to sixty-seven. The additions included, among others, the Earldoms of Cork, Westmeath, and Roscommon; the Viscounties of Powerscourt, Netterville, and Moore of Drogheda; and the Baronies of Brabazon, Fitzwilliam, Charlemont, and Esmonde. Charles I. brought np the number to 99 ; Charles II. to 105; and James II. to 110. Under William III., however, the roll of the peerage became curtailed by the attainders of the Jacobite Lords. In the reign of the first monarch of the House of Han- over, the peerage of Ireland consisted of one Duchess, Munster (the German mistress of the King), one Mar- quess, Catherlough (the English Marquess of Wharton) ; thii-ty-one Earls, one Countess, fifty-two Viscounts, and thirty-one Barons. The long reign of George III., which increased so much the English peerage, added even still more to the roll of similar honom*s in L'eland. The peerage of that kingdom, which, as we have seen, consisted but of nineteen Lords in Henry VII.'s time, numbered at the close of the Irish Parliament, in 1801, D 2 36 \^CISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. 236 Peers, namely, one Duke, nine Marquesses, seventy- seven Earls, sixty-two Viscounts, and eighty-seven Barons. By the Act of Union, the Crown is empowered to confer a new title for every three that become extinct, until the whole number, exclusive of those having here- ditary seats in the House of Lords, shall be reduced to one hundred, which magical number the Crown may keep up by new creations. At the present moment there are one himdred and nine Irish peers, who are peers of Ireland only. Of these, twenty-eight sit as representatives, leaving eighty-one who are excluded from then' hereditary right. Although Richard II. conferred knighthood on the four provincial Kings of Ireland, in 1395, no hereditary honour was bestowed on a native Irish chieftain until Henry VIII. made Con O'Neill Earl of Tyrone, Murrough O'Brien Earl of Thomond, and Dermot O'Shaghnessy, of Gort, in the co. of Galway, an hereditary knight. This last creation foreshadowed the institution of the Baronet. MacCarthy of Desmond, and Magennis of Iveagh, were created peers by Elizabeth, and Rory O'Donnell, Prince of Tyrconnel was made an Earl by James I. Thus originated the famous Earldom of Tyrconnel : under its original possessor it had but a brief existence, falling under the attainder consequent on the " flight of the earls,"* in 1607. The subsequent vicissitudes of this title are remarkable : first it was given to Lord Fitzwilliam of Merrion, but it expired with him in four years ; next it was conferred on a family to which it owes a share of its historic importance, the Talbots of * See Meeban's " Fate and Fortunes of the Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnel." SCOTCH PEERAGES. 37 Malahide, and again fell by attainder. After Talbot, for no other reason, as it appears to me, but that it was an attractive and well-sounding title, it was given to a respectable English baronet, named Brownlow; and, after his extinction, to another English family. Carpenter, who had not a drop, I believe, of either O'Donnell or Talbot blood, and who had little in common with Ireland except the fact of being in the peerage of that country. As for Scotch peerages, the entails and remainders are so varied, complicated, and numerous, that with most of them it is utterly impossible to say when they will become extinct. I need only refer to the claims to the succession of the Dukedoms and other titles of Queensberry, those to the Dukedom of Roxburghe, and the remainders to the Earldom of Breadalbane, to con- vince the reader of the impossibility of foretelling the eventual history of any Caledonian title. The Acts of Union for Scotland and Ireland differed essentially in respect of the peerages of both countries ; the Scotch Act contains no provision as to keeping up the Scotch Peerage by new creations, and probably in course of time all Scotch peers will be absorbed into the peerage of the United Kingdom. The union roll of Scotland, as it stood on the 1st May, 1707, comprised eleven Dukes, five Marquesses, seventy-five Earldoms, seventeen Viscounties, and fifty-three Barons; and now, in 1868, of the whole of that number there remain, allowing for the sixteen Representative Peers, only about thirty who have not a seat in the House of Lords. 38 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. There are many curious incidents connected with the descent of Scottish chgnities. Lord Lindsay's dehghtfal volumes on the hves of his ancestors, tell with romantic effect the extraordmary vicissitudes which have accom- panied the transmission of the Earldom of Crawford, through an illustrious line of twenty-four Earls. At one time an Earl of Crawford, cursed with an unnatural son, obtained the royal assent to transfer the Earldom from his heir to the next male in succession ; and tliis latter Earl, moved with pity, sought the Crown's interference again, for the reconveyance of the title to the rightful heir. But the line of this, the rightful hue, did not prosper. Its eventual heiress lived disgracefully as a common vagrant, and was at length rescued from the lowest wretchedness by the bounty of King Cliarles II. After its extinction, the honours of the house of Ci-aw- ford were usurped by a remote but most powerful descendant, the Eari of Lindsay, to the prejudice of the real heirs, the Lindsays of Edzell, the last of whom (Earl of Crawford if he had had his rights) died in 1744, an hostler at an inn in Kirkwall {seepage 197, vol. 1). The following anecdote, concerning the succession to the Peerage of BREADiVLBANE, affords a curious illus- tration of the unlimited nature of the patents of some Scottish titles in favour of all heirs male whatsoever. Those in the renoAvned race of Diarmid are of the number. So that as long as a member of the Clan Campbell exists who is able to prove his descent from Glenorchy, or Lochawe, there is no chance of the Earl- dom of Breadalbane, or the Dukedom of Argyle, ever becoming extinct. BREADALBANE. 39 The house of Glenorchy is an ancient cadet of that of Lochawe, and has always been distinguished for inordinate feudal ambition and thirst for territorial aggrandizement. Each successive chieftain has materi- ally enlarged its possessions, so that in extent of territory it yields to few mtliui the boimds of the British empu-e. The nobleman whom the following story brings before our notice, and his only son were the last of the direct hne of the original Earl ; but the titles and estates were strictly destined to distant younger branches. Of these, the least remote were Campbell of Carwhin, an old bachelor, a -wT-iter to the Signet, in Edmbui'gh, who had retired from business into the country; and Campbell of Glenfalloch, a Highland laird, who lived upon his small property. The latter had a grandson, of whom he was very fond, and whom he regarded with much pride as the future head of the house ; presmning upon the probable extinction of the lines of his two remote kinsmen, the Earl and Carwhin. In 1758, the thh'd Earl had an English visitor at Taymouth, who, in exploring about, fell in with a fine- looking lad in the Highland garb, attended by a High- land man. The stranger asked who the boy was, and was told he was the young Breadalbane. After dinner, when the Earl and his guest were sitting cosily together, the latter related the circumstance, with the reply, and asked, " Now, who could the boy be ?" " Oh ! " replied Lord Breadalbane, " I know who that would be — that was the young Glenfalloch," savagely adding — " So he called him the young Breadalbane ! did he ? " And he continued the whole evening in a fit of abstraction, 40 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. repeating occasionally — " So ho called him the young Breadalbane ? " Next morning, at break of day, a messenger was sent express to smnmon Campbell ol Carwhin, the retired man of business from Edinburgh, who, as an old bachelor, had lately settled in his own little place to end his days in peace. When he arrived, and was welcomed. Lord Breadal- bane said to him, " Now, Carwhin, you can't guess why I sent for you." *' Oo ! onything to pleasure your Lordship." " Well, Til tell you what it is. I want you to marry ! " " Me many ! ! Breadalbane, I hae naethhig to many on." " Oh ! I'll make that easy for you, Car- whin." " Weel, but if I were ever so weel inclined, T dinna ken ony body that wud tak me." " Well, Carwhin, I've a remedy for that, too. You'll go to Liverary, where the circuit court meets soon — get introduced to Miss , the daughter of Lord , one of the Judges who is to be there. I'll warrant she'll take you." " Weel, Breadalbane, onything to pleasure your Lordship." Off he set in his best trim, got intro- duced to the young beauty, danced with her, took her to supper, and proposed. He was, however, refused ; and, much disconcerted, he applied to a bosom fi-iend, and explained the case. His friend said : " If all you want is to pleasure Breadalbane, try Betty Stonefield, I'se warrant she'll no' refuse you." This was a maiden sister of Lord Stonefield, the other Judge on the circuit, who was a Campbell, but neither young nor handsome. Carwhin took the advice, went through the same form, and was accepted ; and the son and hen- of this curiously- planned marriage was no other than John Campbell of Carwhin, who succeeded eventually, to the exclusion of M.VR: DOUGLAS. 41 young Gleiifallocli, as fourth Earl of Breadalbane. But events are not to be controlled : this fourth Earl's only sou, John, fifth Earl and second Marquess of Breadal- bane, died childless a few years since, and young Glenfalloch's great-grandson is, after all, despite the jealousy of the old Earl, and the cannie courtship of Carwhin, now Earl of Breadalbane. One day in the November of 1862 that same great-grandson was residing in London, in Margaret Street, Cavendish Square, on his moderate patrimony of a few hundreds a year, and the next day he was the possessor of one of Scotland's famous Earldoms, and of a rent-roll of full forty thousand a-year. The Earldom of Mar is the most ancient and, per- haps, most historic title in the Scottish Peerage. Dm-ing the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries, the north of Scotland was divided into several great districts, such as Athole, Moray, Ross, Buchan, Mar, &c., &c., &c., which were governed by hereditary rulers with the title of Maormer. These potentates were next in power and dignity to the King ; and in the transmission of then- rank and office, the rule of hereditary succession was strictly observed. In the case of the Maormers of Mar, the original Celtic dignity was exchanged for that of Earl, and Mortacus, Earl of Mar, was witness to a charter granted by King Malcolm Canmore to the Culdees of Lochleven in 1065. Speaking of this title the learned Lord Hailes re- marks ; " This is one of the Earldoms whose origin is lost in antiquity. It existed before our records, and 42 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. before the era of genuine history." The present Earl of Mar is the direct successor, representative, and descendant of these aboriginal Celtic Maormers. The origin of the DOUGLASES is un discoverable amid the mists of remote ages. No one acquainted witli general history can ignore that their race is among the noblest in Europe, whether we take uito account the long line of their ancestors, the extent of their domains, the grandeur of then' alliances, or the brilliancy of their military fame. On the death of the Duke of Douglas, in 1761, the Duke of Hamilton succeeded as heu'-male to the Mar- quessate of Douglas, the Earldom of Angus, and several other titles, while the succession to the estates devolved upon Archibald Stewart, as son of Lady Jane Douglas, the Duke of Douglas's sister, by her husband, Sir John Stewart, of Grandtully. At the death of the Duke, the guardians of this young man proceeded without delay to vest him in the feudal right of the Douglas estates, by getting him, according to Scottish usage, served heir. As many doubts had existed, from the time of his birth, as to its genuineness, and as it was believed by many persons that Lady Jane and her husband had stolen or bought two children in Paris, m order to introduce false heirs to the great estates of the family, steps were taken by the guardians of the youthful Duke of Hamilton to investigate the matter thoroughly. The discoveries, which they made in Paris concerning the circumstance of Lady Jane Stewart's alleged con- finement of twins, gave them sanguine hopes of being THE DOUGLAS CAUSE. . 43 able to destroy Mr. Stewart's, or, as he was called, Mr. Douglas's claim, and to oust him from the possession of the family property. And now commenced the famous Douglas cause, which excited an interest quite unexampled in cases of this kind, spreading from Scotland over England, and even to the continent of Em-ope. The guardians of the Duke of Hamilton maintained that Lady Jane Stewart had not been pregnant ; that the cu'cumstances of her alleged confinement were un- true ; that the confinement was an impostm-e ; and that so far from having given bfrth to twins in Paris, there was proof that two male children, corresponding in age with the sons of Lady Jane, had been carried ofi" from then* parents, and that these children were abstracted by natives of Britain, whom there was reason to believe to have been no other than Lady Jane and her husband. One of these boys died in infancy. The great amount of proof and counterproof makes this case puzzling in the extreme. To condense the arguments on both sides within the necessary limits of this essay would be impossible. Dr. Johnson's Boswell was one of the counsel, and many a quaint chat he and his mighty friend the Doctor had about the afiair. Johnson imbibed a violent prejudice in favour of the Duke of Hamilton, while Boswell was enlisted in the interest of his Grace's opponent. The cause came on before the Court of Session in Edinburgh, in July, 1767. The fifteen judges gave the most unwearied attention to the case, and pronounced the most de- liberate decisions. There never was a more honour- able display of talent, acuteness, and impartiality 44 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. than was exhibited by those able lawyers, many of whom were distinguished historians and philosophers. The judges being equally divided, seven in ftivour of and seven against Mr. Douglas's claim, the Lord President Dundas decided against him by a casting vote. There never was a case that caused so much sym- pathy. Party feeling about it in Scotland ran so high, that feuds were occasioned among the gentry, and riot- ing among the people. The learned and distinguished of the time became partisans, and throughout Europe the question was the subject of interesting discussion. On the failure of Mr. Douglas's case before the Scottish Supreme Court, there was an immediate appeal to the House of Lords ; and in less^ than two years after, in February, 1769, that tribunal reversed the decision of the Court of Session, and pronounced in favour of Mr. Douglas, thus placing him before the world as legal heir of line of the family, and securing to him the possession of its vast estates. When the question is now considered after the lapse of a century, apart from personal feeling and party bias, it seems difficult to reconcile the contradictory asser- tions connected with the strange story of Mr. Douglas's bii'th, or to resist the strong appearance of imposture. Even those who were most in favom- of his claim could not deny the suspicion of fraud. The two cases of child-stealing, however, were not actually brought home to the parents of Mr. Douglas, and he had the benefit of this failure of proof. In the year 1790, he was raised to the Peerage as Lord Douglas of Douglas ; and he had the prudence and tact to ally himself by HAMILTON. 45 marriage with the daughters of two of the greatest of the Ducal houses of Scotkxud. He died at an ad- vanced age in 1827, and his Peerage was inherited successively by three of his sons. The last of these, James, fourth Lord, was in holy orders; and on his death, m 1857, the title became extinct. The Douglas estates were inherited by his sister, the Dowager Lady Montagu. One main cause of the uncertainty in the succession to Scottish titles, is the frequent alteration in the order of then- transmission, occasioned by the practice which pre- vailed of resigning them to the Crown and obtaining new Patents, with a totally different series of heirs from that which existed in the peerage as originally granted.* In illustration of the peculiar results accruing from this system of the resignation and regrant of titles, I ■will refer to the remarkable limitation of the DuKEDOM of Hamilton. The title was, in the first instance, mtended to have been limited to the grantee, James, thu-d Marquess of Hamilton, K.G., and his heirs-male, * There is one instance of Parliament Laving created a new limitation (with the original precedence) of dignities, which without its interference, would have become extinct. The case is that of the celebrated John, Duke of Marlborough. The Dukedom, with other English titles and a Scotch barony, were held by him, with remainder to his heirs male. But in 1706, when the Duke had no issue male living, an Act was pas-sed limiting all these dignities, in default of issue male, to his eldest daughter and her heirs male, with remainder to all his other daughters, severally and successively according to their priority of birth, and to their heirs male. This was an extra- ordinary occurrence, and nothing can again produce it, except such another combination of circumstances, or a repetition of such great and important services as then called it forth. 46 ^^CISSITUDES of families. which would have carried it to the Earl of Abercorn, when he became the male representative of the family in 1G51. The patent, however, at the suggestion of William, Earl of Lanark, brother of the Marquess, and then Secretary of State to King Charles I., provided that the Dukedom should descend to the heii's-male of the body of the jfirst Duke ; whom failing, to his brother, Lord William, and the heirs-male of his body; whom ftiiling, to the eldest heir-female of the body of the first Duke without division, and the heirs-male of the body of such heir-female, they bearing the name and arms of Hamilton. The first Duke had been previously created Earl of Cambridge in the Peerage of England. He died in 1649, without surviving male issue, and was succeeded by Iris brother William, who became second Duke. William only enjoyed the title about two years, having died of wounds received at the battle of Wor- cester in 1651. At liis death, without sui'viving male issue, he was, in terms of the patent, succeeded in the Hamilton estates and titles by his niece. Lady Anne Hamilton, eldest surviving daughter of the first Duke, and she enjoyed the title of Duchess of Hamilton for the long period of sixty-five years, having died in the year 1716, aged eighty. Availing herself of the privilege Avhich attached to Scottish peerages before the Union, her Grace, in the year 1698, made a resignation of her titles in favom- of her eldest son, James, Earl of Arran, who became Duke of Hamilton, but she specially reserved the right to bear the title of Duchess of Hamilton, as the widow of her husband, William Douglas, Earl of Selkii'k, who had been created Duke of Hamilton for life. QUEENSBERRY: CAITHNESS. 47 Another peculiarity connected with the title of Duke of Hamilton is, that it has not descended either to the heir-male of the body or to the hen-male collateral, or even to the heir-female of the first grantee, which is a rare occurrence in the liistory of dignities. If it had been limited to heu's-male, it would now be inherited by the Duke of Abercorn ; and if to heii's-female, it would have descended to the Earl of Derby, who is the heir- of-line of the Hamilton family, through his grand- mother, Lady Elizabeth Hamilton, only daughter of James, the sixth Duke. Sometimes, however, in obtaining a new patent, the Peer who desired to change the order of succession, neglected to resign his original title to the Crown; so that it continued to exist, unaifected by the new patent. A remarkable instance of this is afforded by the Marquessate of Queensberry. In 1706, James, second Duke of Queensberry, resigned into the hands of the Queen his Dukedom of Queensbeny, and various other titles, and obtained a new patent, according to which, on the death of William, fom-th Duke of Queens- berry, in 1810, those titles devolved on Henry, Duke of Buccleuch, as heii-of-Hne. But, in the resignation of his titles by the second Duke, the Marquessate and Earl- dom of Queensberry had not been included. They therefore continued to exist, unaffected by the new patent, and devolved on the heir-male of the family, Su* Charles Douglas, Bart., a descendant of the first Earl, who accordingly became Marquess of Queensbeny. His grand-nephew is the present Peer. The descent of a peerage of the Rosslyu stock of 48 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. Siiicluirs — tliat of CAITHNESS — has been very singular. George, sixth Earl of Caithness, was a spendthrift, and contracted enormous debts. His creditor was the wealthy Sir John Campbell, of Glenurchy, who, after his death, married his widow, and got possession of all the Caith- ness estates, and, in 1667, was created Earl of Caithness. But George Sinclair, the heir male, ousted him, and be- came seventh Earl of Caithness ; when Glenurchy got a new patent in 1681, as Earl of Breadalbane. The seventh Earl of Caithness died in 1698, without issue, and the title has never, since 1676 until now, been more than two generations in the same line, but .has gone to four successive distant male branches. The grandfather of the present Earl was the descendant of a younger son, who branched off three centuries ago, and his predecessor's father was only one generation less remote from the original stock. The Earldom of Newburgh has been claimed suc- cessfully by the Marchesa Bandini nee Principessa Gius- tiniani, who is the heir and representative of Lady Anne Clifford (wife of the Hon. Thomas Clifford), daughter of Charlotte Maria, Countess of Newburgh in her own right. The Countess, by her second husband, the Hon. Charles Radcliffe, had a son, who became third Earl of Ncwburgli, and a daughter, Lady Mary Radcliffe, vdfe of Francis Eyre, of Hassop. Lady Anne married on the continent, and her descendant and representative was the Prince Giustiniani. On the death of Anthony James Radcliffe, fourth Earl of New- burgh, in 1814, his cousin, Mr. Eyre, of Hassop, assumed the title, on the erroneous supposition that Prince PEERAGE PRECEDENCE. 49 Giustiniani, as an alien, could not claim it, and his two sons and daughter held it until, upon the death of the latter, Dorothea, Countess of Newburgh, in 1853, the Earldom was claimed and adjudged by the House of Lords to the Marchesa di Bandini — Cecilia, Princess Giustiniani — in 1858. About half a centmy ago, a Scottish Earldom had nearly come into the possession of a very distin- guished Cardinal at Rome. Charles Erskine was one of the most accomplished members of the Sacred College in the earlier portion of the present century. He was the son of Colin Erskme, younger son of Sir Alexander Erskine, Baronet, of Cambo, and was born in Rome m 1753. He ably fulfilled some important diplomatic mis- sions, was promoted to the purple by Pope Pius VI. in 1801, and was styled in Rome *' Cardinal Erskine di KiUia." He died in Paris in 1811. He was a man of the most popular manners, classical learning, and excel- lent character. If he had outlived the last Earl of KeUie, before the union of that Earldom with Mar. he would have been at once the wearer of a Cardinal's hat and a Scottish coronet. Peerage Precedence has often been a casus belli in Scotland. There was no fixed precedency in the Parlia- ment of that country previous to 1606. The first attempt at order and regularity dates froDi the promul- gation of " the Decreet of ranking," in that year. " It would have been scarcely credible, and it was surely not creditable" (I am quotmg from one of the learned essays of Alexander Sinclair) " that till then confusion, 2 E 50' VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. or chance, anything rather than method, is observable. Whether the Lords were arranged according to their entry into the House, or whether their places were deter- mined by lot, or whether the highest Earl on one day was put lowest on the next, the result is difficult to con- jectm-e or explain." A very memorable contest on the subject, between the Earls of Glencairn and Eglinton, lasted full a century, and renewed the old rivalry of the Montgoraeries and Cuninghams. Their Chiefs, Glencairn and Eglinton, were near neighbours, and bitter foes. On one occasion Glencairn claimed the inspection of certain documents in the possession of his rival Earl ; his request was re- fused, and in revenge he burnt down Eglinton Castle, with all the family charters in it ! Sixty years after, the fourth Earl of Eglinton, " a comlie brave nobleman," was waylaid and murdered by the Cuninghams. In more modern and less turbulent times, the old feud was renewed, on a question of precedence, as to the relative superiority of the two Earldoms, Glencairn and Eglinton, and the battle was fought with the hereditary acri- mony and pertinacity of the rival houses. One decision gave the pas to Eglinton, another to Glencairn. Protest followed protest, reference after reference, until Glen- cairn gained the final victory about the year 1668. The remembrance of the controversy survived, however, for a long period, so late indeed as the close of the last cen- tury. One day in the year 1776, the Laird of Brisbane had the Earls of Glencahn and Eglinton to dine with him, and was very nervous about the old dispute. Dinner was announced, and the cautious host, feeling the difficulty of his position, turned to his guests, saying, GENEiSiOGICAL HISTORY. 51 " My Lords, you are strangers, and I'll show you the way." " I walked off," continued Brisbane, when telling the story, " and took a peep over my shoulder to see what the Earls would do ; and I saw Lord Eglinton bowing Lord Glencairn out before him." A veiy high value was at all times attached to pre- cedence by the Scottish peers. The Earls of Angus asserted " the right of having the first place in sitting and voting in Parliament ;" and it is declared, 5th June, 1592, that the Earl of Angus having "yielded, at the King's desire, to the Duke of Lennox," shall no wise " prejudge the said Earl's right in tyme coming." The Marquesses and Duke of Douglas maintained this claim up to the Union. This brief essay on the changeful circumstances of the Peerage may, perchance, excite an interest in a subject, full, in itself, of curious details ; and may, perhaps induce some of my readers to search a little more deeply into the history of our great and illustrious nobility. That history will indeed well repay the trouble the search may cost; for it is replete with romance and chivahy, with all the charms of biography, legendary lore, and personal anecdote. The enquirer will find several works to assist him, but he will be much disappointed at their paucity. The houses of Douglas, Howard, Hamilton, Courtenay, Russell, Lindsay, Montgomery, Bertie, Carnegie (Earls of Southesk), Maxwell of Poloc, Perceval, Bagot, Somer- \dlle, Bloimt, Shirley, O'Brien, FitzGerald (Eajls of Kildare), Forbes (Earls of Granard), and a few others, have had their historians, but how rare, after all, are E 2 52 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. these memorials ! "Where are the folios whicli sliouid record the deeds and honom"S, the lives and fortunes of the Percys, the Nevilles, the Beauchamps, the Murrays, the Campbells, the Poulets, the Gordons, the Stanhopes, the Bruces, the Grahams, the Spencers, the Fortescues, the Talbots of Grafton and the Talbots of Malahide, the Cavendishes, the Temples, the Scotts, the Greys, the Willoughbys, the St. Johns, the Arundels, the Cliifords, the Butlers, and countless others? If the noble heir of each of these great houses were to write, or have written, a comprehensive history of his ancestors, the collection would form the most splendid and valuable of all contributions to our national and domestic litera- ture. I shall be more than satisfied if the few fragments, I have here collected together, may create a curiosity for the discovery of more, and may help to increase the public taste for genealogical and heraldic reading. Genealogical history is, if I may venture on the simile, a cemetery, in which the hatchments are still imremoved, the torches unextinguished, and the deep swell of the funeral chaunt yet wakening the echoes of the imagination and the heart. Here they repose, the brave, the gifted, the lovely, who gave themes to mmstrels, subjects to painters, examples to posterity. However remote may be the time — through whatever chaos of mouldering records the laborious search must pierce — there is a peculiar feeling of gratification in poring over an old ancestral document. It seems like stepping back into the days of our forefathers, and conversing with those who have slept for ages in the silent dust. LANDLESS LORDS AND BARONETS. 5d fanbltss fa As nnb ^iironcts. " It is incumbent on the high and generous spirit of an ancient nation to cherish those sacred gi-oves that surround their ancestral mansions, and to perpetuate them to their descendants." Washington Irving. The separatiou of Title from Estate has been, as I have aheady suggested, one of the principal causes of the destruction of noble families. For this evil, I have ventured to prescribe, as a remedy, the endowment of each hereditary honour with a certain landed property. Every title might have affixed to it a territorial designa- tion, as, for instance, "Egerton of Tatton," "AVil- loughby de Eresby," " Howard de Walden," " Talbot of Malahide," " Lytton of Knebworth," &c., and the land, thus named, might be declared inalienable from the dignity for all time to come. Even in the Anglo-Saxon period, the possession of land was essential to dignity, and a very early law declared that if a churl had " a helm, and a coat of mail, and a sword ornamented with gold," and had not five hides of land, he remained of churlish degree, but if he had the land also, he was " thane worthy," and eligible for the highest offices. It is marvellous how the possession of ever so small a landed interest keeps a family together for century after century. A statement made by the late Lord Palmer- ston, corroborates this assertion. In a speech to a 54 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. Hampshii'e audience, at the opening of a local railway, his loi-dship observed, that there was a small estate in the New Forest, which had belonged to the lime-burner PURKIS, who picked up the body of Rufus, and carried the royal corpse in his humble cart to Winchester, and which had come down, through an unmterrupted male line of ancestry, to a worthy yeoman of the same name, now resident on the exact same Farm, near Stoney Cross, on the Ringwood Road, eight miles from Romsey. This permanence of English society is attributable as well to the national character as to the national law of primogeniture, which, to a great extent, secures the landed estate to the chief of the family. Some time ago " the Times " discussed this subject : — "It matters not," says the journalist, "how or where we got om: patriarchal traditions, but they are deep in the blood, and centmies would not wear them out. The whole of a family conspire to create a head. Temporary inconvenience may betray itself in murmurs, but all naturally fall into the hereditary arrangement. The childless leave the property generally to the one who can best keep up the family. They feel it safest and most profitable to invest what they leave in the eldest son of the eldest. Experience amply confirms the wisdom of this course. The eldest son keeps up the place, makes his house the general rendezvous, sustains the social consideration of the family, links it with other families equal or higher in the social scale, — in a word, fights the life battle of his race. He is the chief His one name has more influence than twenty smaller ones. If the juniors of his race have less than their deserts, their deserts are measui-ed by his position, and their LANDLESS LORDS AND BARONETS. 55 inferiority to him is tlieir strong, though silent, claim to a share in the prizes of life. When it is objected that the estate is settled on the elder, and the youngers are thrown upon the public institutions of the country, that expresses a universal fact ; but the fact is, the youngers get what they do get by the aid of the elder, and by the effect of his position. Instead of the estate being frittered away in subdivisions, its concentration makes it the nucleus of increase. The vitality of the seed is imiujured ; it germinates, and bears fruit. Thus small families become great. Were it once the custom to divide landed property as soon as it had been got together, it would never be collected. Nobody would buy out every smaller man about him at an extravagant price to make a property for the mere pleasure of dividing it neatly in his will, or leaving his son to do so." If some such system as this endowment of Titles of Honour, which seems tome so deshable, had been adopted in past times, the Earl of Perth and Melfort would now enjoy a portion at least, of the historic inheritance of the Drummonds; the late Earl of Huntingdon, the male repre- sentative of the famous house of Hastings, would not have been restored to a landless title ; the Earl of Bucking- hamshire might still be seated at the old Manor-House of Blicklmg ; Viscount Mountmorres would yet have his home at Castle Morres, and Viscount Gort at his princely castle of Loughcooter ; Lord Audley would have a share of the broad acres won by his chivalrous ancestors ; Lord Kingsland, the waiter at the Dawson Street Hotel, would not have been a pauper, wholly dependent on the Crown's bounty, and Lord Aylmer, of Balrath, would not be driven to fight the battle of Hfe in the distant 56 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. colony of Canada; the heir of the Castletons* wouhl not have sunk to the trade of breeches-making; a fragment, at all events, of the Tristernagh estate would yet give local position to the old Baronetical family of Piers, and a remnant of the extensive Car- bery possessions of the Moores would have saved their representative, the present Sir Richard Emanuel Moore, Bart., from the necessity of holding the situation of third class Turnkey at Spike Island ;t the Baronetcy of Cox would not have come, despoiled of its fine estate of Castletown, to be the empty inheritance of poor Sir Hawtry Cox, great-great-grandson and male repre- sentative of the celebrated Sir Richard Cox, Lord Chancellor and twice a Lord Justice of Ireland ; and the Baronetcy of D'Oyly, of Chiselhampton, would not have been lost to sight and now be supposed to exist in a labourer at Banbury ; the story' of the Baronets Echlin and Norwich would not have to be related ; * At the beginning of the pi'eseut century the heir of the eminent and ancient family of Castleton, and the twelfth baronet of the name in succession, was a breeches-maker at Lynn, in Norfolk. " The Universal Magazine," of 1810, thus records his decease : — " Died at Lynn, aged fifty-eight, Mr. Edward Castleton. He was the last lineal decendant of Sir William Castleton, of Hingham, Norfolk, who was created a Baronet in 1G41 ; the family and title are therefore now become extinct. He died a bachelor, and never assumed the baronetcy. He for many years followed the very humble employment of breeches-maker at Lynn, but latterly lived on a small patrimonial inheritance." t Sir Richard Moore's case is most lamentable : The unfortunate Baronet lost the situation of turnkey and wandered from Spike Island to Dublin, where he raised a few pounds by the sale of a work written l)y Lady Moore, his wife. At last he became destitute, and a few years ago was to be seen, in abject want, in the streets of Dublin ! THE LORD KIRKUCDBRIGIIT. 57 Lord Kirkcudbright ueed not have stood beliind the counter of his glove shop in Edinburgh ; and that noble- hearted gentleman, Mr. Surtees, the historian of Dur- ham, would have lost the opportunity of takmg from the Avorkhouse of Chester-le-Street old Sir Thomas Conyers, the last Baronet of Horden; Sir Anthony Mayney, Bart., the male heir of one of the most eminent royalist families in Kent mined by the Civil War, would not have perished of actual want, nor his brother have committed suicide for the same cause ; Sir Samuel Morland, to whom the invention of the steam- engine is by some ascribed, would not have been con- strained in his old age to implore the interference of Archbishop Tenison with the King for some little help to support him ; and Sir Hugh Middleton, the projector of the famous New River Company, would not have left his descendants houseless and impoverished. I will instance briefly a few cases in illustration of my subject, and the reader will find others scattered through these volumes : — I. THE LORD KIRKCUDBRIGHT. " This is the state of man ; to-day he puts forth The tender leaves of hope, to-morrow blossoms, And bears his blushing honors thick upon him : The third day comes a frost, a killing frost ; And — when he thinks, good easy man, full surely His greatness is a rij^ening — nips his root, And then he falls." — Shakespeare. The Maclellans were of great antiquity in the South of Scotland, and held the office of sheriff of Galloway in 58 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. ancient times. Duncan Maclellan is mentioned in a charter of Alexander IL, 1217, and Gilbert Maclellan in a charter of King David II. There were, according to Crawford, no fewer than twelve knights of the name, and there were many other Maclellans distinguished in history. Sir Robert Maclellan, one of the gentlemen of the bedchamber to James VI. and Charles I., was created a peer by the title of Lord Kirkcudbright, 25th May, 1633, to him and his lieu's male, bearing his name and arms. The fourth possessor of the title, William, Lord Kirkcudbright, died under age, and without issue, in 1669, when the whole estate was carried off by his father's creditors ; so that when the succession opened to his cousin-german, John Maclellan, there being nothing left to support the dignity, neither he, nor his brother and heir James, ever assumed the title, and the Lords Kirkcudbright do not appear as sitting in Parlia- ment from the time of John, the tliu'd Lord. But the right of the collateral heir male was so universally known and acknowledged, that at the Union this Peerage was considered as a subsisting one, and as such preserved on the Roll. On several occasions, the votes of the Lords Kirkcud- bright were subsequently admitted at the election of Scotch representative peers, and in 1741, William Mac- lellan, Lord Kirkcudbright, recorded his, at the general election. Despite, however, of his lordly character, the poor Peer followed the humble occupation of a glover, and for many years used to stand in the lobby of the Assembly Rooms in the Old Town, Edinburgh, selling gloves to the gay. frequenters of the ball ; for, according SIR PETER HEYMAX, BARONET. 59 to the fashion of the time, a new pair was required for every fresh dance. " The only occasion on which he absented himself from his post, was at the ball following the election of a representative peer; then, and then only, did he doff his apron, and assuming the garb of a gentleman, asso- ciate with the company, many of whom he had served with gloves during the rest of the year. The glover-Lord's son, mindful of the pristine glories of his race, entered on a more ambitious career than his father, attained the rank of Colonel in the army, and, not satisfied with anything short of legal recognition, submitted his Peerage claim to the House of Lords, by whose decision he was declared seventh Lord Kirkcud- bright on 3rd of May, 1773. II. SIR PETER HEYMAN, BARONET. *' The race of yore, How are they blotted from the things that be !" — Scott. If the scope and limits of my present work permitted, I should like to trace the fortunes of a Kentish baronetical family — Heyman of Somerfield — from its uprise in distant ages to its decadence in our own. I could " tell the tale as it was told to me," not by gossiping grand- dame or garrulous grey-beard, but by more trustworthy witnesses. I could make my appeal to deeds, wills, and family letters, extracts from parochial registers, transcripts of epitaphs, iiibbings of brasses, and other 60 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. such like evidence that are found, even to overflowing, in the muniment chest of a friendly Doctor Dryasdust. His silent witnesses adduce imimpeachable evidence. They largely add to om- knowledge of the family, and they correct, in many material places, the statements found in the visitations, county histories, and divers genealogical publications : biit I must confine myself now to a few general particulars. Like the family itself, the family nomenclature suffered loss by the lapse of time. In its original guise of Aynion, or Hamon (as it was other^vise written), it carried with it the air of old romaunt and poesy,* and it was a personal designation like Raoul, Baudoum, and Goscelin. Its bearer was then, of necessity, particu- larized either by his lands, as " de Creve-coeur," or by his office, as " le Senechal," or by his outward mien as "le bel," "le gros," or "le blond," or by his mental capacity as " le sage," or " le simple." When patro- nymics were found to be desirable, the simplest consisted in the prefix of " fitz," so as to indicate filiation ; and the name appeared as "FitzHamon," or, as Thierry, in his Histoire de la Conquete, has it, " FitzAymon." And when usage, in its capriciousness, discontinued the pre- * The jongleurs, the early chroniclers, and the writers of chival- resque romances continually employ this designation for their heroes. Who has not heard of Aymon, count of Tremoude, in Flanders ; of the valor of his four sons in the defence of Malines and Brabant ; of the feats of their war-horse, Bayard, who browsed in the fertile plains watered by the Dyle, and who left, for the eternal confusion of gainsayers, the imprint of his hoof upon a rock in the forest of Soignies ? But why speak more about these things, when the reader can consult for himself the well-known " Histoire des quatre fils Aymons, trcs Nobles et tres-vaillaus Chevaliers?" SIR PETER HEYMAN, BARONET. 61 fix, the sire-name passed into a surname, with various modifications of its orthography, as are copiously illus- trated in the documents that lie around me. Of the antiquity of the Heymans there is no dubious- ness. When, in 1783, the fourth baronet, Sir Peter Heyman, of Windsor, put forth an advertisement, which I shall give fully in its right place, he claimed to be " descended from a very ancient family that came to England with the Norman Conqueror in 1066, several of which were in parliament, and held places of honour and trust under the Crown." Wotton, writing in 1741, described them as " of known antiquity for many hundred years past, having had honours and good estates m the counties of Kent and Essex, and in the city of London, belonging to them ;" and he further made mention of " their being of extensive charitable dispositions." In truth the philanthropy and benevolence of the Hejonans ought to have saved them from rum. Four himdi'ed years ago, a Heyman founded the Tenterden free school. A century later, a Heyman gave a perpetual Exhibition at Canterbury and Cambridge ; and another of the family made a donation, for charita- ble purposes, of a considerable estate in Kent. These Heymans were, most assuredly, good and worthy gentle- men. In Plantagenet times, they purchased the manors of Harenge and Otterpole, and in the reign of Henry VIII. a fan- and well-portioned heiress, Elizabeth Till, brought the fine estate of Somerfield in marriage to Peter Heyman, Esq., who became gentleman of the bed- chamber to Edward VI., and whose descendant, Sir Henry Heyman, of Somerfield, son of the famous Su- Peter Heyman, Knight, ]\I.P. for Hythe, was created one 62 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. of King Charles the Fu'st's Baronets, in atonement, per- haps, of the wrongs inflicted on his father for his strong Parliamentary sympathies. At this period, the Hey- mans had attained the highest coimty position, and enjoyed universal esteem; but a change soon came over the scene. Sir Peter Heyman, the second Baronet of Somerfield, and Sir Henry's son and successor, having involved himself in debt, was constrained to sell the whole of the family estates ; and about the close of the reign of Charles II. he obtained a private Act of Parliament for that purpose. The manor of Clavertigh, which had been conferred on liis ancestor, Peter Heyman, by King Edward VI., he sold to his cousin. Sir Edward Honywood, Bart., of Evington ; and Somer- field, along with the manors of Sellinge, Harenge, Limne, and Wilmington, he conveyed to Thomas Gomeldon, Esq. He died at Canterbury 5th October, 1723, and was buried in the parish of St. Alphage in that city. His eldest son, Sii' Bartholomew Heyman, succeeded as the third Baronet. This gentleman was born in 1690, and when a boy he was so unfortunate as to have his eyesight impaired by an accident from gun- powder, so that he was rendered unfit for the army, for which it was intended to bring him up. The aliena- tion by his father of the hereditary property left him without the means of supporting his position; and in February, 1737-38 he was made one of the Poor Knights of Windsor, He married Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Nelson, of Sandwich, Kent, merchant, a relative of the pious Robert Nelson; and dying at Windsor 9th June, 1742, he was bmied in Saint SIR PETER HEYMAN, BARONET. 63 George's Chapel, beneath a stone, which is thus in- scribed : — " In memory of Su' Bartholomew Heyman, late of the county Kent, Baronet, who was one of His Majesty's Poor Knights of this place, and died the 9th of June, 1742, aged 52 years." His only child. Sir Peter Heyman, who was born in 1720, served for a short time in the Royal Navy. In his seventeenth year he married Miss Kempe, of Pl}Tnouth, and by her he had three childi-en, who, with theii' mother, predeceased him. In 1783 he was so reduced m cu-cumstances as^to make an appeal to the public for relief; and he put forth the advertisement following : — " Under the Patronage of several Noble Personages of the first Distinction, For the Benefit of an English Baronet, At Pasqnalli's Great Eooms, Tottenham St., Tottenham Court Eoad, On Thursday, the 22nd May instant, at Noon, will be A Grand Concert of Vocal and Instrumental Music by the most Capital Performers. With Eefreshments, Tickets 10s. 6d. each. " Su' Peter Heyman, of Windsor, Baronet, for whose benefit the concert is to be, is descended from a very ancient family that came to England with the Norman Conqueror in 1066, several of which were in Parliament, and held places of honour and trust under the Crown. His Lady is descended from a baronet, and a family equally ancient and respectable. As his family inheri- tance was dissipated by his grandfather, he only succeeded to the dignity (a creation so early as 1641), which he hath enjoyed nearly forty years ; and it being 64 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. unaccompanied with any property is tlie cause he now suffers real distress, which is rendered more poignant and severe by his age and infirmities. He earnestly entreats your kuid notice and protection on this very useful occasion, which he will ever most gratefully remember. You will be attended to-morrow by a friend of Sir Peter Heyman, with a list of subscribers, and more tickets, should you be disposed to give it support. 20 May, 1783." Yet seven years, and the aged and distressed baronet was mercifully taken out of a world of struggling and privation. He died, in July, 1790, at the house of John Hale, Esq., of Hertford, aged seventy ; and the title thereupon devolved upon his cousin, the Rev. Sh Henry Pix Heyman, Avho was Vicar of Fressingfield- cum-Withersdale, in Suffolk, where he died, after a brief illness, 20th November, 1808, aged 42, leaving no issue ; and the baronetcy, that had lasted for a period of 167 years, became extinct. But a member of the old house — a female — lived on after this for nearly half a century, " the world forget- ting, by the world forgot." The last Baronet had a sister, named Mary, who, with her mother, Elizabeth, daughter of Hatch Underwood, Esq., resided with Sir Henry Pix Heyman up to the time of his decease. On that event, they removed to Ilarleston, co. Kent, where in the fulness of years the mother entered into rest. She left a sister, who became the grandmother and god- mother of the wife of the Rev. E. J. Shepperd, the late esteemed Rector of Luddesdown, Kent; and Mary Hey- man, having discharged all filial duties, removed, on her relative's invitation, to Luddesdown, where she spent ECHLIN OF CLONAGH. 65 the declining years of her hfe. There seems to me a «oothing melancholy in associating with the hallowed influences of a clergyman's home, both in the case of tlie last Baronet and of his sister, the passing away of this ancient family. The Gentleman s Magazine for January 1858, p. 104, contains the following notice : — " 1854, Oct. 31st, at Luddesdown Rectory, Kent, aged t)3, Mary Heyman, the last descendant of the family of Heyman, of Somerfield, in the parish of Sellinge, Baronets. The collateral representation of this ancient house now devolves on Matthew Hayman, of South Abbey, Youghal, co. Cork, Esq., J.P." Since this was announced, Matthew Hayman, of South Abbey, has died, and his hne is represented by his son .xnd heir, my gifted and accomplished friend, the E.ev. Samuel Hayman, Rector of Doneraile, co.. Cork. m. SIR FREDERICK ECHLIN, BART. " Pity the sorrows of a poor old man." The Echlms have been settled in Ireland since the reign of James I. The Right Rev. Dr. Henry Echini, migrating from Stafford, in England, became Bishop of Down and Connor, in Ireland, from 1613 to 1635. In the latter year he met with a violent death at Balrud- dery, en route to Dublin. His grandson, Su' Henry Eclilin, Knight, was second Baron of the Exchequer in Ireland, and obtained a Baronetcy 17th October, 1621. 2 F (56 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. Baron Echlin's eldest son, Robert, represented the borough of Newry, 1695, in the Irish parhament. He married Penelope, daughter of Sir Maurice Eustace, Knight, and sister of the Lord Chancellor Eustace. His grandson, Sn Henry Echlin, the third baronet, died suddenly, 1799, when the title devolved on Sir James, the fourth baronet, grandson of the Rev. Dr. Echlin, Vicar of St. Catherine's, Dublin. This gentleman married Jane, daughter of Cambre Echlin, Esq., by whom he had Sir Frederick Echlin, the fifth and present baronet. So far the " Peerage and Baronetage " (Edition of 1849) presents a record of this ancient family; but, beneath the surface, there lies a story of melancholy interest, not told in that memorial of the nobility. It is to be found in the records of an equity suit, and the letter of a good Samaritan, the worthy Rector of Car- bury, in the county of Kildare. To pursue the details of loans and mortgages, and their consequences, equity suits and bills of costs, though all-absorbing in mterest to the parties concerned, would be an ungrateful task, and anything but an agreeable intellectual treat to my readers. The curious in those matters may gratify their taste by consulting " The Pleadings " m the di'eary cause of Thomas v. Echlin. That famous suit com- menced in the Irish Equity Court of Exchequer in 1827, and ended in 1850. It is needless to go into particulars ; the litigation went on year after year ; the lawyers en- joyed it amazmgly; they chuckled and punned, and cracked jokes about it. To them it was food and raiment ; to the Echlin family, death and destitution. Sir James Echlin expu-ed mider the torture, and his ECHLIN OF CLONAGH. 67 son, the fifth baronet, inheritor of the family estate, Clonagh, in the county of KHdare, witnessed the suit ghde from the defanct Exchequer into the Hving gulf of Cliancery, and he lived to see it end there: — his estate sold, and himself a pauper! Two letters are now lying before me, which present so vivid a picture of misery in the person of the victim of Irish Equity proceedings, and of the fall of an ancient house, that I do not hesitate to give them in preference to any pre- pared narrative of my own ; " 21, Upper Memon Street, Dublin, May 2nd, 1860. "My dear Sir Bernard, " When I was last year staying in the county Kildare, a poor old man was pointed out to me at Eden- deny as the representative of the Echlius, Baronets, and the actual mheritor of their title. No doubt was ex- pressed on the point. He has been receiving relief from the parochial charities, and has given up earning his maintenance by manual labour, being now too feeble. He has a son, heir to the Baronetcy, for whom an effort has been made to procm-e a good education, and I am informed that the Queen, heaiing of the case, contributed forty pounds to aid that object. The title I do not now find in the Baronetage, though it was in the edition of 1849. When one considers the high offices which iu former times the Echlius filled in Church and State, this is certainly a remarkable reverse of fortune. Faithfully yours, "John Ribton Garstin." F 2 68 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. The other letter is from tlie Rev. Francis Hewson. Vicar of Carbury, county of Kildare. "Vicarage, Carbury, June 1st, 1860. " Sir, — I have been unable sooner to reply to your letter respecting Sir Frederick Echlin, as I had to ascer- tain before doing so some particulars which I was not quite sure about. " The present Sir Frederick Echlin is the son of Sir James Echlin. His mother was a Miss Echlin. He has a brother, Fenton Echlin, who is married, and has five children, three boys. He had a sister, who died without leaving any children surviving. Their grandfather, Henry Echlin, Avas a half-witted man, who resided near Clonard, in this barony. He was, as I have been in- formed, on visiting terms with the nobility and gentry of the county. He left three sons. The only one of them who married was the father of the present Baronet. By an expensive lawsuit, and other causes, Sir James Echlin was latterly in such reduced and embarrassed circumstances, that he quite lost caste, and was unable to give his children any education. Sir Frederick can neither read nor write, and his brother is also quite an illiterate and uneducated man. The baronet is, like his grandfather, half-witted, but a very well-conducted and amiable man. He still preserves the traces of aristo- cracy in his appearance, though he has never mixed in any society but that of the labouring class. He is now Tipwards of seventy, and utterly destitute, his only means of support being two shillings and sixpence a week, which I allow him out of our collection for the poor, together with occasional donations from Chi'istian ECHLIN OF CLONAGH. 69 persons in this neighbourhood, and contributions which I get for him from ray friends. About thirteen years ago I received forty pounds from the Queen for him, in answer to a memorial that was forwarded to her — ten pounds being fi-omHer Majesty's privy purse, and thu'ty from the royal bounty fund. He shared a considerable portion of this with his brother and family, who were at the time in the greatest want, and the remainder I took charge of, and doled out to him, at his own request, at the rate of sis shillings a week. I need not say that the sum has been expended long smce. I do not know a fitter case than poor Sir F. Echlin's for either the Con- cordatura Fund, or, what would be still better, admission into some hospital. But all my efforts in his behalf have hitherto been fruitless, as his case is not considered eligible for Wilson's Hospital, and there was no vacancy when I applied on the list of persons for the Concor- datum Fund. If you would kindly help me, or put me in the way of obtaining some pro\'ision for the declining- years of this amiable poor Baronet, I shall feel very thankful. He attends om' church, and dines iu our house, regularly every Sunday. His brother Feuton resides in the village of Kilmeague, where he supports himself by labom-, and the assistance of Mr. Preston, the clergyman, who has been very kind to him. "I shall feel very happy to fm-nish you with any further information in my power respecting Sir F. Echlin, should you require it. " I now remain, " Your very faithful servant, "Francis Hewson." 70 VICISSITUDES OF FAJULIES. This simple and touching nan-ative, given in the first edition of this work, produced its effect. Another letter from Mr. Hewson, dated eight years later, 10th August, 1868, informs me that old Sir Frederick Echlin is still alive, but has now more comforts about him, in consequence of a pension of £26 a-year from Greatham Hospital, Stockton-on-Tees, a pension, Mr. Hewson says, which the publication of this story was the means of obtaining. The Governors of that Institution pitied and relieved the sorrows of the poor old man. The Baronet's brother Fenton continues to reside at Kilmeague, deriv- ing his only support from contributions fi'om his sons, very deserving young men, one a Policeman, another a private in the Life Guards, and the third a Footman. " Forsan miseros meliora sequentur." IV. NORWICH, OF BRAMPTON. "... the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows, and miseries." Shakespeare. This family held a high place on the roll of Northamp- tonshire genealogy. For a long time they were lords of the manor of Brampton, and for generations they formed high and distinguished alliances. It is said of the Nor- wiclies, they " rose and fell by the smiles of woman." Margaret Holt, the heiress of Brampton Manor, gave her heart and hand to Simon de Norwich, and endowed him with her mansion and lands. His grandson, another Simon de Norwich, was equally fortunate, having NORWICH OF BRAMPTON. 71 acquii'ed large estates in Leicester and Northampton by- marriage witli Alice, only daughter and heiress of Richard Christian, of Harborough, and Simon Norwich, liis son, became enriched by the estates of his cousin, Sir Richard Holt, which descended to him as heir. The importance of the Norwiches of Brampton m the early part of the reign of James I., appears from monu- mental tablets still remaining in Brampton chiu'ch. On the south side, over the chancel, a niche in the wall contains the effigies of a knight in armour, and a lady behind him, both kneeling in the attitude of prayer. These figm'es are surmounted with the family arms of Norwich, and beneath are two black tablets, containing the following inscription : — " Here resteth in peace Sir Charles Norwich, some time Lord of this towne of Brampton, in the county of Northampton, Knight, sonne and heire of Simon Norwich, Esq., and of Grace, his wi^e, the eldest daughter of Edward Griffin, of Dmgley, in the county of Northampton, Esq., and sometime Attorney-General to that most excellent prmcess Marye. Hee was married to Ann Watson, eldest daughter of Su* Edward Watson, of Rockingham, in the countye aforesaid, by whom he had issue Sh* Simon Norwich Knighte, his onlye sonne and heu-e, who in testimony of his love and dutie erected this monument. He died the 4th of May, Anno Dominy 1605." Under tliis inscription, beneath the floor, is the tomb, and in the chancel in front of the rails are two flat stones inlaid with brasses. A lady, full length, is represented at the side of the knight. " And there, in marble, hard, and cold, The Knight with all his train behold. 72 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES, " Outstretched together are exprest He and my lady fair, With hands uplifted on the breast, In attitude of prayer : Long-visaged, clad in armour, he — With ruffled arm and bodice she. The Norwiclies advanced in dignity, and in the reign of Charles I., A.D. 1641, Sir John Norwich, of Brampton, was created a Baronet. His first wife was Anne, daughter of Sir Roger Smith, Knight, of Echnonthorpi in Leicestershire, and his second, Mary, daughter of Sir Hemy Atkins, of Cheshunt. The Baronet's eldest son and successor. Sir Roger Norwich, became M.P. for Northamptonshire and a Deputy Lieutenant, holding at the same time the office of Verderer of the Forest. But the policy of James II. not according with the views of Sir Roger, he surrendered his office and retu-ed from Court, finding in the seclusion of Brampton Manor and the society of a charming wife, Catherine, daughter of Sir Hatton Fermor, Knight, of Easton, and widow of Sir John Shuckburgh, Bart., of Schuckburgh, co. War- wick, and his children, that happiness and enjoyment which the glittering pageant of a falling court could not bestow. His son and successor, Sir Erasmus Norwich^ recovered his social rank, and added to his inheritance, by a double marriage, his first wife being the Lady Anabella Savage, younger daughter of Thomas, third Earl of Rivers, and the second, Jane, daughter and heir ot William Adams, Esq., and eventually heiress of her uncle. Sir Charles Adams, Bart. And now comes the turning point in the fortunes of the house of Norwich. They had arrived at considerable NORWICH OF BRAMPTON. 73 eminence, possessed large estates, had a grand old hall at Brampton, and had formed alliances with distin- guished families. " The Norwiches rose and fell by the smiles of woman," accordmg to the old tradition of Brampton, and there would seem to have Leen some foundation m truth for it. Sir William Norwich, Bart., the syn and successor of Sir Erasmus, never married. He lived the Hfe of a preux chevalier — hunted, shot, and gamed — sipped honey-dew fi-om the sweetest flowers of society. A voluptuary, he lived only for pleasm-e. A selfish, egotistical life it was. But what cared he, a sen- sualist? So that he enjoyed himself, the world's opinion was as nought. And he drank the cup of pleasure to the di-egs. He lost his estates, so the story goes, at card- playing, with the famous Sarah, Duchess of Marl- borough, wife of the hero of Blenheim ; and Brampton Manor passed to the Spencer family. An outcast from the home of his ancestors, he retired to Harborough, where he died, 1741. His remains were deposited with his kindred in Brampton Church; but no scul^jtured tablet is inscribed with his name — no mm-al epitaph records his life or his fate. The title was borne by another member of the family, but without sufficient means to support its dignity. The widow of the late Sir Samuel Norwich, the lineal repre- sentative of his house, resided at Kettering, and earned a livelihood by washing. She was very poor and very ignorant, not having received any education : she died 21st June, 1860, aged upwards of eighty. Her husband, Sir Samuel Norwich, for many years a sawyer in Kettering, was the eldest son of Sir John, who died in the parish workhouse. This poor scion of the old race 74 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. had, I am told, the manners and bearing of a perfect gentleman. His father, also named John, was a. pen- sioner under the Montagu family. He was the brother, I have been informed, of Sir William, who had lost the Brampton estate by gambling. The present heir of the family. Sir William Norwich, is now, I understand, in America, where he is said to be doing well. V. THE LAST VISCOUNT KINGSLAND. " Lady Duberly. — Consider, by the strangest accident you have been raised to neither more nor less than a Peer of the Reahn. " Lord Duberly. — Oh ! 'twas the strangest accident, my Lady, on the face of the universal yearth." Colman; "The Heir at Law." Few countries in Europe possess an aristocracy as ancient or as distinguished as that established by the Anglo- Normans in Ireland. The FitzGeralds of Kildare and Desmond, the Butlers of Ormonde, the De Burghs of Clanricarde, the De Courcys of Kinsale, the Talbots of Malahide, the St. Lawrences of Howth, and the Barne- walls of Meath, were no unworthy rivals of the Mowbrays, and Bohuns, and Mortimers, and Beau- champs, and Bouchiers, and Nevilles, and Howards of England. The Barnewalls possessed in early times vast estates in the counties of Meath and Dublin, and were among the greatest of the Anglo-Norman settlers. Their present chief. Sir Reginald Barnewall, eighth Baronet of Crickstown Castle, is the head of the senior THE LAST VISCOUNT KINGSL.iND. 75 Hue of this ancient house. The junior branches of Trimleston and Turvey were both ennobled — the former in 14G1, when Sii' Robert Bamewall (second son of Sir Christopher Barnewall, of Crickstown, Chief Justice of Ireland), was created Baron Trimleston ; and the latter, in 1646, when Nicholas Barnewall, of Tm-vey, was made Viscount Kmgsland. His Lordship's wife was the daughter and co-heiress of Henry, Earl of Kil- dare, and widow of Rory O'Donnell, Earl of Tyrconnel ; and the descendants of this marriage continued to be a family of high connection and importance among the peers of Ireland until the severance of land from title left the last heir dependent on the bounty of the Crown for his subsistence. The letter which I annex, from my friend, the late Mr. R. Hitchcock, Master of the Exchequer in Ireland, tells graphically the Kingsland story : — "Dublin, 26th Sept., 1862. "My dear Sir Bernard, " When the late Lord Kingsland established his claim to the Peerage I was a mere boy ; but as my father was the solicitor, to whose enterprise, talent, and pecimiary support he was indebted for his success, he was very much at our house during the progress of the proceedings, and his extraordinary story became as familiar to the familv 'as household words.' I am therefore enabled from recollection, although half a century has elapsed since the time of which I speak, to give you an outline of his antecedents. " He was born in some obscure part of Dublin, and ' educated ' in the vicinity of Castle Market, where it was 76 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. said he made his ' fii'st appearance in public ' in the ' onerous ' part of a basket boy, his success in which character led to his promotion in the course of time to the more elevated position of under-waiter at a tavern in Dawson Street. It subsequently appeared, that although in so lowly a sphere, he entertained a dreamy notion, derived from family tradition, that, as he bore the name of the Kingsland family, he might, by some turn of the wheel of fortune, become entitled to its honours and estates. The Lord Kingsland of that time was a lunatic, residing in an asylum in France, and was under the guardianship of his relative, Lord Trimleston. A false rumour of that Lord's death reached Matthew Barnewall while he was officiating at the tavern in Dawson Street, and acting upon the traditionary notion of heirship, under the advice of his then companions and friends, Matthew mustered a strong force of the employes of the taverns and the market, which had been the school of his early training, and with that formidable array, proceeded forthwith to Turvey, the family mansion, of which he took instant possession. There he cut down timber, lighted bonfires, and for some short time indulged in the exercise of rude hospitality to the companions who had escorted him, and the rabble which he collected in the neighbom-hood. His rejoicings were, however, but short-lived. Lord Trimleston, the guardian of the lunatic Peer, applied to the Court o* Chancery, and poor Matthew was committed to Newgate under an attachment for contempt. While in the prison, he was advised to apply to my father for his legal advice and assistance, through which he was after some time set at liberty. At that period he was quite unable THE LAST VISCOUNT KINGSLAND. 77 to trace his pedigree, and being utterly illiterate — Tinable even to write his name — he could give but little assistance to his legal adviser in testing the justice of the claim which, in the midst of his almost Cimmerian darkness, he still insisted upon to the right of succession to the Kingsland Peerage. My father, however, being a man of sanguine temperament as well as superior talents, saw that there was something in what the poor fellow said, and took up the case with such ardour that he soon discovered a clue, which led him step by step through the difficulties which lay in the way of tracing a pedigree amidst so much ignorance, until at length there was but one missing link in the chain ; and this was, after much research, supplied by the evidence of one Lucinda Ambridge, a woman upwards of a hundred years old. In the meantime the lunatic Peer actxmlly died; and when Matthew's pedigree was completed, and the proofs forthcoming, the claim was brought before the House of Lords, and after due investigation by the Committee for Privileges, admitted. " Dming the progress of tracing the pedigree, and pending the decision of the House of Lords, the expect- ant Peer was clothed and supported by my father, and was frequently at our house. He was at first very modest, and could scarcely be enticed beyond the mat at the hall door, and when brought into a room he sat, as such men do, on the least possible edge of a chair. By degrees, however, he grew in confidence, and being a good-humoured man, his conversation was very amusing, what Lord Duberly would call his ' cakalology,' and Dr. Pangloss his 'cacology,' being extremely rich. It would not be easy to do justice in description to his 78 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. exultation and pride on being acknowledged by the House of Lords. But liis_ elevation was accompanied by a sad drawback. The property which should have gone mth the title, consisting, I believe, chiefly of church ad- vowsons, had lapsed to the Crown, owing to some want of conformity to the Established Church on the part of some of the ancestors, and could not be recovered- A pension of five hundi-ed pounds a-year was granted to the new Lord Viscount Kingsland, and Baron of Tuiwey; but, alas ! my father never was paid anything for his outlay and professional laboiu-. All he ever got was the eclat, and the satisfaction of having achieved so great a triumph. " Lord Kingsland was married in early life to a woman in his then class, who died before his elevation to the Peerage, leaving only one child, a son, who lived to be the Hon. Mr. Barnewall, and heir-apparent to the Peerage, but died within a few years after his father had established his claim. After some time, Lord Kingsland married a Miss Bradshaw, an English lady, but died without issue, and consequently the title is extmct, although it is said, and probably with truth, that an hen- could be found amongst the poorest classes in Dublm. " And now, my dear Su- Bernard, I have given you a mass, out of which you may glean what will answer your purpose. The papers relating to the case, which I remember in my father's oflSce, have all been lost, and I can now write only fi'om memory ; but no doubt the piinted petition, pedigree, and proofs, could be foimd among the records of the House of Lords. They Avould be interesting to you, and Avould show you what COLE OF BRANCEPETH CASTLE. 79 wonderful ingenuity and industry were exercised in the case. "Yours sincerely, "R. Hitchcock." To Mr. Hitchcock's naiTative, I will only add that Viscount Kingsland mamed for his third wife a Miss Julia Wniis, daughter of a medical general-practitioner at Kennmgton, and died at his father-in-law's house in 1833 : his widow, Viscountess Kingsland, survived in such great distress that she styled herself simply Mrs. Kingsland, and earned by her needle a precarious and miserable sustenance. She is still livuig, I believe, at all events was two years ago, when she wrote to me m her wretchedness under the name of Mrs. Kingsland. VI. COLE OF BRANCEPETH CASTLE. " When mirth is full and free, ' Some sudden gloom shall be ; When haughty power mounts high, The Watcher's axe is nigh. All growth has bound ; when gi'eatest foimd, It hastes to die." J, H. Newman. If I were writing on the Vicissitudes of the Historic Seats of England, the narrative would illustrate, more strikiagly than any other I could adduce, the ruin that has been brought on ancient and noble houses by two destructive agencies, om* English law of attainder, and the power vested in the heir of some one generation or 80 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. another of alienating the whole hereditary estates of his family. Perhaps no case would be so much in point as a history of the famous Castle of Brancepeth, in Durham. Of all the feudal fortresses of England, whether we regard their venerable antiquity, the rank and authority of their early possessors, or the wealth and taste which have been, in modern times, expended upon them, there are few which can claim precedence over this home of the Nevilles. Built, in all probability, temp. Stephen, by the Buhners, Lords of Sheriff Hutton, in Yorkshire, it was conveyed, after a few generations, by an heiress, Emina De Bulmer, to her husband, Geoffrey De Neville. Thus originated the illustrious House of Neville of Brancepeth, in which this grand old castle continued down to the time of Elizabeth, when the last Neville of Brancepeth, Charles, Earl of Westmorland, "the noblest Erie in the north countrie," by his participation in " the Rising of the North," forfeited both Raby and Brancepeth, and was di-iven into exile, where he died landless and penniless, in 1601. His story I have already told. Brancepeth, thus lapsed to the Crown, was granted by James I. to his favourite, Robert Can*, who was created Baron Brancepeth and Earl of Somerset ; but his at- tainder again forfeited the property, and it was sold in 1 GSG to Ralph Cole, Esq., of Newcastle. This family of Cole rose almost, per saltum, from the smithy to the baronetage ! Towards the close of the sixteenth century, there was living in the town of Gates- head one James Cole, who worked as a smith there ; and within less than fifty years after, his children and grand- COLE OF BRANCEPETH CASTLE. 81 children were amongst the most affluent of the resident gentlemen of the county of Durham, Thomas Cole, his son, dying worth an immense sum; and Ralph Cole, his grandson, being able to pm-chase the Nevilles' lordly castle of Brancepeth. The smith's descendants ranked now amongst the leading gentlemen of the Palatinate ; formed alliances with such families as the Liddells of Ravensworth, and the Foulis' of Ingleby ; and were raised to a baronetcy as "Cole of Brancepeth," in 1640. The second Baronet, Su- Ralph Cole, represented the city of Durham in Par- liament, and commanded the Durham Regiment of Militia ; he had a great love for the fine arts, and is included by Walpole in his Catalogue of Painters. His master was no less a personage than the great Vandyke ; but the taste proved an expensive one, and resulted in great injury to his fortune. After him, the family fell as suddenly as it rose : the descent from the lordly halls of Brancejjeth to the mean room of a lowly house in Durham was as rapid as the ascent from the smithy : the grandchildren of the connoisseur of the fine arts, the pupil of Vandyke, the accomphshed Sir Ralph Cole, were utterly destitute — in landless poverty and dis- regarded obscm-ity ; the last of them, Sir Mark Cole, dying in such abject want that he had to be buried in Crossgate, Durham, at the expense of his cousin. Sir Ralph Milbank. G 82 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. » VII. THE RERESBYS OF THRYBERGH. " The land left by thy father ? that rich land That had continued in Welborn's name Twenty descents ; which like a riotous fool, Thou didst make sale of." Massinger. Of the many instances already given of the reverses of great famiHes, there is scarcely one so striking as that which is the subject of this little chapter. In other cases, a stately house, like the oak of the forest stricken by the storm, or sapped by decay, has crimibled in one generation, but then the fall has been pre- cipitated by some public convulsion, some act of devoted loyalty and its attendant attainder, or by some unfor- seen calamity or ruinous speculation. Most of those narratives were suited " to adorn a tale ;" but the story of the Baronet, whose miserable career I am about to describe, is only calculated ''to point a moral" — a sad moral, indeed — and to tell of the utter destruction of a time-honoured race by the profligacy of one single descendant. The Reresbys of Thrybergh had been " mighty in the olden time," but " one sad losel soiled theu' name for aye." A grand old pedigree was that of these Reresbys, then- home at Thrybergh, one of the loveliest in York- shire, and their high county position, the fair result of good and honourable deeds. Tradition carries up the genealogy to a Norman soldier of Duke William's army, and history confirms THE RERESBYS OF THRYBERGH. 83 this origin of the family. Heiresses brought broad lands to almost every generation. A fair daughter of the d'Eyncourts, who inherited Pleasley, was won, with all her rich manors, by Isidore Reresby, and her son Ralph Reresby, M.P. for Derbyshire {temp. Edward II.), ex- changed pleasant Pleasley for delightful Ashover, and added largely to his possessions by an alHance \^^th Margery Normanville. This match united romantic Thrtbergh to the family possessions, and for that sylvan spot the Reresbys quitted their Derbyshire residence. In the course of the family's alliances one meets with the honoured names of Bradborne, Nevill, Stapleton, FitzAvilliam, Fulnetby, Babington, Monson, Tam- worth, and Yarburgh ; and, "unthin thirty-one years of the institution of the Order of Baronets, Sir John Reresby, Knight, of Thrybergh, Governor of Hull, was advanced to that honom\ His son and successor was Sir John Reresby, Bart., Governor of York, the cele- brated historian of his own times, who had as much reason to be proud of his literary talents as of his ample possessions and distinguished name. Sh William Reresby, Bart., son and hen* of the eminent author, succeeded his father in 1689, and this descendant of an honoured line, the possessor of ample estates and of a name renowned in the history and literature of his country lived to see himself stripped of every acre of his broad lands ! " 'Twere long to tell, and sad to trace" the steps of his fall from a position of such envied eminence. Gaming was one of Sir William's follies, and particularly that vile species of it, cock-fighting, and Thrybergh was said to have gone on a single main ! The downward com-se having begun, the facile descent G 2 84 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. followed, and domains, that had been acquired by the sei'vices or the alliances of his provident ancestors, were alienated in rapid succession. Le Neve, in a MS. preserved in the Heralds' Colleg-e, states that the wretched spendthrift was at length reduced to such abject beggary, that he accepted the menial post of tapster in the King's Bench Prison, and was tried and imprisoned for cheating in 1711. How he afterwards dragged on his thriftless career is not recorded, but he was alive in 1727, when Wootton published his account of the Baronets. In that work, his then miserable con- dition is referred to. And thus it was that Sir William Reresby, Avho might have given another good name to the glory of his progenitors, died in indigence and obscmity, " unwept, unhonoured," and, save in some of the doggrel ballads of the times, "unsung." " These are the acts, Lothario, which shrink acres Into brief yards — bring sterling pounds to farthings, Credit to infamy : and the poor gull, Who might have lived an honoured, easy life, To ruin and an unregarded grave." The profligate Baronet had one brother to survive him, the landless Su- Leonard, with whom the title expired. Beautiful Thrybergh had been sold by the spendthrift to John Savile, Esq., of Methley, and is now, by bequest of Mrs. Finch, the widoAv of Savile Finch, Esq., M.P., the charming seat of the Fullertons. THE LAST OF THE LEICESTERSHIRE BURTONS. 85 VIII. THE LAST OF THE LEICESTERSHIRE BURTONS. " Of higher birth he seem'd and better days." Byron. Burton, whether applied to places or persons, is a familiar and famous name in lieicestershii-e. Of places there are Bm-ton Lazars, Burton Overy, and Burton on the Wolds. Of eminent persons of the name, born and bred in the county, a long catalogue might be given. A few must suffice : Thomas Burton, a merchant of the staple, bequeathed in 1495 those extensive charities at Loughborough, out of which recent times have seen an extensive educational establishment and other benefac- tions spring. William Burton was the first historian of the county, and liis brother Robert, who called himself Demetrius Junior, was Vicar of Seagrave, and author of the " Anatomy of Melancholy," from which Milton plagiarized and wliicli Johnson praised. "Bm'ning Bm-ton " sprmig from the county, so did Judge Burton, and Decimus Burton. It is doubtful whether more than one of these had a common ancestry with the Burtons of Stockerston, of whom I am about to write. John Burton, Esquue, eldest son of William Bm'ton of Bramiston, purchased the lordship of Stockerston from the Drurys. He was descended from Su William Burton, Knight, one of the justices of the King's Bench, as appears from authentic evidence as well as from his SQ VICISSITUDES OF FAHHLIES. arms, gules, a chevron between three oivls argent crowned and memhered or. He was succeeded by his son Thomas, who had been made a Knight in 1603 at the coronation of James the First, and was created a Baronet in 1622. He was High Sheriff of Leicestershire in 1633, and eminently distinguished himself on behalf of Charles I. He was in the first commission of array with Sir George Villiers, Sir Henry Skipwith, and others, and, though not in the sequestered lists, suffered sequestra- tion and imprisonment for the Royal cause, and died in 1655. Sir Thomas was twice married — first to Philippa, daughter of Su- Henry Cobham alias Brooke, and widow of Walter Calverley, of Calverley, by whom he had three daughters* but no son, and secondly to Ann Hubbard, widow, by whom he had one son, Thomas, who, the year before his father's decease, married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Pretyman, of Lodington, Baronet, of Nova Scotia. Sir Thomas Burton died in 1659, and left two infant sons. His widow re-married with William Hal- ford, afterwards Sir William, of Welham. Su' Thomas Burton, the third baronet, sold Stockerston in 1690 to Sir Charles Dmicombe, and died at Newark in 1705 leaving two sons, Charles, who succeeded to the title, and was an officer in the Guards, and Thomas, d.s.p. Some of Su- Charles's predecessors had been improvi- dent. The fine family estates had nearly all gone, and he, with the desire of rc-posscssing some portion of the * Two of these were christened " Beauty " aud " Bands," taken we suppose from the XI of Zeehariah, according to the common prac- tice of the times. Whether they tried to prove the appropriateness of these names I am not aware. THE LORDS UMFRE^TLL. 87 wealth of his aucestors, tried expedients that were neither honom-able nor successful. The facilis descensus was short as well as easy. Step by step, the once fashionable Guardsman reached the depth of degrada- tion, and a career that might have reflected the credit of some famous progenitors led to abject poverty and a spunging house. At last, in 1712, he was indicted at the Old Bailey for stealing a gold ring, was found guilty, and sentenced to transportation. In him the baronetcy is supposed to have become extinct. From some family papers preserved by the Halfords, it appears that Sir Charles had moved amongst the wits of his time, and was not devoid of literary talents. A fragment of his which 1 remember reading, but cannot accurately quote, is so beautiful and bears so striking a resemblance to those exquisite lines of Moore's, that it may have suggested to Erin's bard one of his exquisite thoughts. Assuredly it describes, and not inaptly, what may well have been the feelings of the Last of the Leicestershire Burtons. " And I felt how the pure intellectual fire In luxury loses its heavenly ray ; How soon, in the lavishing cup of desire, The pea7i of the soul may be melted away." IX. THE LORDS UMFREVILL. " They were of fame. And had been glorious in another day." Byrok. A high and potent family were the Umfrevills of Northumberland, men of the strong hand and the stout 88 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. heart — qualities whicli in the old time gave those who possessed them mastery over their fellow-creatures. The patriarch of their race, " Robert with the Beard," Lord of Tours, accompanied his kinsman, William the Conqueror, in his expedition to England ; and, like so many others of his fortunate countrymen, reaped an ample portion of the general plunder. Ten years after the battle of Hastings, he obtained from his royal master a grant of the valley of Redesdale in Northum- berland, with all its castles, woods, and franchises, to hold of him and his heirs for ever, by the service of defending that part of the country from wolves and the king's enemies by "the sword which the said King AVilliam wore at his side when he entered Northumber- land, and which he gave to the said Robert." In 1295, " Robert with the Beard's" descendant, Gilbert de Umfrevill, Earl of Angus in Scotland, and Baron of Prudhoe, Redesdale, and Harbottle, in Northumberland, was summoned as a Peer to the English Parliament by King Edward I. But, alas for the instability of all human greatness ! this illustrious family, dignified with the titles of Baron Umfrevill and Earl of Angus, was on its wane ere the Russells or Cavendishes had yet risen into importance. Mr. William Umfrevill, the last but one of their male descendants in a direct line, kept a chand- ler's shop at Newcastle, but failing in that humble occupation, was glad to accept the office of keeper of St. Nicholas' workhouse, in the same town, where he died, and left his widow with a son and daughter, utterly destitute. Fortune, however, at this dark moment, before turning her face from them for ever, shed a passing gleam upon their extinction. Theii" sad THE DE PERCYS OF NORMANDY. 89 story came to the ears of the Duke of Northumber- land, Lord of the old Umfrevill Barony of Prudhoe, who generously allowed a small pension to the widow, and after educating her son, procured for him a midship- man's appointment. In due course of time, John Brand Umfrexall rose to the rank of captain ; but he left no issue at his decease in 1820, and with him, it is believed, expired the illustrious race of Umfrevill. A respectable branch, settled at Farnham Royal, Bucks, had previously ended in an heiress, Mary Umfrevill, wife of Edward Lake Pickering, Esq. The house of Northumberland was always munificent. Another instance of its benevolence may not be inap- propriate here. Among the emigres who effected their escape at the outburst of the French Revolution, and sought refuge in England, was the Abbe de Percy, of the Norman branch of that illustrious name. He brought with him very slender means, and of a portion of that little he was robbed, shortly after his arrival in London. With the remnant he went to Bath, but his fund lasted only a brief while, and the poor Abbe was reduced to the extremity of want. In his utter destitution, he remembered that the Norman Percies fi-om whom he sprang and the English ducal house of Percy were of the same origin; and he took heart and addressed himself to the Duke of Northumberland, who happened at the moment to be at Bath. De Percy told simply the story of his exile and sufferings, referred to the honoured name he bore, and mentioned his actual state of poverty. To the letter the Duke returned a courteous acknowledgment, and promised to write again in a few days. In the interval his Grace com- 90 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. raunieated with Lord Harcouvt, whose guest the Due d'Harcourt was at the time, and having ascertained the truth of the Abbe de Percy's statement and the authenticity of his pedigree, enclosed to his newly-dis- covered kinsman a bank note for £1,000, in a beautiful gold snufi-box, and with a general invitation to hie house, which was ever after open to the refugee. THE VICISSITUDES OF BULSTRODE. 91 C^e Dicissiiitks of ^ulstok. " Pel' varies casus — per tot discrimina rerum." Vigil. " Beau pare et beaux jardins, qui, dans votre cl6ture, Avez toujoui-s des fleurs et des ombrages verts, Non sans quelque demon qui defend aux Livers D'en effacer jamais I'agreable peinture." Malherbe. " Puisse en fin le pinceau, errant sur quelques pages Des sites enchant^s, de vivantes images, E6veiller d'autres temps." Le Flaguais. The Vicissitudes of Bulstrode : — Under this title I pass for a moment, for the sake of variety, from the con- templation of the changes in families to viewing the strange alternations that have occurred in a single and ancient estate — that of Bulstrode, in the county of Bucks. Becoming at intervals the property of sets of owners totally dissimilar, and that by abrupt and sin- gular transitions, the lands of Bulstrode have had a notable and perennial, and yet ever-varying existence, like some old lineage that has gone on for centuries maintaining its position, despite of the startling acts and eventful diversities in the lives of those who formed the links of the descent. Bulstrode, although its name dates from the Conquest, was a park in the 92 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. Saxon era, and now, in 1808, it is the same park still — aye, and one of the most beautiful in the kingdom. Its very graces have no doubt been the cause of its long preservation. Those fair eight hundred acres that constitute Bulstrode, diversified as they are with bold hillocks almost rising into hills, and a great number of deep sweeping valleys crossing and mtersecting the grounds in several directions, and forming that pleasing inequality of surface which constitutes the greatest beauty in the outline of Nature's scenery — those eight hundred acres, I say, have lasted verdant and unfading, just as with the lineage I allude to, because they have always been good to look upon, though marked by much deviation and many oddities of deed or circum- stance. Let us view Bulstrode at different eras of its permanence, which has now endured for some thousand years — a permanence of which the divers owners of the place formed the vicissitudes. I. The Shobingtons, an ancient Buckinghamshire race, held the lands of Bulstrode before the invasion of the Normans. The lands were not called Bulstrode then, but hear what a marvellous tale tradition has to tell of how that name was acquired. When William the Conqueror had subdued this goodly realm, and was partitioning its choicest acres among his armed fol- lowers, his eye lighted on the neighbourhood of Gerard's Cross, and there saw this fine park, with its chief mansion- house, and the other siuTOunding possessions that had been the Shobingtons' for ages. He appropriated and gi'anted the whole to a certain Norman lord who had THE VICISSITUDES OF BULSTRODE. 93 come over with him. The Shobiugton then in posses- sion got timely notice of this disposal of his mheritance, and he determined rather to die upon the spot than tamely to suffer himself to be tm-ned out of what had descended to him from his ancestors. Thus resolved, he armed his servants and his tenants, whose number was very considerable. Upon which the Norman lord, who had advice of it, obtamed of the King a thousand of his regular troops to help him to take the estate by force. Shobiugton thereupon applied to his relations and neighbours to assist him, and the two ancient families of the Hampdens, ancestors of the Hampden who would not pay ship-money, and the Pens, ancestors of the founder of Pennsylvania, took arms, they and their ser- vants and tenants, and came to his relief. When they all met together, they cast up works, remains of which appear to this day in the place where the park now is and the Norman lord, with his forces, encamped before their entrenchments. Now, whether the Shobmgton party wanted horses or not is uncertain ; but the story goes, that having collected a parcel of bulls, they mounted them, and, sallying out of their entrenchments in the night, surprised the Nor- mans in their camp, killed many of them, and put the rest to flight. The King having intelligence of this act of daring valour, and not thinking it safe for him, whilst his power was yet new and unsettled, to drive a brave and obstinate people to despair, sent a herald to them to know what they would have, and promised Shobiugton a safe conduct if he would come to Court, wliich Shobiugton accordingly did, riding thither upon a bull, accompanied with his seven sons. Being intro- , discovering a plot for his child's elopement, secured her person, and declared positively against Jeffereys obtainhig her or her pro- perty. Mary Nesham sent an account of these harsh roceedhigs to her lover. Jeffereys at once acted more THE VICISSITUDES OF BULSTRODE. 105 like a cavalier tlian a fortune-hunter. He hastened to her rescue, and married her, though penniless ; for so she was at first, but the relenting father afterwards gave her £300 a-year. Jefferejs, however, found his best treasure in the wife herself, who lived with him in devoted attachment till her death. The lady, it should be observed, to redeem even her influence fi*om blame, died some years before Jeffereys went as Chief Justice on his ruthless commission in the west. He married, secondly, Anne, daughter of Sir Thomas Bludworth, and ■uddow of Su' Thomas Jones, of Fonmon, co. Glamorgan, which lady survived him. In a London mob tumult, consequent upon the Prince of Orange's landmg, Jeffereys, endeavouring to escape, was maltreated by the populace. He was cap- tured, and, more for protection than aught else, was put in the Tower by the Lords of the Privy Council, and was there arbitrarily detained. He died a prisoner in the Tower the 19th April, 1689, but he was never tried on any charge, nor was he ever attainted, as is sometimes absurdly stated ; consequently his son John succeeded him as second Lord Jeffereys of Wem. This second lord, who Avasted his patrimony in dissipation and intemperance, married the Earl of Pembroke's daugliter, and their only child and heiress, Henrietta Louisa, became the wife of Thomas, first Earl of Pom- fret, and through her the blood of the Lord Chancellor Jeffereys passed, not only to the succeeding Earls of Pomfret, but also to the Carterets Earls Granville, to the eighth Earl of WinchiLsea, to Dr. Stuart, Arch- bishop of Armagh, to General Su* William Gomm, G.C.B., and to numerous other nobles and gentlemen whose 106 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. families arc extinct or still existing. John, second Lord Jeffereys, dying without male issue the 9th May, 1702, his peerage and baronetcy became extinct. Bul- strode, it seems, fell to the lot of one of Lord Chan- cellor Jeffereys' sons-in-law, Charles Dive, Esq., of Lincoln's Inn, who married the Hon. ]\lary Jeffereys : he sold it to the Earl of Portland. A branch of the Jeffereys ftimily — that of Jeffereys of Wem — springing from a common ancestor with the Lord Chancellor, still exists in Shropshire. It should be also observed that many members of the Jeffereys family (among them, we believe, some of the brothers of the Chancellor) were Quakers. One Quaker alliance is remarkable : — Lord Chancellor Jeffereys' great-granddaughter. Lady Juliana Fermor, w^as married to Thomas Peim, of iStoke Park, Bucks, lately the seat of Lord Taunton, which Thomas Penn was the third son of the illustrious Quaker, William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania. V. Bulstrode's vicissitudes appear to have varied with the times. The Roundhead Whitelocks made it notable in the Commonwealth. Jeffereys filled it with a Jaco- bite spirit ; and now that the Whigs and William III. were in the ascendant, the Dutch favourite of the Dutch monarch turned his eyes towards the fair acres of Bul- strode. Mynheer Bentinck was no ordinary man, and the success of the house of Orange owed much to him : he was constantly by William's side in sickness and iji health, in peace and in war; and the King justly appre- ciated this valuable adherent, who landed with him at Torbay in 1688. "The King's chief personal favour," THE VICISSITUDES OF BULSTRODE. 107 says Burnet, " lay between Bentinck and Sidney. The foi-mer was made Earl of Portland and groom of the stole, and continued to be entirely trusted by the King, and served him with great fidelity and obsequiousness, but he could never bring himself to be acceptable to the English nation." This was in some measure owing to Bentinck's being ever too visibly active in bettering liis own fortunes, and to his being constantly so set on his own pleasures as really to appear not able to follow public busmess with due application. His anxiety for the goods of this world more than once marred his po])u- larity. For instance : after he, in Ireland, had behaved so gallantly at the battle of the Boyne, and had had a principal share in obtaining the victory, and was further serviceable in the reduction of Ireland, he spoilt his credit by obtaining for himself a grant of the royal furniture in Dublin Castle — the tables and chairs of the King that had been dethroned. Another remarkable act of attempted appropriation was this : — On Bentinck's return to England after brilliant doings in the war abroad, he, in consideration of his great services, got a gift of the Lordships of Denbigh, Bromfield, and Yale, with other lands in the principality of Wales, which being part of the demesnes of the Prince of Wales, the House of Commons addressed William III. to put a stop to the passing that grant. The King answered thus : — " I have a kindness for my Lord Portland, which he has deserved of me by long and faithful services, but I should not have given him these lands if I had imagined the House of Commons could have been con- cerned. I will therefore recall the grant, and find some other way of shewing my favour to him." And soon 108 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. after His Majesty coufen-ed on Bentiack the royal house of Theobalds, with the demesnes thereunto belonging, in Herts and Middlesex, and also granted to him the office of ranger of the great and little parks at Windsor. Bulstrode, it would seem, the Earl of Portland bought with his own mone/. Yet, though avaricious, Portland's integrity was unflinching. In 1695 there was a report at the House of Commons that some members of both Houses had been bribed in relation to pas&ing an act for establishing the East India Company, and it appeared that £50,000 were pressed on the Earl of Portland to use his interest with the King that it might pass, which he absolutely refused, saying he would for ever be their enemy and opposer if they persisted in offering him the money. After attending the death of his royal master and friend, William III., and after various political services, the Earl of Portland, towards the close of 1708, betook himself to a retired life at Bulstrode, which had become his favourite residence. He passed his latter days there in a most exemplary way, and died at Bulstrode in 1709, in the sixty-first year of his age. He was buried in the vault under the great east window of Henry VIIL's Chapel, in Westminster Abbey. His son, the second Earl, was created Duke of Portland, and was also a soldier and a statesman. He died at Jamaica, governor of that island, but his son William, the second Duke, made Bulstrode his favourite abode ; and the second Duke's amiable and talented Duchess, nee the Lady Margaret Cavendish Harley, a warm patron of literature and the fine arts, celebrated by Prior as " my noble, lovely, little Peggy," used to here constantly entertain THE VICISSITUDES OF BULSTRODE. 109' a host of the notabilities of the day. Among them was her attached friend, the celebrated Mrs. Delany, who came to her as her visitor dvn-ing the half of every autumn until the Duchess died a widow in 1785. Mrs. Delany then lost her country home ; but the muni- ficence of George III. supplied another to this aged lady, who and whose deceased husband had been the friends and intimates of Dean Swift, and who herself was the attached ally of Miss Burney, afterwards Madame D'Arblay. In her Memoirs, Madame D'Arblay gives charming details of her own association with Mrs. Delany. The following is her account of Mrs. Delany's conduct, and the King's generosity, after the death of the Duchess of Portland. It is so gracefully written, and is so interesting a memorial of Bulstrode, that we do not hesitate to lay it before the reader. Miss Burney is writing to her father : — "I must tell you, dearest sir, a tale concerning Mrs. Delany, which I am sure you will hear with true pleasure. Among the many inferior losses which have been in- cluded in her great and irreparable calamity (the death of the Duchess;, has been that of a country-house for the summer, which she had at Bulstrode, and which for the half ot every year was her constant home. The Duke of Portland (tlie Duchess's son) behaved with the utmost propriety and feeling upon this occasion, and was most earnest to accommodate her to the best of his power with every comfort to which she had been ac- customed ; but this noblest of women declared she loved the memory of her friend beyond all other things, and would not suffer it to be tainted in the misjudging 110 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. world hy ;iu action that would be coustnied into a reflection upon her will, as if deficient in consideration to her. ' And I will not,' said she to me, ' suffer the children of my dearest friend to suppose that their mother left undone anything she ought to have done. She did not ; I knew her best, and I know she did what she was sure I should most approve.' She steadily, therefore, refused all offers, though made to her with even painful earnestness, and though solicited till her refusal became a distress to herself. " This transaction was related, I believe, to their Majesties, and Lady Weymouth, the Duchess's eldest daughter, was commissioned to wait upon Mrs. Delany with this message : — That the Queen was extremely anxious about her health, and very apprehensive lest continuing in London during the summer should be prejudicial to it. She intreated her, therefore, to accept a house belonging to the King at Windsor, which she should order to be fitted up for her immediately ; and she desii-ed Lady Weymouth to give her time to consider this proposal, and by no means to hurry her ; as well as to assure her that, happy as it would make her to have one she so sincerely esteemed for a neighbour, she should remember her situation, and promise not to be troublesome to her. The King, at the same time, desired to be allowed to stand to the additional expenses in- curred by the maintenance of two houses, and that Mrs. Delany would accept from him £300 a-year." Lady Llanover, of kin to Mrs. Delany, has recently made a valuable addition to her relative's biography, in those volumes which she has so ably and so charmingly edited, entitled " The Correspondence of Mrs. Delany." THE VICISSITUDES OF BULSTRODE. Ill Dick Turpin, the famous liighwayman, actually robbed the second Duke of Portland within his own park of Bulstrode. This daring feat he thus for a bet accom- plished : The Duke was driving into the domain in his can-iage, accompanied by a few attendants on horse- back. Turpin hastily rode up, havmg apparently a roll of paper in his hand, and, pointing to it, he motioned to the horsemen to stand aside for a moment. Thinking he was a messenger of State, they did so, when Turpin, puttmg his head into the carriage, levelled the roll of paper at the Duke's head, and his Grace perceived it contained a loaded pistol. " Your life or your watch on the instant ! " quietly said Turpin. The Duke pulled the latter fi-om his fob and gave it him. Turpin di-ew back with sundry bows and obeisances, as if receiv- ing the Duke's answer to an important despatch, and then galloped off, and was on the high road out of reach before the Duke could give the alarm to his followers. The Duke's son and successor was William Henry, third Duke of Portland, K.Gr., an eminent statesman, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and twice Prime Minister. This Duke of Portland had much trouble with his pro- perty. At one time his Grace was mvolved in a law- suit with Sir James Lowther, Bart, (afterwards Earl of Lonsdale), to whom a grant of extensive estates had been made by Government, called Inglewood Forest, appurtenant to the manor of Penrith, in Cumberland, Avith the township of Carlisle, previously held by the ancestors of the Duke of Portland from Kuig William III. This remarkable cause, which involved in its effects the interests of many families, was argued 20th November, 112 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. 1771, before tlie Barons of the Exchequer, and was, after much expense and vexation, decided in the Duke of Portland's favour. With this Duke's son, Wilham Henry, the fourth Duke, the Bentincks' possession of Bulstrode ended. Another and a far more ancient ducal coronet came to ornament its gates — that of Seymour, Duke of Somerset. Edward Adolphus, eleventh Duke of Somerset, bought the estate from the fourth Duke of Portland in 1810, and it has descended to Ed^v^ard Adolphus, the twelfth and present Duke of Somerset, K.G., its actual owner, whose mar- riage with the granddaughter of the orator and dramatist, the Right Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan, brings also the name of Sheridan in connection with Bulstrode. For many years the present Duke of Somer- set was not a sojourner at Bulstrode, but he now resides there, having gracefully rebuilt the house and made a charming mansion of it, and having restored the whole locality to that state of rural beauty which at different times captivated Saxon and Norman, monk and layman, cavalier and roundhead, judge and states- man ; and which nature itself has marked out as a retirement for the thoughts of poets and the fatigues of princes. A word or two on the former mansion, at Bul- strode. It was built by Judge Jeffereys in 1G86, evidently in part from the materials of an older mansion. It was of a reddish brick — blood-stained, as the people declared it to be in Jeffereys' time. The second Duke of Portland made extensive alterations and improve- ments ; but the third Duke pulled most of the mansion down, intending a complete renovation, which'he never THE VICISSITUDES OF BULSTRODE. 113 carried out. He left only the late dwelling, whicli was tastefully constructed from the former conservatory, and which the Duke of Somerset has supplanted by the pre- sent very elegant Gothic mansion. But the park is the wonder. It is a delightful spot, containing not a single level acre, and is profusely scattered over by numerous plantations, disposed in the purest taste. To the w^est of the mansion's site is a line grove of old trees, inter- spersed with walks leading to the flower-gardens and shrubbery, and commanding many extensive and interesting views, where the forest of Windsor and its noble castle, with the Surrey hills melting into the horizon, constitute some beautiful distant scenery. On a hill, south-east of the house, there stands a very large circular entrenchment, enclosing an area of twenty-one acres, with some large old oaks growing on its banks. In fact, the park displays all the charms that can be pro- duced by diversified surface, commanding situation, and sylvan grandeur. But I should not conclude the de- scription without urging the London wayfarer who may visit Bulstrode to wander a little in the neighbourhood, and return home by Beacons field, Stoke Pogis, and Slough. At Chalfont St. Giles, near Bulstrode, Milton wrote " Paradise Regained." An old wounded soldier of the Peninsular used to inhabit, and may still, the cottage of the poet, and to display with equal pride the very place where Milton sat, and the very bullet that was taken from the martial exhibitor's own leg at the battle of Vittoria. The inhabitants of Chalfont St. Giles are not satisfied with the fame that Milton has brought them, but they also assert that a descendant of Shakespeare's not long ago lived at Chalfont, and — 2 I 114 VICISSITUDES OP FAMILIES. alas ! for family vicissitude — worked there as a cobbler. Near also to Bulstrode, at Jordans, is a desolate and tombless cemetery — a Quaker's burial ground, where all is smooth grass but one largish mound and four or five small ones. Under these lie William Penn and his childi-en — WiUiam Penn (lately so ably defended against Macaulay's unfounded charges, by Mr. Paget, the barrister and police magistrate), Penn, that great and good member of the Society of Friends, who, not in war, like Caesar or Napoleon, but in the spirit of peace, laid the foundations of a state that has flourished in honoured prosperity, and has contributed not a little to the freedom and happiuess of mankind. VI. Let the wayfarer not forget Beaconsfield, three miles from Bulstrode. Beaconsfield holds the rank of a mar- ket town, and has the reality of being one of the most picturesque country villages within the neighbourhood of the metropolis. After Stratford-on-Avon, the holy of holies in literary remembrance, and Twickenham, which Pope has made immortal, there is nowhere in England such another memory as that which decorates in chief the verdant retirement of Beaconsfield — the memory of Edmund Burke. Here did he reside during the whole of his political career ; here is his grave, and hither, wending his way up the green acclivity, may now and then be seen the traveller, either native or from France or Germany, or still more distant parts, a visitor to the Medina of him whose eloquent wisdom was the first to sound amid the crash of revolution, and to summon Europe to the defence of civilization and order. THE VICISSITUDES OF BULSTRODE. 115 But I pass with too ready fondness to the recollection of Edmund Burke. An earlier genius has left a memory in Beaconsfield, not so venerable, it is true, as that of Edmund Burke, yet most pleasant to dwell upon — a memory which, with strange tenacity, attaclies to the place far more closely, and with far more visible marks than even the memory of Burke. That genius was Edmund Waller, the first lyric poet of his time, and the worthy precursor of Rolbert Burns, and Tom Moore, and the other great lyrists that were to succeed. Beaconsfield was the favourite and constant residence of Waller in his lifetime, and it is in death his last earthly resting-place. Edmund Waller's stately tomb in Beaconsfield churchyard tells us, in most graceful Latinity, that " he was of the poets of his time easily the prince : that when an octogenarian he did not abdicate the laurel he had won in his youth, and that his country's language owes to him the possible belief that if the Muses should cease to speak Greek and Latin, they would love to talk in English." One high-born dame, the Lady Dorothea Sidney, owes the perpetuation of her memory to having been, as Sacha- rissa, the chief subject of Waller's amatory verse, and Beaconsfield, through his choice, first became a place of note. Its earliest fame was Waller, and his memory hangs round it still. The visitor will find many a mark and memorial of Waller there. The poet's magnificent seat of Hall Barn, Beaconsfield, built by himself, but improved by his son, still remains. The Waller family left it only a few years ago, when it became the pro- perty of another distinguished man, the late Sir Gore Ouseley, Bart., and at his demise it passed into other I 2 11(3 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. hands. In its now uninhabited condition, dismantled of its furniture, signs of the past may be discovered on the premises, and in the picturesque domain, adorned with classic temples and obelisks. Waller had Sacharissa's portrait for constant contemplation infixed in the wains- cot over the mantle-piece of his sitting-room, at his seat in Beaconsfield. That picture, which he declared, "wonders so distant in one face disclosed," remained in the place he put it, until recently torn away and sold. Alas ! for the Gothic hand that took it down. The seat of Butler's Com-t, or Gregories (as it was at different times called) at Beaconsfield, was Edmund Bm'ke's property, and he here commenced that charming rm'al course of life which made his home so perfect and so happy. Bm'ke delighted in society, and could not live without it. He loved and was beloved by wife, childi-cn, and friends ; his servants clung to him with constant affection, and the very beggar, that received his alms, had pleasant remembrance of the gentle word that would accompany the donation. And how Burke doted on that home. " Every care," Avould he say, "vanishes the moment I enter under its roof" Tliis happiness had a sad ending. Bm-ke died in 1797, at Beaconsfield, of a broken heart, from grief for the loss of his son — his only and idolized child; and though more than seventy years have passed since then, Beaconsfield bears still visible marks of that incurable sorrow. The mansion of Gregories was no more cared for by its owner, and was sold from the family by his widow. What was an hereditary house to him who in his grief refused a peerage, with the title of Lord Burke of Beaconsfield? An accidental fire has THE VICISSITUDES OF BULSTRODE. 117 since destroyed the dwelling, and one can scarcely trace, with no other landmark than a few ruined offices, the site of the mansion in the now deserted but still beautiful grounds. A decayed stable alone remains, with the very stall in it where the Right Hon. William Windham, the IMinister of War, when, to consult Burke, he rode down big with the fate of nations, would put up his white horse. The humble tablet in the church marks Burke's bv.rial there, instead of in Westminster Abbey, as it would have been but for the direction in liis will. "My body I desire to be buried in the church at Beaconsfield, near to the bodies of my dearest brother and my dearest son, in all humility praying that, as we have lived in perfect unity together, we may together have a part in the resurrection of the just." A few years ago, several gentlemen of the name of Burke, or De Burgh, caused a handsome brass plate to be laid in Beaconsfield Church, over the exact spot under which are the vault and coffined remains of Edmund Burke. High honour, too, has of late been done to his memory, by the erection of his statue in front of Trinity College, Dubhn, and by its being unveiled the 21st April, 1868, by H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, during his memorable visit to the capital of Ireland to be installed a Knight of St. Patrick. Burke stands before old Trinity, side by side with his friend, inimit- able Oliver Goldsmith. Both statues, of perfect artistic beauty, chefs d'oeuvre of the Royal Academician, John Henry Foley, himself an Irishman, proudly and lastmgly proclaim by their presence that the genius of Ireland, whether in poetry or eloquence, in writing or sculpture, is immortal. 118 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. VII. A few miles from Beaconsfield, on tlie way to Slougli, one arrives at a long, scattered village, with the impoetic name of Stoke Pogeis, or Pogis, but with a brilliant halo of poetry about it. Here, in the pictu- resque chiu'chyard (can it have been the country church- yard of his immortal elegy ?) — here, under the tombstone that he erected to his aunt and mother, lie the earthly remains of one of our sweetest bards, Thomas Gray. Some fine monuments are also in this churchyard, glittering with armorial ensigns, among them occasion- ally occurring the black and silver barry of four of the Hungerfords, and the sable maunch of the Earls of Hmit- ingdon ; but "the boast of heraldry, the pomp of power," seem here quite out of place. The poet, whose unfading nobility cannot be brightened by blazonry, has a monopoly of the place. Nor does he rest unhonoured even by marble trophy ; for though simply interred in the churchyard, there close by stands a magnificent cenotaph to his memory, erected by worthy John Penii, Governor of Portland Castle, county of Dorset, and last hereditary governor of Pennsylvania, the grandson of that William Penn of whom we have already spoken in reverence, and the great-great-grandson, by the way, maternally of Judge JeSereys. The vicissitudes of Bulstrode will thus have alhance with Gray's monu- ment. At any rate, its construction in 1799 is another mark of the intellectual benevolence of the Penn family. These Penns were good genii wherever they went ; and in them, that gentle spuit survived to which Hannali THE VICISSITUDES OF BULSTRODE. 119 More alludes in those lines to William Penn, begin- ning — " The purest wi-eaths which hang on glory's shrine, For empires founded, peaceful Penn, are thine." Oddly enough, Hannah More links Gray to a memory of Bulstrode, in some other verse of hers; when, speaking of sensibility, she says — " 'Tis this that makes the pensive strains of Gray Win to the open heart their easy way ; Makes Portland's face its brightest rapture wear, When her large bounty smooths the bed of care." Mrs. Hannah More here refers to Margaret, Duchess of Portland, the friend of Mrs. Delany, also of Bulstrode fame, whom Mrs. More does not forget : " Delany, too, is ours, serenely bright, Wisdom's strong ray, and virtue's milder light. And she, who blessed the friend and graced the lays Of poignant Swift, still gilds our social days." Stoke, like Bulstrode, has some legal memories con- nected with it. First, there is that of Queen Elizabeth's Chancellor, Sir Christopher Hatton, whose dancing, which charmed his royal mistress, did not hinder him from being one of the wisest and honestest judges of his time. Hatton's successor at the manor-house of Stoke was the famous Sir Edward Coke, the pride and ornament of British jurisprudence, whose colossal effigy by Rosa, on a pillar sixty-eight feet high by Wyatt, stands loftily and haughtily at Stoke, as if prepared to remove, on instant view, any ugly impression of the law 120 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. which the recollection of Jeffereys of Bulstrode may- have cast upon a visitor to these localities. Stoke Manor House, through the taste and liberality of its late and present owners, Lord Taunton and Mr. Cole- man, is admirably preserved in all its pristine quaintness and decorative attraction, and is open to public inspec- tion. It looks just as it must have done in Hatton's time : one sees the same old rooms, and as Gray's lines, that cannot be repeated too often, say, the — " ceiling's fretted height Each panel in achievement's clothing ; Rich windows that exclude the light, And passages that lead to nothing. " Full oft within the spacious walls, When he had fifty winters o'er him, My grave lord -keeper led the brawls — The seal and maces danced before him." Stoke Park, where the Penns so long sojourned, and where the present mansion was built by Wy att in 1 789, was till lately the seat of Lord Taunton, a peer better known by the names under which he, as a minister and states- man, achieved his reputation, viz., the Right Hon. Henry Labouchere. It is now the property of Edward J. Cole- man, Esq. Stoke Park commands a view of stately Windsor and of Cooper's Hill and the Forest tracts. But I must go no further. I have already strayed too much from Bulstrode and my subject ; but Avho will not stray when once in this fair county of Buckingham, so full of surpassing scenery and glorious recollections, where every corner has some poet to speak of, such as Milton, or Waller, or Gray, or Cowper ; where mansion after man- THE .VICISSITUDES OF BULSTRODE. 121 sion has some stirring history of its own — some pedigree of doers and of deeds of note ? What I here relate of the old Park of the Shobingtons, the Whitelocks, and the Bentincks may find a rival narrative (though with, perhaps, less striking change of owners) in many a Buckinghamshire country seat. " Ex uno disce oranes :" there is, I maintain, much remarkably peculiar in those versatilities which have fonned the vicissitudes of Bulstrode, 122 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. Cjjc §on;tpartci Hie Caesar, et omnis luli Progenies." — Virgil, Napoleon's proud assertion, that lie was *' the Rodolph of his race," and that his patent of nobility dated from the battle of Monte Notte, must not be received as evidence of the humble origin of the Bonaparte family, but simply as an indication of the haughty mind of the ambitious Ruler of France, which could ill brook the idea of inferiority, even in this respect, to the other royal potentates. At the moment Napoleon uttered these expressions, the star of his destiny shone the briglitest, and the great European sovereigns had yielded submission to one — " Mightier far, Who born no king, made mouarchs draw his car." From a remote period the Bonapartes, or Bzfonapartes according to the Italian spelling (which the enemies of the first Napoleon affected spitefully to keep up as showing him not to be French), were of distinction in Italy ; and are traced in Vicomte de Magny's " Nobi- liaire Universel" up to John Bonaparte, "Consul et recteur de Trevise" in 1183. The cradle of the race THE BONAPARTES. 12 o seems to have been at Treviso ; but the tyranny of Alberic de Romano forced many of the name to migrate to Bologna and Tuscany, where they esta- blished themselves at Florence and San Miniato, and where they subsequently held high municipal appoint- ments. In the Golden Book of Bologna, the Bonapartes are inscribed among the patricians of Florence, and they appear also recorded in the Book of the Nobility of Treviso. The Bonaparte coat of arms may even now be seen over some of the old Florentine houses, and the family was still existent at St. Miniato at the opening of the present century. On his first triumphant return from Italy, Napoleon found in that little town the Canon Gregoire Bonaparte, the last descendant of the San Miniato branch, and he was proudly acknowledged by the old ecclesiastic, who, at his death, in 1803, made his illustrious kinsman his heir. Some of these Tuscan Bonapartes were authors of repute : one, Nicholas Bonaparte, wrote a play, entitled " La Veuve," the manuscript of which, and a piinted copy, are preserved in the Imperial Library of Paris ; and another, Jacques Bonaparte, Chevalier de St. Jean de Jerusalem, was the author of a " History of the Siege of Rome, by the Constable Bourbon," which siege he had himself witnessed, and which city, in an after-age, was to furnish such remarkable chapters in the lives of his relatives, Napoleon I., and Napoleon III. His book, written in Italian, is much esteemed, and was translated into French by the late Prince Napoleon Louis, eldest brother of the present Emperor. 124 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILTES. In the Catalogue of the proscribed and exiled partisans of the Guelphs, in their feud with tlie Ghibelhnes, the Bonapartes are named ; and from Gerini I learn that these banished nobles proceeded to Sarzana and Genoa. Three of the latter line, Barthelemy, Martin, and Augustin Bonaparte, assisted as " Anziani " of the Republic, at the oath taken by the nobles to the Duke of Milan, in 1488 ; and a descendant of the former, maiTying into the ancient house of Parenticelli, became mother of the Sovereign Pontiff, Nicholas V. It was in 1512, that Fran9ois Bonaparte, of this, the Sarzana division of the family, went to Corsica, and fixing his residence at Ajaccio, founded the illustrious branch, for ever memorable as the parent stem whence sprung Napoleon and his dynasty. Francois' son Gabriel was father of Jerome Bonaparte, Chief of the Council of Senators (Chef des Anciens) of Ajaccio, and Deputy to the Senate of Genoa, in 1504. He left two sons: — 1. Francois Bonaparte, Captain of Ajaccio, and Member of the Council of Ancients, in 151)6, father of Sebastian Bonaparte, a distinguished scholar, born in 1603, and, 2. Fulvio Bonaparte, whose son Louis married Marie de Gondi. The son of Sebastian was Carlo Bonaparte, senator of Ajaccio, who had the nobility of his family recognized at Genoa, in 1661. His son Joseph, also senator of Ajaccio, had a son, Sebastian Bonaparte, elected " Ancien d'Ajaccio," 17th April, 1720. He was father of three sons : — 1. Nap ^)leon Bonaparte, chief of the ancients of Ajaccio, a soldier of repute, whose only child, Isabella, was married ta Colonel Louis d'Ornano; 2. Joseph Bona- THE BONAPARTES. 125 parte ; and, 3. Lucien Bonaparte, Archdeacon of the Cathedral of Ajaccio, who died in 1792. The second son, Joseph Bonaparte, was acknowledged in 1759 by the Bonapartes of Florence as a member of their family, and, like his ancestors, formed one of the comicil of senators of his native city. His son, Carlo-Maria Bona- parte, born 29th March, 1746, went to Pisa to study law, in accordance with the custom of the Bonapartes of Ajaccio, who never ceased to remember their Florentine nobility, and invariably sent their cliildren to complete their education in Tuscany. Returning to his native country with the degree of Doctor of Laws, he com- menced practice, and attained eminence as an advocate ; but the times were too troublous then in Corsica to admit of his following the calm paths of professional life. He soon resigned the gown for the sword, and becoming the especial favourite of Paoli, he assisted in the gallant and patriotic stand made against the French for the independence of his country. At the disastrous termination of the conflict, he would fain have exiled hmiself with his kinsman Paoli, but was dissuaded from the step by his wealthy uncle, the Archdeacon of Ajaccio, and became in the sequel reconciled to the conquering party, and protected by the French G overnor. It was in the midst of the discord of fights and skir- mishes of Corsica, that Carlo Bonaparte, who is described as possessing a handsome person and great vivacity of intellect, married Letitia Ramolino,* one of the most * The mother of Letitia married for her second husband a Swiss officer in the French service, named Fesch, and had by him a son, Giuseppe, so well and so creditably kuo^vn as the amiable and high- 12G VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. beautiful maidens of Corsica, and a lady of incomparable mental firmness. It should be here observed, as a fact worthy of note, that the imperial dynasty of the Bona- partes, up to the present day, has been particularly fortunate in this ; that the ladies of their house, whether by birth or alliance, have been, often to a surpassing degree, remarkable for talent, beauty, strength of mind, and every gentler female qualification. During the years of Civil War, Letitia Bonaparte partook the dangers of her husband, and used to accompany him through all the toils and difficulties of the Mountain campaigns. On the establishment of the French ascen- dancy, Louis XV., desirous of reconstructing the Corsican nobility, issued a decree requiring all those who claimed to belong to it to prove their right, and in consequence, Carlo Bonaparte, having produced his documents, was admitted by the Council of Corsica to be noble by descent for more than two hundred years. He con- tinued to adhere to the new state of things ; acted as recorder of a tribunal in Corsica, and was representative for the nation, and a member of the General Assembly of noble deputies at the Court of the King of France. By his lovely and high-spirited wife (so well known as Madame Mere), who died at Rome in 1836, aged 86, he had a very large family ; no less than thirteen children. Of these five died in infancy, the others (of whom one became an Emperor, three became kings, and one minded Cardinal Fesch, who was born the 3rd January, 1763, and was Arclibishop of Lyons, and, at one time. Primate of Gaul. He died the 12th May, 1839, universally respected, and left the ex-King Joseph Bonaparte heir to a part of his property, having bequeathed the rest to the church of Lyons, and the town of Ajaccio. THE BONAPARTES. 127 daughter was a sovereign grand duchess, and another a Queen), were Joseph, Napoleon, Lucien, Louis, Jerome, Eliza, Pauhno, and CaroHne. Lady EmmeHne Stuart Wortley paid a visit to Madame Mere in 1833, and has given this very interesting de- scription of the interview : — " I immediately followed Mademoiselle Kose into the chamber, and was introduced to the mother of Napoleon. Madame Lsetitia was at that time eighty-three years of age, and never did I see a person so advanced in life with a brow and countenance so beammg with expres- sion and undiminished intelligence ; the quietness and brilliancy of her large sparkling eye was most remark- able. She was laid on a snow-white bed in one corner of the room ; to which she told me she had been confined for three years, having as long as that ago had the misfortune to break her leg. The room was completely hung round with pictures, large full-length portraits of her family, which covered every portion of the wall. All those of her sons who had attained to the regal dignity were represented ui their royal robes ; Napoleon, I believe, in the gorgeous apparel he wore at his coro- nation. , . . She then, seeing us looking earnestly at the magnificent picture of Napoleon, which was hung close to the side of her bed, asked, if we did not admire it, gazing herself at it proudly and fondly, and saying, in French, 'That resembles the Emperor much; yes, how like him it is ! ' I could not help feeling that she must exist as it were in a world of dreams, in a world of her own, or rather of memory's creation, with all these splendid shadows around her, that silently but elo- quently spoke of the days departed." 128 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. Napoleon, Emperor of the French, and King of Italy, was the second of the sons of Carlo and Letitia Bona- parte. On the events of his wonderful career I need not dwell. Instead of furnishing materials for a few pages of my little work, the vicissitudes of Napoleon Bonaparte, from his entrance — a Corsican youth — into the military school of Brienno, to his death on a lonely rock in the Atlantic, form the most memorable chapter in the world's history. Suffice it to state that he was born at Ajaccio, 15th August, 1769 — that he married twice — that he died at St. Helena, on the 6th May, 1821, and that his remains, brought with reverent care from that distant island, and received with the highest honours and the most marked feeling in France, now repose, under the gorgeous dome of the " Invalides," on the banks of the Seine, and amid that French people whom he loved so well. Napoleon's first wife (the mar- riage took place 9th March, 1796) was Marie Frances Josephine Rose, daughter of M. Tascher de la Pagerie, a planter of St. Domingo, and widow of Eugene Alex- ander, Vicomte dc Beauharnais, Deputy from the nobility of Blois to the States-General in 1789, but, nevertheless, a rather radical member of the National Assembly, and Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the Rhine. His niece, the daughter of his elder brother, the Marquis de Beauharnais, was the famous IMadame Lavalette, who rescued her husband from prison. By Napoleon, Josephine had no issue ; but by her first husband (who fell a victim to the revolutionary tribunal four days before the overthrow of Robespierre) Josephine was mother of the charming Ilortense Eugenie, ex- Queen of Holland (whose son is the present Emperor of THE BOXAPARTES. 129 tlie French), and of tlie gallant Viceroy of Italy, Eugene Beauharnais, Duke of Leichtenbui'gh. Napoleon's second consort, the Archduchess Maiie Louise, daughter of Francis II., Emperor of Austria, had one son, Napoleon Francois Charles Joseph, Duke of Reichstadt in Bohemia, born 20th March, 181 1, who (in consequence of his being proclaimed Emperor as Napoleon II. by his father, and so confirmed by the chamber of Peers and Deputies, at that abdication m 1815, which Napoleon never after- wards revoked), counts as second of the Napoleon sove- reigns, and who died unmarried at the Palace of Schoenbrunn, near Vienna, 22nd July, 1832. Joseph Bonaparte, Count de SurvilHers (the eldest son of Carlo Bonaparte), who was born at Ajaccio, 7th Januaiy, 1768, was designed for the law, and studied at the University of Padua ; but the brilliant destiny of his brother opened to him an ascent to greatness which the mediocrity of his own abilities never could have attained. In 1805 he ascended the tlnrone of Naples, and in 1808 exchanged that peaceful diadem for the more brilliant one of Spain, from which country he was expelled by the Anglo-Spanish army under Wellington. In 1814, whilst the Emperor was engaged in the memorable campaign in defence of the French soil, the ex-King Joseph remained at Paris as Lieutenant-General of the Realm and Commandant of the National Guards ; but on the arrival of the Allies at Paris he fled to Switzerland. There he purchased a valuable property, and there he remamed until Napoleon's retm-n from Elba. After Waterloo he escaped to New York. He subsequently established himself in the \dcinity of Philadelphia, under the name of the Count SurvilHers, 2 K 130 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. and became possessed of a fine estate. In 1799 he pub- lislied a little novel called " Moina." In 1832 he took up his abode in England, and resided many years near Dulwich. In 1841 he went to Tuscany, and died at Fk^rence the 28ih July, 1844. Joseph Bonaparte mar- ried, August 1, 1794, Marie Julie de Clary, daughter of a merchant of Toulon, a hospitable friend to the family when they sojourned near Marseilles, and had two daughters : Zenaide Charlotte Julie, born 8th July, 1801, married at Brussels, 30th June, 1826, to her cousin, Charles Lucien, Prince Musignano, son of Lucien, Prince of Canino : she died the 8tli of August, 1854 : her husband died on the 29th July, 1857. Their eklest surviving son is Cardinal Bonaparte. Charlotte, born 31st October, 1802, who was mar- ried to her cousin. Napoleon Louis, Grand Duke of Berg, brother of Napoleon III., son of Louis, ex- King of Holland, and died at Florence, his widow, the 3rd September, 1839. Lucien BoNxVPARTE, Prince de Canino (tlie third son of Carlo), born at Ajaccio in 1775, imbibed at an early period revolutionary sentiments, and the elevation of his brother led to his own advancement to honours and riches. He was successively President, at its dissolution, of the Council of Five Hundred, Minister of the Interior under the Consular Government, and Ambassador to Madi-id in 1801. In 1804, the year of Napoleon's assump- tion of the imperial diadem, he retired to Italy, and esta- blishing his residence in the Eternal City, purchased an estate at Canino, wliich the Pope raised into a princi- pality, inscribing at the same tune the name of "the Prince THE BONAPARTES. 131 of Canino" among tlie Roman nobles. In 1810, distrustful of the security of his asylum in Italy, Lucien embarked for the United States, but was captured by two English frigates, and conveyed to Malta to await the orders of our Government. In conformity with those instructions he was transferred to England, where he arrived 18th December, and fixed himself in Worcestershire, at a beautiful residence called Thorngrove, which he was allowed to purchase, about four miles from the city of Worcester, on the Ludlow road. Here he sojourned, devoted to literature and the repose of domestic hfe, until the peace of 1814 opened his way to the continent, and enabled him to return to his old friend and protector, Pius VII. Dm-ing the Hundred Days he played a prominent part, and again held the portfolio of the Interior. After the conflict at Waterloo, he urged the Emperor to make one great effort in defence of his throne ; but the mighty mind of Napoleon seemed then completely crushed. He listened not to his brother's counsel ; and Lucien with difficulty effected his escape to Rome. There the Prince of Canino passed the remauider of his days, much respected in private life, and there he died, on the 29th June, 1840. By his first wife, Christine Boyer, whom he married in 1795, and who died m 1801, he left two daughters, Charlotte, wife of Prince Gabrielli, and Christine Egypta, who married, in 1824, Lord Dudley Coutts Stuart. By his second wife, Alexandrine Laurence de Bleschamp, widow of Monsieur Joubertteau, Lucien Bonaparte had three sons and three daughters. Of the former, the eldest, Charles Lucien, Prince of Canino and Musignano, distinguished in the scientific K 2 132 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. Avorld for his zoological rcsearclies, and for his famous work, " Inconografia della Fauna Italica," was born at Paris, 24th May, 1803, and married, in 1822, his cousin, Charlotte Zenaidc Julia, elder daughter of Joseph Bona- 2:)arte, Count of Survilliers, by whom (who died the 8th Aug. 1854) he (at his death, the 29th July, 1857) left issue : Joseph, Prmce de Canino and de Musignano, deceased ; LuciEN Louis Joseph Napoleon, Cardinal Bonaparte, born 15th November, 1828 ; Napoleon, born 1839, Cap- tain in the French Foreign Legion, married to Princess Ruspoli ; Julie, "wife of Alexander del Gallo, Marquis de Roccagiovine ; Charlotte, wife of Comtc Pierre Primoli ; ^larie, wife of Paul Comte de Campcllo ; Augusta, wife of Prince Placido Gabrielli ; and Bathildc, late wife of Louis Count de Cambac6res. The Prince of Canino resided in the Papal dominions. The other children of Lucien, first Prince of Canino, are : Louis Lucien, born in 1813, the elegant linguist and scholar, one of the senators of Paris ; Pierre Napoleon, born in 1815 ; Anthony, born in 1816, married to Caroline Cardinali, of Lucca; Letitia, who married, in 1821, Thomas Wyse, Esq., of the Manor of St. John's, Waterford, afterwards the Right Hon. Sir Thomas Wyse, K.C.B., her British Majesty's Ambassador at Athens, who died in 18G2 ; Jane married the Marquis Onorati, and is dead ; Mary, widow of the Count Vincent Valentini di Canino; and Constance, a nun of the Sacre Coeur at Rome. The following little anecdote may not be inappro- priately introduced here, as illustrative of the vicissi- tudes incidental to all spheres and conditions of life : — On one occasion, Louis Pliilippe and his Queen, then in exile at Claremont, di'ove over to Roehampton to see the convent of the Sacre Coeur, which had been recently THE BONAPARTES. 133 established there by a eommimity of French nuns. This French- Order of the Sacre Coeur is one of eminent piety and high distinction, and was, in the days of the Boui'bons, one of aristocratic exckisiveness. At the time of which I am speaking, the Comtesse de Grammont was, I beHeve, at the head of the chief house of the Community in Paris, and Madame ChfFord, sister of the late Lord Clifford, was Superioress of the Roeharapton branch. The royal visitors, who were incognito, asked permission as strangers to see the convent chapel, and we]"e allowed to go over the whole establishment. The lady nun who conducted them through the house was so amiable and agreeable, that the Queen, on leaving, expressed her extreme satisfaction mth the admirable arrangements of the community, and her pleasure at finding herself once again amongst her good and pious compatriots. " Perhaps," added her Majesty, " you will be interested to know who yom- visitors are. This gentleman is Louis Philippe — I am the Queen Marie Amelie." The nun, bowing profomidly, replied with a gentle smile — "And I am Mademoiselle Bonaparte." The strange coincidence evidently touched their Majes- ties, and the Queen could not refrain from giving expression to her surprise at the waywardness of fate which had thus brought together, within a convent of the old regime, the two sovereign houses of Bonaparte and Orleans. Lucien was, after Napoleon, the ablest and most for- ward, though, as far as sovereign rank was concerned, the least ambitious of the Bonapartes, and at one time his literary and scientific attainments received laudation from the French savans. His " Charlemagne " made its first appearance in London in 1814, but the success it 134 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. met with was very indifFereut. Besides, this too elaborate epic, the Prince of Canino pubUshed two other works — Stellina, a novel ; and The Cyrneide, or Corsica saved. Louis Bonaparte, the fourtli son of Carlo, and next brother to Lucien, was born at Ajaccio 2nd Sept., 1778, and ascended the throne of Holland in 180(). Unwilling, however, to remain the mere vassal of his brother, he abdicated in 1810, and adopting the modest title of Count de St. Leu, retired from public life, and resided principally at Florence. His wife was Hortense Eugenie de Beauharnais, Duchess de St. Leu, daughter of Josephine, by her first husband the Vicomte Eugene Alexandre de Beauharnais, and step-daughter of Napo- leon. The marriage took place in 1802, and the issue of the union were three children. The eldest, Napoleon Charles, named heir to the Imperial throne, died at the Hague, the 5th March, 1807, in the fifth year of his age ; the second. Napoleon Louis, Prince Royal of Holland, Grand Duke of Berg and Cleves, christened at St. Cloud by Pope Pius VIL, and nominated Grand Duke of Berg and Cleves in 1809, died 17th March, 1831, from the effects of the fatigues he encomitered in the Italian insurrection ; and the third, CHARLES LOUIS Napoleon, is the present Emperor of the French, Napoleon III. Of their mother, HoRTENSE, I will presently speak. Jerome Bonaparte, the fifth and youngest son, was born 15th Nov., 1784, became King of Westphalia in 1807, and commanded the army of that country in the invasion of Russia. In 1814, however, the Allies deprived him of his throne. At Waterloo he commanded the left wing of the French army, and, on the defeat of the Emperor, re- THE BONiVPARTES. 135 treated with the debris of the forces to Paris. He subsequently proceeded to Wirteniberg, and was created a prince of that kingdom by the title of Due de ]\Iontfort. His first wife (whom he married in America in 1803, and from whom he separated in 1805), was Elizabeth Patterson, of Baltimore, a lady of station and fashion in the United States, of Irish extraction, sister of Robert Patterson, Esq., the first husband of the late Marchioness Wellesley, and grand-daughter of old O'Carroll of Car- roUstown, one of the origmal signers of the declaration of American independence. By her he had one child, Jerome, born 6th July, 1805, at Baltimore, and now resident, I believe, in that city. He married Miss Susan Williams, and has a son Jerome. The second wife of Jerome Bonaparte was Frederica Catherine Sophia, daughter of Frederick, King of Wntemberg, and by her he had two sons and one daughter, viz., Jerome, Prince of Montfort, Colonel in the service of Wirteni- berg, who was born at Trieste, 21:th Aug., 1814, and died s. p. at Florence, 29th May, 1847 ; Napoleon, Prince of Montfort, a leading politician, and a general of divi- sion, born at Trieste in 1822, who married, 30th Jan., 1859, the Prmcess Clotilde, daughter of the King of Italy, and has issue two sons ; and Mathilde-Letitia, married to Prince Anatole Demidofi", and now so popu- larly known at the Court of the Tuilleries as the Princess Mathilde. Jerome Bonaparte was a Marshal of France, and in 1852 was declared heir-presumptive to the throne, and a French prince. He died on the 24th July, 1860, at his seat, Villegenis, near Paris, and was bmied in state ui the chapel of St. Jerome in the Hotel des Invalides, close to the remains of his mighty brother. 136 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. The thi'ee sisters of Napoleon were, as I have ah-eacly mentioned, ]\Iary-Anne-Ehza, Pauline, and Mary-Amiun- cia de-Caroline. The eldest, Eliza, reigning Princess of Lucca and Piombino, born 3rd January, 1777, married 5th May, 1797, Pascal de Bacchiochi, a noble Corsican, created by his Imperial brother-in-law Grand Duke of Tuscany, under the title of Felix I., and had one son, Frederick Bacchiochi, who died at Rome, and one daughter, the Princess Napolienne-Eliza, married to the Comto Camerata. Eliza, Princess of Lucca, died in 1820. The Emperor's second sister, the gentle, devoted, and beautiful Pauline — so beautiful that she was the original of the Venus of Canova — was born 22nd April, 1782, and was created Princess and Duchess of Guastalla31st March, 1806 ; but on the 2Gth of the following May, on the annexation of the duchy to the kingdom of Italy, her Highness received in compensation 6,000,000 of livres. She married, first. General le Clerc, and secondly, the Prince Don Camillo deBorghcsc, and died at the Borghcse Palace, near Florence, 9th June, 1825. Tln'ough a life of much misfortune and anxiety, Paulino clung mth earnest and heroic attachment to her Im- perial brother and his family : her only child, a son by her first husband, died young, and his loss was nearly fatal to her. Her last illness was Jbrought on by sorrow for her brother Napoleon's death. Carolixe, Napoleon's yoimgest sister, born 25th ]\Iarch, 1783, married the gallant Joachim Murat, King of Naples, and had two sons and two daughters : Napoleon Achille Murat, Prince Royal of Naples, born in 1801, who purchased property and fixed his residence THE BOXAPARTES. 137 in Florida ; he married in America Miss Caroline Dudley, a grand niece of Washington's, and died without issue in 1847 ; His Highness Prince Napoleon Lucien Charles Mm-at, head of the house of Murat, " Senateur," at one time French Ambassador at Turin, who, born in 1803, married Caroline Greorgina Fraser, and has three sons and two daughters ; Letitia Josephine (deceased), mariied to the Marquis Pepoli, a nobleman of Bologna ; and Louisa-Julie- Caroline, married to Count Jules Rasponi. The widow of Mm-at lived for many years in Austria under the name of Countess of Lipano, and died at Florence, 18th May, 1839, of the same disease, cancer m the stomach, as her brother Napoleon. I now come to the present Emperor, and his mother, the beautiful and interesting Hortense de Beauliarnais. Poor Hortense ! Her loveliness, her fascination, and her misfortunes made her the Mary Stuart of the Im- perial house. I have already said that all the ladies of the Napoleon dynasty were remarkable women; but among them, even including Josephine, Hortense stood pre-eminent. She combined the gi-aces and the loving nature of her mother with the talent and spirit of her gallant brother Eugene. Her whole life was one of adventurous change, and would in itself fill a volume of vicissitudes. I regret that I have only room to touch on the principal features of her eventftil career. Born a few years before the Revolution, her childhood was passed in the midst of horrors. At one time, while her father and mother lay in the dungeons of Robespierre, she and her brother were actually so destitute, that he, the futm-e Viceroy of Italy, had to go as apprentice to a carpenter, and she, the future Queen of Holland, had 138 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. to earn her livelihood at a work-woman's. Robespierre and his gang had murdered her father just before the 9th Thermidor ; but when that day of retribution rid the earth of the worst monsters of " the Terror," Jose- phine obtained her freedom, and resumed her position in society. General Bonaparte was already a great man. Eugene's coming to ask him to get him back his dead father's sword, brought on the acquaintance and the marriage of the General with Josephine. The 18th Brumaire made Bonaparte First Consul, and placed his wife and her children in the Tuilleries, Hortense had completed her education in the admirable seminary of Madame Campan, and now it was that her beauty, her captivating manners, and her varied powers of mind burst in full splendour on the Parisian world. Her step and adopted father, Nappleon, was dotingly proud and fond of her, but his policy and ambition stood in the way of her first and best love. A scion of the old noblesse, M. do Paulo, courted her, and she responded to his suit ; but though he was a gallant gentleman, and had become Napoleon's friend, yet when he asked for the hand of Hortense, exile was the answer he received. Hortense was married to Louis Bonaparte, and two years after their nuptials, Napoleon was an Emperor, and Louis and his wife were a prince and princess of the blood imperial. This, amid the opening magnificence of the Empire, was the most brilliant period of Hortense's life, and it was now that she first produced some of those beautiful musical compositions, which alone would have perpetuated her name. The earliest of them breathe a tone of melancholy, which seems to accord with her disappointed affection. "Partant pour la THE BONAPARTES. 139 Syrie " was of gayer complexiou than the rest, and charmed all Paris at the time, but little could its author then foresee the extent of its future popularity and fame. That song was to be the national air of France when her own loved son became France's Emperor. It was to make itself hearl throughout the whole globe, and was to call men to victory at the Alma and Inkermann, at Solferino and Magenta; was to be the Frenchman's rallying note m peace and war, and ming- ling with " God save the Queen," was to cheer that bond of union which, I trust in God, France and England may never have to break again. There is an edition of Hortense's compositions exquisitely illustrated by drawings of her own. In 180G, Louis and Hortense became King and Queen of Holland ; she was now the mother of two sons, and in 1808, when she was in Paris, a third was born, the futm-e Emperor of France. Her eldest child died an infant : the other two absorbed her utmost affection. Hortense's marriage had not been a happy one, fi-om no particular fault of herself or her husband, but from sheer incompatibility of habits and feelings. They lived mostly separate, but Hor- tense's whole soul was in her children. _ Misfortune was soon, it would seem, to be her constant attendant. First came the divorce of her mother, and then the dethrone- ment of Napoleon. When Louis XVIII. returned in restored royalty to Paris, he found Hortense there, and he, a poet and a man of letters, as well as a monarch, could not resist her accomplishments and fascination ; the old King was completely captivated, and he created her Duchess of St. Leu. But " outre ne sers" is the Beauharnais motto, and Hortense would serve none but 140 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. her own. It is said, that through her influence with Louis, she obtained information that helped the retm-n from iilba. Be that as it may, it is certain that the King, when restored again, was persuaded by liis courtiers that he had been somewhat fooled in his attentions, and poor Hortense was most harshly treated. She was driven from Paris and from France, and, owing to the interfe- rence of the French Government, she had much difficulty in finding anywhere a resting-place. At last, the father of her brother Eugene's wife, Maximilian, King of Bavaria, afforded her protection. She took up her abode at Augsburg; here she remained till she ceased to be the object of pursuit or persecution, and then she went to live at a Cha-teau on the Lake of Constance. Her brother Eugene was her neighbour. Here she was sur- rounded by a little court of attached friends, and the time passed in intellectual and graceful rethement. Poet, artist, composer, and even actress, the Duchess provided constant amusement for her circle, and for those to whom she extended her hospitality; she would sing her own compositions, and now and then display marked dramatic powers in the little dramas that the company got up. There is, in a bygone number of the New Monthly ]\Iagazine, a charming description, by an English lady who at that period visited her, of the Duchess of St. Leu, and her mode of life. But these more happy hours of Hortense were soon to end, and she was once more to be a wanderer. In 1824 her beloved brother Eugene died : m 1831 the insurrection in Italy deprived her of one of her sons, and increased her care for the other, whom the affair of Strasbourg sent an exile from France. This calamity brought on his THE BONAPARTES. 141 mother's illness and deatli. Her son came in haste fi-om England to attend her, and succeeded, despite of every obstacle, in reaching her then residence, the Chateau of Arenenberg in the S^viss Canton of Thurgau. Here she breathed her last in his arms, on the 5th Oct. 1837, just as that cloud had set darldy upon him, to be only dis- l^ersed by a light, fulfilling even Hortense's fondest views of the future — a light no other than the agaui risen sun of Imperial France. The present Emperor, Napoleon III., was born at Paris, 20th April, 1808, in the palace of the Tuilleries, and the event was hailed with enthusiasm by the French people as another secm'ity for the continuance of the Napoleonic dynasty. At the period of his birth his father was King of Holland, but he afterwards resigned his throne from a conscientious scruple that he could not retain it con- sistently with the interests of Holland and France. I ponder in wonder over the vicissitudes in the life of the consummate politician and marvellous man who now rules over France. Perhaps no alternations of fortune have ever been so strange as his. Within the last thirty-seven years he has played many parts ; at one time the leader of an Italian revolt, then an exile and an author, then the invader of Boulogne, then a pri- soner at Ham, then again an exile and a private gen- tleman in London, where he loyally acted as one of the special constables ; then the chief of a French republic, and finally the emperor of a mighty people, excelling iji his love and maintenance of peace, and rivalling as a statesman and a solcher, his uncle, the most memorable ruler and the greatest captain of 142 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. France. It may be interesting to briefly recall the marked features of his career. After the expulsion of the Bona- partes in 1815, the ex-qneen of Holland, taking with her her little boys, retired into Bavaria, but, being driven thence by the altered temper of Louis XVIIL, she had to seek another place of refuge, and finally, after a brief sojourn in Rome, established herself in the castle of Arenenberg in Switzerland, where she resided for several years, and where she eventually died. Here, under the guidance of his all-accomplished mother, and amid a simple and energetic people, Louis Napoleon pursued his studies, and not only devoted himself to literature and science, but took advantage of the vicinity of the camp at Thun to acquire a knowledge of military duties. "Every year," says a contemporary writer, "he carried the knapsack on his back, ate the soldier's fare, handled the shovel, the pickaxe, and the wheelbarrow, would climb up the mountains, and, after having marched many leagues in the day, return at night to repose under the soldier's tents." When the Bolognese revolution of 1831 broke out, Louis Napoleon and his elder brother took an active part in the campaign, and, aided by General Sercognani, defeated the Papal forces in several places ; but their successes were of short duration. Tlie two princes were soon deprived of their command, and banished from Italy. Meanwhile the elder brother fell sick at Faenza, and died shortly afterwards, on the 27th March, 1831 ; and Louis Napoleon, hemmed in by Austrian soldiers, most vigilant to capture him, only escaped by assuming the livery of one of Hortense's servants. Ultimately mother and son reached Cannes, the spot so memorable THE BONAPARTES. 143 as that on which the great Emperor first set foot on his retui'n from Elba : thence thej proceeded to Paris, to claim the generosity and hospitality of the King of the French. This was refused them. The Prince then craved permission to serve in the French army, even in the humblest station ; but his prayer was rejected, and his immediate departure from French soil insisted on. The death of the Duke of Reichstadt made him still more dangerous, for, according to the precedence laid down by Napoleon I., he (or, more strictly, his father, then alive) was now heir-male of the Imperial house. Driven from his native land, and apparently from all chance of serving France, he returned once again, after passing a short time in England, to his former Swiss residence. In this seclusion the Prince spent a few years devoted to literature and political meditation. There it was that he, the future historian of Caesar, wrote his famous " Reveries Politiques," as well as his " Con- siderations Politiques et Militaires sur la Suisse." At length, in 1836, on the evening of the 28th of October, " abandoning this happy existence," the Prince arrived at Strasbourg, " impelled," to use his own words, " to run all the risks of a most hazardous enterprise by a secret voice that led him on, and by a feeling, which for no consideration on earth would he have postponed, that the moment for action had arrived." Every one knows how the attempt at Strasbourg miscamed, and how Louis Napoleon had once again to seek shelter in a foreign land. He went this time to America, and remained there until called back to Europe by the fatal illness of his mother, llortense's letter, announcing her precarious state, bears so feeling a testimony to the filial regard of her son, that 144 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. I venture to introduce it here, as exliibiting the Emperor in that domestic and amiable Hght which, as son, husband, and lather, has adorned the memorials of his political life :— "My Dear Son, " I am about to undergo an operation which has become absolutely necessary. In case it should not termuiate successfully, I send you, in this letter, my blessing. We shall meet again — shall we not ? — in a better world, where may you come to join me as late as possible ! And you will believe that, in quitting this world, I regret only leaving yourself, and your fond, affectionate disposition, which alone has given any charm to my existence. This will be a consolation for you, my dear friend — to reflect that, by your attentions, you have rendered yom- mother as happy as circum- stances would allow her to be. You will think also of all my affection for you ; and this will inspire you with courage. Think upon this, that we shall always have a benevolent and distinct feeling for all that passes in this world below, and that, assuredly, we shall all meet again. Reflect upon this consolatory idea ; it is one which is too necessary not to be true. And that good Arose, I send him my blessing as to a son. " I press you to my heart, my dear fi-iend. I am calm, perfectly resigned ; and I would still hope that Ave may meet again, even in this world. " Your affectionate mother, " 3rd April, 1837." " Hortense." After the deatli of his mother, which occurred on the 5th October, 1837, Prince Louis Napoleon again took up THE BOXAPARTES. 145 his abode in Switzerland ; but in the folio whig year, the French Government, alarmed at the near proximity of the exile, made a demand on the Helvetic Confederation for his cxpidsion ; a demand which was as firmly and unhesitatingly refused. Louis Philippe threatened to enforce his requhement by arms, and the gallant Swiss, Avith equal resolution, prepared to resist force by force. In this crisis, Louis Napoleon, unwilling that the generous and hospitable land which had sheltered him so long should suffer on his account, decided on leaving Switzerland. The subsequent residence of Louis Napo- leon in England is so well remembered that I will not refer to it, further than to mention that it was during his stay amongst us that he published his " Idees Napo- leoniennes." In 1840 he made another effort to restore the Napoleon dynasty by the bold but ill-concerted landmg at Boulogne, and beuig taken prisoner, was tried by the Chamber of Peers, and sentenced to im- prisonment for life in a French fortress. Thus seemed terminated the career of this enterprizing and able Prince. But his destmy was not yet accom- plished. In 1840 he entered the Chateau of Ham, and for six long years remamed immm-ed in that state prison, occupying liimself with his unfailing resource, literature, and political thought. His patient submission to his fate was rarely distui'bed. On one occasion, however, harassed by petty annoyances and indignities, he ad- dressed a protest to the French Government, so eminently characteristic that I cannot refrain from gi^Tug one or two extracts : — " In the nine months during which I have now been in the hands of the French Government," remonstrates 2 L 146 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. the illustrious captive, " I have submitted patiently to indignities of every kind. I will, however, be no longer silent, nor authorize oppression by my silence. " My position ought to be considered under two points of view — the one moral, the other legal. — Morally speaking, the government which has recognized the legitimacy of the head of my family is bound to recognize me as a prince, and to treat me as such. "Policy has rights which I do not dispute. Let government act towards me as towards its enemy, and deprive me of the means of doing it any harm ; so far, it would be justified. But, on the other hand, its con- duct will be dastardly if it treat me, who am the son of a king, the nephew of an emperor, and allied to all the sovereigns of Europe, as an ordinary prisoner. " The simplest civility of look is regarded as a crime ; and all who would wish to soften the rigours of my position without failing in their duty, are threatened Avith being denounced to the authorities, and with losing their places. In the midst of this France, which the head of my family rendered so great, I am treated like an excommunicated person in the tliirteenth cen- tury. " The insulting inquisition which pursues me into my very chamber, which follows my footsteps when I breathe the fresh an- in a retired corner of the fort, is not limited to my person alone, but is extended even to my thoughts. My letters to my family, the effusions of my heart, are submitted to the strictest scrutiny ; and if a letter should contain any expressions of too lively a sympathy, the letter is sequestrated, and its writer is denounced to the government. THE BOiXAPARTER. 147 "By an infinity of details too long to enumerate, it appears that pains are taken, at every moment of the day, to make me sensible of my captivity, and cry inces- santly in my ears, Vce victis ! "It is important to call to mind tliat none of the measm'es which I have pointed out were put in force against the ministers of Charles the Tenth, whose dilapi- dated chambers I now occupy. And yet these ministers were not born on the steps of a throne ; and, moreover, they were not condemned to simple imprisonment, but then- sentence implied a more severe treatment than has been given to me ; and, in fine, they were not the repre- sentatives of a cause which is an object of veneration in France. The treatment, therefore, which I experience is neither just, legal, nor humane. " If it be supposed that such measures will subdue me, it is a mistake. It is not outrage, but marks of kind- ness which subdue the hearts of those who suffer." This remonstrance produced its efffect, and the Prince's captivity was rendered less irksome ; but still it went on year after year until 1846, when Louis Napoleon at last effected liis escape by means graphically narrated in his own letter, and in the evidence of Dr. Conneau, when examined before the local tribunal, both of which state- ments I annex : — Thus writes the Piince himself: " My desire to see my father once more in this world made me attempt the boldest enterprise I ever engaged in. It required more resolution and com'age on my part than at Strasbm-g and Boulogne ; for I was determined not to submit to the ridicule which attaches to those who are arrested escaping under a disguise, and a L 2 148 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. failure I could not Lavo eudured. Tlio following are the particulars of my escape : — " You know that the fort was guarded by four hundred men, of whom sixty soldiers acted daily as sentries out- side the walls. Moreover, the principal gate of the prison was guarded by three gaolers, two of whom were constantly on duty. It was necessary that I should first elude their vigilance, afterwards traverse the inside court, before the windows of the commandant's resi- dence ; and, on arriving there, I should stUl have to pass by a gate wliich was guarded by soldiers. " Not wishing to communicate my design to any one, it was necessary to disguise myself. As several rooms in the part of the building wliich I occupied were under- going repair, it was not difficult to assume the dress of a workman. My good and faithful valet, Charles Thelier, procured a smock-frock and a pair of sabots, and, after shaving off my moustaches, I took a plank on my shoulders. " On Simday morning I saw the workmen enter at half-past eight o'clock. Charles took them some diink, in order that I should not meet any of them on my way. He was also to call one of the turnkeys, whilst Dr. Conneau conversed with the others. Nevertheless, I had scarcely got out of my room before I was accosted by a workman, who took me for one of his comrades, and at the bottom of the stairs I found myself in fi-ont of the keeper. Fortunately, I placed before my face the plank which I was carrying, and succeeded in reaching the yard. Whenever I passed a sentinel or any other person, I always kept the plank before my face. " Passing before the first sentinel, I let my pipe fall, THE BOXi\J>ARTES. 149 and stopped to pick up the bits. There I met the officer on duty ; but as he was reading a letter he paid no attention to me. The soldiers at the guard-house ap- peared surprised at my dress, and a chasseur turned round several times to look at me. I next met some workmen who looked very attentively at me. I placed the plank before my face ; but they appeared to be so cm-ious that I thought I should never escape, until T heard them say ' Oh, it is Bertrand I ' " Once outside, I walked quickly towards the road to St. Quentin. Charles, who had the day before engaged a carriage, shortly overtook me, and we an-ived at St. Quentin. I passed through the town on foot, after having thi'own off my smock-frock. Charles procm-ed a post-chaise, under pretence of going to Cambrai. We anived, without meeting with any obstacles, at Valen- ciennes, where I took the railway. I had procm-ed a Belgian passport, but I was nowhere asked to show it. " During my escape. Dr. Conneau, always so devoted to me, remamed in prison, and caused them to beheve that I was unwell, in order to give me time to reach the frontier. Before I could be persuaded to quit France, it was necessary that I should be convinced that the Government would never set me at Hberty if I would not consent to dishonom- myself. It was also a matter of duty that I should exert all my efforts m order to be enabled to solace my father in his old age." Dr. Conneau, the escape having been discovered, was brought before the local tribmial and examined. In answer to the Judge's mterrogatories, his statement was as follows : — " I tried to conceal the departm-e of the Prince in 150 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. order to give him time to escape, I was anxious to gain, in this way, at least twenty-four hours, if possible. First of all, I closed the door leading fi'om the prisoner's chamber into the saloon. I kindled a strong fire, although the weather was really very hot, to support the supposition that he was indisposed. About eight o'clock a packet of violet plants arrived by the diligence. I told the keeper to fill some pots with earth, and pre- vented him from entering the Prince's saloon. About half-past eight o'clock the man-of-all-work came and asked me where we would breakfast. 'In my room,' I replied. ' I shall fetch the large table,' said he. ' It is unnecessary,' I answered ; ' the General is unwell, and will not breakfast with us.' > '• My intention was, in this manner, to push off further knowledge till the next day. I said the Prince had taken medicine. It was absolutely necessary that it should be taken, accordingly I took it myself. I then took some coffee and threw it into a pot of water, with some crumbs of bread, and added nitric acid, which produced a very disagreeable smell, so tliat the man- of-all-work might be persuaded that the Prince was really ill. " About half-past twelve I saw the commandant for the second time, and informed him that the Prince was somewhat easier. * * * Every time that I came out of the small saloon, in which the Prince was supposed to be lying on a sofx, I pretended to be speaking to him. The man-of-all-work did not hear me. If his ears had been at all delicate, he would have been quite able to hear me speaking. "The day passed on very well till a quarter-past THE BONAPARTES. 151 seven o'clock. At this moment the commandant entered, with an air somewhat stern. * The Prince,' said I, ' is a httle better, commandant.' ' If/ repHed he, 'the Prince is still ill, I must speak to him — I must speak to the Prince.' " I had prepared a large stuffed figure, and laid it in the Prince's bed with the head resting upon the pillow. I called the Prince, who naturally enough, made no reply. I rethed towards the commandant, and indicated to him, by a sign, that the Prince was asleep. This did not satisfy him. He sat down in the saloon, saying, ' The Prince will not sleep for ever. I will wait.' " He now remarked to me, that the time for the anival of the diligence was passed, and expressed his wonder that Thelier was not returned. I stated to him that he had taken a cabriolet. The drum beat, and the com- mandant rose and said, ' The Prince has moved in bed — he is waking up.' " The commandant stretched his ears, but did not hear him (the supposed Prince) breathe. I did the same, and said, ' Let him sleep on.' He drew near the bed, and foimd a stutFed figm'e. He immediately turned towards me, and said, ' The Prince is gone ! At what time did he go ?' ' At seven in the morning.' ' Who were the persons on guard f ' I know nothing ! ' These were the only words which were interchanged between us. The commandant left the room."* The Prince hastened to England, and again took up his residence in London, where he mixed much in * For the statement of Dr. Conneau, as well as for the Prince's own narrative of his escape, I am indebted to a very interesting work, by a British officer, entitled " Napoleon III." 152 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. society. In 1848, the Orleans dynasty was overthrown, and shortly after, the sentence of banishment against the Imperial family was reversed, but the Prince — fearful that his presence in Paris, in the then unsettled state of France, might lead to tumults —delayed his return, and during the interval on the memorable 10th April, 1848, the day of the great Chartist demonstration, he enrolled himself as a special constable in London. Witliin eight months after, the French people, by a vast majority (the exact number was 5,434,226), elected the heir of the Bonapartes President of the Republic; and in 1852, he became Emperor, by a still more marked manifestation of the popular will, 7,864,180 votes having been recorded. His mari'iage to Eugenie Marie de Guzman,* Countess de Theba, born 5th May, 1826, occurred on the 29th January, 1853, and the birth of the Prince Imperial, Napoleon Eugene Louis, followed on the 16tli March, 1856. I should in conclusion particularly remark, that her Imperial Highness, the Grand Duchess Dowager of Baden, and widow of the Grand Duke Charles Louis, Stephanie, n6e do Beauharnais, was adopted by Napo- leon I., she being the daughter of Claude de Beauhar- * The family of Guzmau (of which the French Empress is a descendant) is one of the most illustrious and historic houses in Europe ; being the parent stock from which have sprung the Dukes of Medina de las Torres, the Dukes of Medina Sidonia, and the Counts Dukes of Olivares, and the Marquesses and Counts of Montijo, Counts of Tliel>a, and Grandees of Spain. In addition to the name of Guzman, Her Majesty is entitled to tliat of Porto- carrero, which recalls likewise great historical associations. The Empress Eugenie is not the first of her race who has been called to a throne ; in IG33, Donna Louisa Francesca de Guzman married the King of Portugal, Don John IV., of Bragauza. THE BONAPARTES. lOo nais, Peer of France, last Count ties Roclies-Baritaud. Napoleon III. is consequently her cousin. Her daughters are the present Princess of Hohenzollcrn Sigmaringen, and the present Duchess of Hamilton and Brandon. Such, on the whole, is this mighty and wide-extended family of Bonaparte, whose head at one time was certainly, like Nebuchadnezzar, " the terrible of the nations." May the land that was waste and desolate become, under their future influence, like the garden of Eden! In 1861, shortly after the appearance of the first edition of this work, a very obliging and intelligent correspondent, then just returned from a visit to Ajaccio, Mr. William Otter Woodall of Scarborough, favoured me with the following description of Napoleon's birth- place : — " Following from the Place du Diamant, one of the main streets of Ajaccio, leading towards the harbom*, and turning out of it again shortly to the right, I passed up a narrow street and found myself in a little square about twelve yards long and as many wide. On one corner of it, its name, Place Letitia, written in letters faded from the dust and decay of years could be dis- cerned ; in the centre a few flowers ; but the elm tree mentioned by Gregorovius has disappeared. Occupying nearly one side of it is a house — a quiet, ordinary looking house — in colour, yellow, two stories in height, with a stone balustrade on the top. On one side of it is a narrow passage, communicating with another street: there is a thoroughfare through this passage ; and the people who pass constantly by, brush against the corner of this house ; and they have dirted 154 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. and discoloured it, and the lower part has th6 mark of their feet. Houses adjoin on the other side. In the centre is the door, with one step to it : over the door is a tablet in marble, let into the wall, on which the following inscription may be read : — Napoleon est ne dans cette maison Le XV Aout MDCCLXIX. From a window on the right hand side of the entrance, a glimpse of the mterior may be caught. This Avindow looks into the kitchen, a square solid looking room, in which a few flags and coloured lamps used on illuminations are now kept. I was looking into this room, and leaning against the bars, when a soldier passing, seeing I was a stranger, pouited out a small red house close by, where he said I might obtain the keys. I accordingly rang at the bell ; and a woman, guessing my errand from my appearance, came down immediately to let me in. Introducing a singular looking key, and turning the creaking lock with some difficulty, the door swung back on its hinges, and I found myself on the threshold of Napoleon's house. On entering, on the right is the kitchen above mentioned, about a foot below the level of the entrance hall: there is a large fire-place in it; the floor is curiously paved with stone, but it contains nothing but Avhat can be seen from the outside. It is an ordinary, useful kitchen — nothing more. The stairs start immediately from the front door, and there is scarcely any passage. They are steep, and con- THE BON.VPARTES. 155 structed of red tiles, and tlie banister is made of ii'on : both the flooring of the stairs and this iron banister are the same as were in the house in the childhood of the first Napoleon. Ascending the two first flights, I arrived at the landing on the first floor. There is a door on each side. One of these doors leads into the old dining-room ; the other into a room whose pm'pose cannot be gathered from its emptiness now, but which in all probability was a reception room. Outside, between these two doors, hanging on a wheel affixed to the wall, is a bell, used in the time of Carlo Bonaparte to summon the family to dinner. A piece of discoloured rope was still attached to it ; and as I rang it, its shrill penetrating notes, which must have so often fallen on Napoleon's ears, sounded strangely solemn in that large deserted echoing house. Passing through one of these rooms, like the rest of the house entirely devoid of fm'niture, and retaining notliing of its fonner appearance but the pleasant gleam of its well polished floor, I came to a small room on the right hand — a room scarcely fifteen feet long. On the wall on the left hand is the fire-place, ornamented with a curious chimney-piece ; past the fire-place on the same side, a door leading into another room. The ceiling is low, the room is ill lighted, and but a mere passage room ; but here, on the 15th of August, in the year 1769, Napoleon Bonaparte was born. There was no furniture in it when I visited it ; over the chimney-piece, however, surrounded by a circle of roses, was the letter " N," in flowers, and beneath it a cross, formed also of roses, and quite fresh. Whether ordinarily there are these flowers in it, or whether it 156 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. was by a mere cliauce I found tlicni there, I cauuot say, but the roses seemed but recently gathered, and it is possible some devout admirer of Napoleon's may pay continual homage to him by decorating his room. Be it, however, as it may, they had a pleasant look there, those roses, and were the only sign of care and attention the deserted house contained. Close by is the study, a narrow desolate looking closet, where Napoleon used to sit and work — empty like the rest of the house. Other rooms adjoin these, and doors from some of them open into a sort of terrace at the back, where one or two empty tubs, formerly con- taining orange trees, are the only things now to be seen. Above this floor is another story. I went carefully into every room in the house, and fomid the same emptiness and desolation reigning in each. I had my attention drawn specially to some, as being the ones formerly occupied by other members of the Bonaparte family ; but havmg visited and passed that little room on the fii-st floor, I could not find much interest elsewhere. I went there once more before I left, and my guide having descended before me, I stood for some minutes alone, quietly gazing about the room. Empty and deserted as it is, in spite of national feelings and national prejudices, there is yet something intensely interesting about the place. One other room alone, perhaps, can claim from its connection with Napoleon as much interest as this — the room in which he died in St. Helena. It was a bright day in June wluii I visited the house; and the rooms, pleasantly darkened by their bHnds, felt delightfully quiet and calm. No sound penetrated any THE BONAPARTES. 157 of the windows, and except the noise of my footsteps as I passed through, a dead silence reigned in every room. There was something inexpressibly quiet abont the place, and I could not help thinking as I tiu-ned reluctantly away fi-om this empty deserted house, and slowly descended the stairs, leaning on the iron banister over which Napoleon's hand must so often have passed, as I cauglit through the open door a glimpse of the cheerful Place Letitia, warmly lighted up by the beams of a mid-day sun, how Napoleon, in his lonely exile at St. Helena, must have longed for a farewell sight of his Corsican home, and the house where he was born," Mr. Woodall visited Ajaccio seven or eight years ago. Various renovations have, I believe, been since made by the direction of the Emperor and Empress. 158 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. ®l)f f iifos of f auristoit. " Sous I'auguste et sage Eegence D'un Prince aimant la bonne foi, Law, consomme dans I'art de regir la finance, Trouve I'art d'euricher les sujets et le Roi." Verses at the time to Ijxw. " They are not in the roll of common men." Shakespeare. Among the families of this empire Avho have been cele- brated in foreign countries, there are none more remark- able than the family of Law of Lauriston, in Scotland. Other houses may have had isolated members distin- guished in civU or military service abroad, but the Laws can boast of producing, at two different periods, two men, the one a minister of finance, and the other a states- man and a soldier, both of whom have had prominent connection with the history of France. Among the dramatis persona? of the Duke of Orleans' Regency, un- doubtedly the chief actor was John Law of Lauriston ; and at a subsequent time, especially at the Peace of Amiens, foremost rank must be given to the gallant and sagacious James Alexander Bernard Law, a Mar- quis and a ]\Iarshal of France. The coronet of the latter has survived him, and is borne by his grandson, Alex- ander Louis Joseph Law, the third and present Marquis, a nobleman of high credit and position in Paris. This THE LAWS OF LAURISTON. 159 fact gives the Law family the further and pecuHar honour of being one of the very few of French noblesse of pure Scottish descent still resident and flourishing in France. The vicissitudes of these Laws, as may be supposed fi'om the figure they have cut in the world, have been indeed of a most singular and varied description, and are Avell deserving of the following chapter in this volume. Let me begm with decidedly the greatest man of the race, John Law the financier; but before entering on his career, so much lauded by some, and so out- rageously and unjustly blamed by others, it behoves me to show that, so far from being, as is asserted, a man of obscure and humble origin, he was really allied by l)irth to some of the noblest families in Scotland. I am, therefore, the more explicit in referring to Law's pedigree, thus : — The family of Law, of which the Laws of Lauriston are so distinguished a branch, is of very ancient standing in Scotland, and has made itself conspicuous as well by its own deeds as by its numerous alliances with the very first of the Scottish nobility. Out of Scotland, the rank and fame it has achieved are remarkable. In France, the celebrity of the Laws of Lauriston is his- toric, and another line of the Laws, which settled in England, can boast of the mitres and coronets which the house of Ellenborough, so eminent in divinity and jurisprudence, has obtained. The Laws were, centuries ago, Free Barons in Scotland ; and their descent fi-om and before the reign of King Robert IIL, down to the present period, admits of the clearest proof Nisbett, in his Heraldry, gives their arms, as borne by Law of Law- 160 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. bridge, Free Baron in Galloway, arg. a bend and in chief a cock gu. : crest, a cock croioing. These arms, with some sliglit alterations, are the ensigns of the present Earl of Ellenborough and the present Marquis of Lauriston. The immediate ancestor of the Laws of Lam-iston was Dr. James Law, of Lithrie and Burntown, Ai'chbishop of Glasgow, who married Marian, daughter of John Boyle, of Kelburn (ancestor of the present Earl of Glasgow), and left a son, James Law, who assumed the title of Free Baron of Burntoun, in Fifeshire, from the estate purchased for him by his father, and who, upon taking such title, added another cock gu. to his arms, and adopted the motto " Nee obscura nee ima," now borne by the Marquis of Lauriston. This James Law's eldest survi\ang son and heir, James Law of Burntoun, married IVIargaret, daughter of Sir John Preston, of Preston Hall, and had issue James Law of Burntomi, his successor, and a younger son, WiLLLUi Law, who was an eminent banker and goldsmith, of the city of Edinburgh, and who, with the fortune he made, purchased the lands of Lauriston and Randleston, with the castle of Lauriston, hi the co. of Midlothian, and entailed the whole estate (giving a life enjoyment to his wife) upon his family. He married Jean Campbell, a scion of the noble house of Argyle, and cousin of the great John Campbell, Duke of Argyle and Greenwich, and of his brother, Archibald Campbell, Earl of Islay, who succeeded him as Duke of Argyle. By this lady, William Law of Lauriston left six sons and four daughters. The eldest of these sons was the famous John Law, Marquis of Essiat, of Charleval and Touey, THE LAWS OF LAURISTON. 161 Count of Taiicarville and Valen9ai, and Comptroller- General of the Exchequer in France, who was born in Cramond, Midlothian, the 21st April, 1671. At foiirteen years of age he lost his father, but it was from his mother that he was to take the estate of Lauriston ; and to her was he indebted for another and a far greater boon — an admirable education. It was the dii-ection that she, perceiving the bent of his mind, gave to her son's studies, that caused him to become so perfect a proficient in arithmetical and commercial knowledge. She was also well awai*e of his love of pleasure and expense ; and she thought, and not without reason, that the acquisition of the solid sciences for Avhich he showed such capacity, would eventually make up for the dissipation that was likely to lead him astray. The worthy lady died when Law was in his oue-and- twentieth year, leaving him the sole possession of Lauriston and Randleston. Law, with this inheritance, burst at once into bound- less extravagance, and soon wasted all the immediate proceeds of his property. He then looked about him. He could not resign being the gentleman of fashion and gaiety in Edinburgh, and he turned his attention to continuing the style he lived in, by means of his talents as a man of commerce. His learning and ability, wonderful for one so young, soon availed him in the mercantile and banking world. He was not long thus engaged, before he brought him- self into the notice of the King's ministers for Scotland, and he was consulted by them on the best mode of arranging the public accounts, and remedying the want of a circulating medium in Scotland. As a way of 2 M 162 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. effecting this, he proposed the establishment of a bank of issue, which, according to his daring phm, might send forth paper money to the amount of the value of all the lands in the kingdom. This idea was no doubt the basis of those projects which subsequently gave such celebrity to his name. It is pretty sure that Law derived pecuniary advantages from his communications with the Scottish ministers. Law at this time, accord- ing to a contemporary account, is described as " a person of imposing mien and very handsome face, highly educated, displaying much intellect and eloquence in conversation, and having rare address in all corporal exercises — in fine, a perfect gentleman." About 1694, the love of adventure and the desire of display brought Law to London. Here, howsoever he had acquired his fresh wealth, he lived -in the most brilliant way, vying with the leadmg young men of fashion, and proved so remarkable a gallant himself, that he was designated by the then favourite distinction of Beau, and was called Beau Law. An untoward event, though perhaps fortunate for his future career, was now to change his course, and to rouse him from a condition far too trifling for one of his powers of calculation and action. This incident was a duel ; but to relate it rightly, I must introduce his opponent, another exquisite of the day, one Beau Wilson, upon the scene. This Beau's grandfather was Rowland Wilson, a citizen of London, and the founder of Merton Hospital, county of Surrey. He was descended from a family that has long been of consideration in the counties of Norfolk and Leicester, and whose representative is the Right Hon. Henry William Wilson, Lord Berners. THE LAWS OF LAURISTON. 163 The Wilsons liave formed alliances with many ancient families, as the Walpoles and the Kny vets. At this day also, the family is further distinguished by the gallant deeds of Lord Berners' cousin, the hero of Delhi, the present Major-General, Sir Archdale Wilson, Bart, and G.C.B. The Beau himself, Edward Wilson, was grand- son of the above Rowland, and fifth son of Thomas Wilson, Esq., of Keythorpe, High Sheriff of Leicester- shire in 1684-5. "Beau Wilson," says the London Journal of the 3d December, 1721, " was the wonder of the time he lived in. From humble circumstances [or, rather, from the moderate fortune of a private gentleman's younger son] he was on a sudden exalted to a very high pitch. For gay dress, splendid equipage, and vast expense he exceeded all the Court. How he A\^as supported few truly knew : and those who have undertaken to account for it, have only done it from the darkness of conjecture." Edward Wilson was the Brmnmell of his time. Pos- sessed of a remarkably handsome person, a polished address, and with large pecuniary sup])lies at his com- mand, he was well received, or, rather, anxiously com-ted by the best families in the kingdom. Like his antitype. Law, he acquired the sobriquet of " Beau," and was the arbiter elegantiarum of every cfrcle in which he moved. With the gentler sex he was a universal favourite ; and in times when outward adornment and frivolous accomplishments were better passports to society than sterling talents or worth, it is not to be wondered at that Beau Wilson was regarded by both sexes as a paragon. Contemporary with Wilson, and his rival both in M 2 104 YICISSITin^ES OF FAMILIES. beauty of person, fashionable dress, and expensive outlay, was John Law. A Mrs. LaA^Tence was one of the reigning beauties of that day, and i\Ir. Wilson and Mr. Law were both in the train of her admirers ; but whether it was in consequence of their livalry for her, or for Elizabeth Villiers, the sister of the first Earl of Jersey, afterwards Countess of Orkney,* that the duel with such melancholy results took place, has never been clearly ascertained. At no period was the disreputable custom of talking of conquests over the fair sex so' prevalent as then ; and it has been asserted that Law's boast of Miss Villiers' preference of him led to Wilson's challenge. The History of Cramond thus relates the particulars : — " In London, Mr. Law's superior beauty of person, ready wit, and engaging manners, assisted by proper commendations, and aided by that propensity to play for which he was always noted (gambling in those days was rather looked on as the necessary qualification of a gentleman than as aught disreputable), procured his admission into some of the first circles, and particularly attracted the attention of the ladies, among whom he had the reputation of being extremely fortunate. This success was, however, attended with very disagreeable consequences, involving him in an unhappy quarrel with Mr. Wilson, a gentleman renoA\med for a similar pre- eminence in personal endowments, which produced a hostile meeting between the parties. In tliis encoimter * Elizabeth Villiers, one of the six daughters of Sir Edward Villiers, had a very lai'ge share of that surprising beauty which ha.s been said to be the hereditary possession of the Villiers family. There is a good deal of romance in her marriage with Lord Orkney. , THE LAWS OF LAURISTON. 105 Mr. Law came off conqueror, leaving his antagonist dead on the spot where they fought." The particulars of the duel will be gleaned from the Royal Commissioner's Report of the trial, which took place m 1694, at the Old Bailey. Jolm Law, of St. Giles' in the Fields, gentleman, was arraigned upon an indictment of murder for killing Edward Wilson, gentleman, commonly called Beau Wilson, a person who, by the common report of fame, kept a coach and six horses, and maintained his family in great splendour and grandeur ; being full of money ; no one complainmg of his being their debtor ; yet from whence or by what hand he had the effects which caused him to appear in so great equipage is hard to be determined. The matter of fact was this. There was some diflference happened to arise between Mr. Law and the deceased, concerning one Mrs. Lawrence, who was acquamted witli Mr. Law, upon which, on the 9th of April instant, they met in Bloomsbury Square, and there fought a duel, in which Mr. Wilson was killed. It was made appear also that they had met several times before, but had not had opportunity to fight ; besides that, there were several letters sent by Mr. Law, or given to Mr. Wilson by him, which letters were full of invectives and cautions to Mr. Wilson to beware, for there was a design of evil against him ; and there were two letters sent by Mr. Wilson, one to Mr. Law, and the other to Mrs. Lawrence. Mr. Wilson's man, one Mr. Smith, said that Mr. Law came to his master's house a little before the fact was done, and drank a pint of sack in the parlour; after which he heard his master say he was much sui'prised with something that Mr. Law had told him. One Cap- 160 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. tain Wiglitman, a person of good conformation, gave account of tlie whole matter, and said tliat he was a familiar friend of Mr. Wilson, and was with him and Mr. Law at the Fountam Tavern, in the Strand ; and after they had stayed a little while there, Mr. Law went away. After which Mr. Wilson and Captain Wiglitman took coach and were driven toAvards Bloomsbury; whereupon Mr. Wilson stepped out of the coach into the square, where Mr. Law met him ; and before they came near together Mr. Wilson ch-ew his sword; and they both passed together, making but one pass, by which My. Wilson received a mortal wound in the lower part of his stomach, of the depth of two inches, of which he mstantly died. This was the sum of the evidence for the King. The letters were read in Court, which were full of aggrava- tions on both sides, without any names subscribed to them. There were also witnesses that saw the duel fought, who all agreed in their depositions that they drew their swords and passed at each other, and pre- sently Mr. Wilson was killed. Mr. Law, in his defence, declared that Mr. AVilson and he had been together several times before the duel was fought ; and never any quarrel was betwixt them till they met at the Fomitain Tavern, which was occa- sioned about the letters, and that his meeting Mr. Wilson in Bloomsbury was merely an accidental thing; Mr. Wilson drawing his sword upon him first, upon which he was forced to stand upon his own defence. That the misfortune did arise from a sudden heat of passion, and not from any prepense malice. The Com-t acquainted the jury that, if they found that ]\Ir. Law and Mr. Wilson THE LAWS OF LAURISTON. 1G7 did make an agreement to fight, thougli Mr. Wilson drew first, and that Mr. Law kUled him, he was (by the con- struction of the law) guilty of murder ; for, if two men suddenly quarrel, and one kill the other, this would be but manslaughter ; but this case seemed to be other- wise : for tliis was a continual quarrel, carried on betwixt them some time before; therefore must be accounted a malicious quarrel, and a design of murder in the person who killed the other : likemse that it was so in all cases. The trial was a very long one. The prisoner produced many persons of high station and good repute to speak in his favour ; and their testimony went to prove that his life was generally correct, that he was not given to quarrelling, nor was he a person of ill-behaviom. The jmy, after long deliberation, found the prisoner Guilty of Murder, and he received sentence accordingly. A pardon was, however, obtained from the Crown; and Law was on the point of regaining his liberty, when the relatives of Mr. Wilson lodged an appeal of murder, and he was detained in the Kmg's Bench. An appeal of murder was a very serious thing, and requires some explanation. It was this : if a man on an indictment by the Crown for murder was acquitted, or found guilty and pardoned by the Kmg, he was still liable to an appeal fi'om the widow or hefr male of the deceased. This appeal was in the nature of a private action between the parties, by which the death of the deceased was to be compensated for by the death of the accused ; and, if the case went against the defendant, die he must, if the plaintiff insisted on it ; since the Crown, as in all other private actions, could not remit the judgment. It was, 168 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. in fact, a suit of life for life ; and tlie Shylock who gained it had not a mere pound of flesh, but tlie fuller satisfaction of hanging on a gallows the subject of his prosecution. This barbarous proceeding of appeal for murder happened to be revived upon an acquittal for murder even so lately as 1817, when the defendant repelled the appeal by challenging the plaintiff to trial by combat, Avhich mortal mode of decision it appeared he could adopt in place of trial by jury. The plaintiff declined the fight; but this rendered the appeal so utterly ridiculous that the whole process was aboHshed by Act of Parliament. Law continued in durance for eight months awaiting the trial, when he found means to corrupt the keeper of the prison and to effect his escape. The following is from an advertisement fi-om the Lon- don Gazette of J anivdi' J 3 — 7, 1694-5 : — " Captain J. Lawe, aged 26, a Scotchman, lately a prisoner in the King's Bench for murther, hath made his escape from the said prison. Whoever secures him, so as to be delivered to the said prison, shall have =€50 paid immediately by the marshal of the said King's Bench." This advertisement proved ineffectual. Mr. Law got out of the country, and took up his abode in Paris, there and throughout France to cause more singular sensation than ever did foreigner before or since. John Law's marvellous proceedings in Paris are too much matter of history to need detail here. Law's con- nection with the Regent, Duke of Orleans was the greatest event of that able but dissipated Pi-ince's administration ; and among the great commercial trans- actions of the world. Law and his system will be re- THE LAWS OF LAURISTON. 1G9 membered for ever. Many and many are the accounts given, besides those in the various histories of France, of Law's system and the Mississippi scheme that grew upon it ; and in referring to those accounts, I woukl mention that of Dr. Mackay, in his " Popular Delusions," as about the best of all. Yet I cannot pass this mighty period of John Law's life without msisting that his plans Avere of a far wiser natm-e than the almost co- temporary Darien scheme (though that chiefly owes its failure to the faithlessness of William IIL) : nor should they be confounded with the South Sea Company, the Tulipomania, the sham railway projects, and the other bubbles by which visionaries and rogues have brought the avaricious and the imprudent to ruin. Law was undoubtedly an able calculator and financier. He found the exchequer of France on the verge of bankruptcy, and the government about to sink under the pressure. His paper issue and his establishment of the Royal Bank saved the state and restored confidence and re- animated, commerce. No doubt " the Company of the West," known better as the Mississippi scheme, and the numerous other companies that followed, brought much ruin in then- track ; but this was really more owing to the madness of the French people themselves than to Law, who rather yielded to the torrent than courted the storm. This, however, as I say, is matter of public history, and has been and is the subject of never- ending discussion. I return to Law's personal career. He shared, of course, immensely in the questionable wealth that accrued to France : he bought the Hotel de Soissons and sixteen large estates, and he outvied royalty in his houses and in his gardens ; for, like most 170 "^^CISSITUDES of families. Scotchmen, Law was an adniiniLle horticulturist. He thus, and it is a strong proof of his own honesty and good faith, invested all his treasures in landed property in France : he put not a shilling in the funds of other countries ; and, when he might have purchased regal domains in Scotland, he did no more than preserve his few paternal acres of Lauriston there. Law was in France Comptroller-General and a Minister with power unlimited. He obtained letters of nu,turalisation, and was raised to nobility by various titles. He was for a time the idol of the French, and he could have done just as he liked. Yet, in the midst of tliis prosperity and influence almost superhuman, he never did an unkind or an unworthy action ; and not unfrequently his justice and his liberality were remarkable. On one occasion he instantly, when asked, gave five hundred thousand francs towards building the church of St, Roch, so familiar, now-a-days, to all visitors to Paris ; and he distributed another sum of five hundred thousand fi-ancs among the followers of King James, the poor Scotch, Irish, and English exiles at St. Ger- mauis. Numerous gifts like these might be related. Of his justice the following is a sample : — Count Horn, brother of Prince de Horn, and a relative of the Em- peror of Germany, waylaid, robbed, and murdered in Paris a man loaded with the proceeds of some success- ful sale of Mississippi shares. The count was seized, tried, and condemned, but though dukes, princes, and even sovereigns interceded in his behalf. Law prevented the wavering Regent from yieldmg, and contrived that stern retribution should be done. Horn was executed in the Place de Greve. Law's coolness amidst all his THE LAWS OF LAURISTOX. 171 grandeur, was another remarkable feature. The anec- dotes that are told of this would fill a volume. One here must suffice. At a levee of Law's, when prmces, noblemen, and prelates were waitmg m Law's anti- chamber, a plain-lookmg gentleman craved admittance, on the score of being a Scotch kinsman. " Let him instantly come in," said Law, " for that claim is always a j)assport with me." The so honoured individual entered ; it was the Earl of Islay, afterwards Duke of Argyle. " I am sorry," said the Earl, as Law instantly jimiped up and grasped his hand, " I am sorry to dis- tm-b you while engaged in such momentous occupation." " By no means momentous," replied Law, " I am only wi'iting to my gardener at Lauriston about plantmg some cabbages ;" and while he was doing tliis, the best blood of France was waiting at the door ! Law's unmense wealth enabled him to gratify Mr. Wilson's relatives by the payment of one hundred thou- sand pounds. It would appear fi-om the fact of this hush-money not having been paid till 1721, that the determination of the Wilson family to bring the offender to justice had contmued for more than a quarter of a centmy, and offered a bar to his return to England. The fame of his financial oddities, however, was now at its height, and led to an invitation from the English Ministry to return to his native comitry, and give it the benefit of his talents. The one hundred thousand pounds reconciled the Wilsons ; and Law embarked in the Baltic Squacbon, commanded by Sir John Norris. He was accommodated on board the admiral's own ship, and treated with as much distinction as a crowned head. 172 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. He landed at the Nore, October 20, 1721, proceeded to London in a kind of triumph, and was speedily pre- sented to King George I., by Sir John Norris. The monarch received him with marked distinction, and loaded him with compliments. He took a mansion in Conduit Street, and furnished it with a splendour rarely seen at that time in houses of the highest society. On the 28th of November, 1721 (being the last day of Term), Mr. Law pleaded at the bar of the King's Bench on his knees, his Majesty's most gracious pardon for the murder of Edward Wilson, Esq., in 1694. He was attended at the bar by his relatives, the Duke of Argyle and the Earl of Islay, and several friends ; and each of the judges was presented with a pair of white gloves. After some years' residence in England, where a high degree of homage was paid to him by the upper classes, Mr. Law received intelligence of the confiscation of his whole property in France. The Mississippi scheme had ended in the ruin of myriads there ; and these, instead of blaming their owti reckless speculation, laid the whole evil at the door of him whose real utility they had per- verted and led astray. Conscious of the rectitu to have been murdered in the Richard, Duke of York. ) Tower. Elizabeth, contracted to the Dauphin, and m. to King Heury VII., with whom she lived unhappily. Cecily, contracted to James III., King of Scotland, but ?h. to John, Viscount Welles ; death took him and her only daughter from her very soon after the marriage. She was m. secondly, to Sir John Kyme. Anne, contracted to Philip, only son of the Duke of Burgundy, but m. to Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk : her death saved her from sharing in the misfortunes of her husband. Katherine, contracted to John, son of the King of Arragon, but m. to William Courtenay, Earl of Devon, and was mother of Edward Courtenay, Marquess of Exeter, beheaded 1539, and grandmother of Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devon, who was supposed to have been poisoned at Padua. II. Margaret, m. to Thomas Fitz-Alan, Earl of Arundel : her grandson, oft a prisoner in the Tower, saw his only son die before him, and was the last male of his line. III. Anne, m. first, to William, Lord Bourchier, eldest son of Henry, Earl of Essex, who died in his father's lifetime, and her son by him was killed by a fall from his horse, and was the last male of his line. She was m. secondly, to George Grey, Earl of Kent, by whom she had a son Richard, Earl of Kent, who took to gaming, became a great dicer, a deep drinker, and a thoroughly worthless fellow ; he dissipated his whole estate, and was at last found dead on the bench of a low inn in London ; Aime was m. thirdly, to Sir Anthony Wingfield, Knt. IV. Jacquetta, m. to John, Lord Strange, of Knokyu. V. Mary, m. to William Herbert, Earl of Huntingdon, who was to have married Richard the Third's daughter Katherine, but 2 2 b 370 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. she died young. This Mary, Countess of Huntingdon, was more fortunate than the rest of her race ; for, though she gave no son to her husband, and his earldom became consequently extinct, her only daughter was Countess of Worcester, and ancestress of the present Ducal house of Beaufort. VI. Katheriue, m. first, to Henry Staftbrd, Duke of Buckingham, beheaded by Richard III., by whom she was mother of Edward, Duke of Buckingham, beheaded by Henry VIII., 1521 : with him sunk for ever the splendour, princely honours, and vast wealth of the StaiFords. She was m. secondly, to Jasper Tudor, Duke of Bedford ; and thirdly, to Sir Richard Wing- field, K.G. VII. Another daughter, who is stated by Dugdale to have m. Sir John Bromley, Kiit., son of the renowned Sir John Bromley, who recovered the standard of Guyen, in the memorable battle of Corby, again.st the French. The melancholy death of Lord Rivers occurred in 1469, and he was succeeded by his eldest son, Anthony WlD- VILLE, Lord Scales, as second Earl Rivers, another victim of much misfortune. This nobleman, when Lord Scales, in the beginning of the reign of Edward IV., marched with the King into the north against the Lancastrians, and was one of the principal commanders at the siege of Alnwick Castle. He was soon afterwards made a Knight of the Garter, and he obtained a grant in tail of the Isle of Wight; his lordship about this period ac- quired great fame in a tournament at London, wherein he contested successfully with Anthony, the Baiitard of Burgundy, brother of Charles, Duke of Burgundy. But this affair, and his career before it, are so well told by Horace Walpole, in his " Royal and Noble Authors," that we cannot do better than quote the account : — " There flom-ished,'^ writes Walpole, " at the same period as the Earl of Worcester, a noble gentleman, by no means inferior to him in learning and politeness ; THE WIDVILLES. 371 in birth his equal ; by alliance his superior ; greater in feats of arms, and in pilgrimages more abundant. This was Antony Widville, Earl Rivers, Lord Scales and Newsells, Lord of the Isle of Wight ; Defenseur and Directcur of the Causes Apostolique for our holy Father the Pope in this realm of England, and uncle and Governour to my Lord Prince of Wales. " He was son of Sir Richard Widville, by Jaqueline of Luxemburg, Duchess-dowager of Bedford, and brother of the fan Lady Gray, who captivated that monarch of pleasure, Edward the Fourth. When about seventeen years of age, he was taken by force from Sandwich, mth his father, and carried to Calais by some of the opposite faction. The credit of his sister, the coun- tenance and example of his Prince, the boisterousness of the times, nothing softened, nothing roughened the mind of this amiable lord, who was as gallant as his luxm-ious brother-in-law, without his weaknesses; as brave as the heroes of either Rose, without their savageness ; studious in the intervals of business, and devout after the manner of those whimsical times, when men challenged others whom they never saw, and went bare-foot to visit shrines in countries of which they had scarce a map. Li short, Lord Antony was, as Sir Thomas More says, ' Vir, baud facile discernas, manuve aut consilio promptior.' " He distinguished himself both as a warrior and a statesman. The Lancastrians making an insurrection in Northumberland, he attended the King into those parts, and was a Chief Commander at the siege of Alnwick Castle, soon after which he was elected into the Order of the Garter. In the tenth of the same reign 2b 2 3 72 VIOISSITUUES OF FAMILIES. he defeated the Duke of Clarence and Warwick in a skirmish near Southampton, and prevented their seizing a great ship, called ' the Trinity,' belonging to that Earl. He attended the King into Holland on the change of the scene, returned with him, and had a great share in his victories, and was constituted Governor of Calais, and Captain-general of all the King's forces by sea and land. He had before been sent ambassador to negotiate a mar- riage between the King's sister and theDuke of Burgundy, and in the same character concluded a treaty between King Edward and the Duke of Bretagne. On Prince Edward being created Prince of Wales, he was appointed his governor, and had a grant of the office of Chief Butler of England; and was even on the point of attaining the high honour of espousing the Scottish princess, sister of King James the Third ; the Bishop of Rochester, Lord Privy Seal, and Sir Edward Widville being despatched into Scotland, to perfect that marriage. " A remarkable event of this Earl's life was a personal victory he gained in a tournament over Antony, Count de la Roche, called the Bastard of Burgundy, natural son of Duke Pliillip the Good. This illustrious en- counter was performed in a solemn and most mag- nificent tilt, held for that purpose in Smithfield. Our Earl was the challenger ; and from the date of the year, and the affinity of the person challenged, tliis ceremony was probably in honom- of the aforementioned marriage of the Lady Margaret, the King's sister, with Charles the Hardy, last Duke of Burgundy. Nothing could be better adapted to the humour of the age, and to the union of that hero and virago, than a single combat between two of their near relations. In the Biographia THE wroviLLES. 373 Britannica is a long account, extracted from a curious manuscript of this tournament, for which letters of safe conduct were granted by the King, as appears from ' Rymer's Fcedera ; ' the title of which are, ' Pro Bastardo Burgundies super punctis armorum perficiendis.' " At these justs, tlie Earl of Worcester (before- mentioned) presided as Lord High Constable, and at- tested the Queen's giving The Flower of Souvenance to the Lord Scales, as a charge to undertake the enter- prise, and his delivery of it to Chester Herald, that he might carry it over to be touched by the Bastard, in token of his accepting the challenge. This prize was a collar of gold, with the rich flower of Souvenance enamelled, and was fastened above the Earl's knee by some of the Queen's ladies. On the Wednesday after the Feast of the Resurrection, the Bastard, attended by four hundred Lords, Knights, Squires, and Heralds, landed at Gravesend ; and at Blackwall he was met by the Lord High Constable, with seven barges and a galley full of attendance, richly covered with cloth of gold and arras. The King proceeded to London ; in Fleet Street the champions solemnly met in his pre- sence ; and the palaces of the Bishops of Salisbury and Ely were appointed to lodge these brave sons of holy church ; as St. Paul's Cathedral was for holding a chapter for the solution of certain doubts upon the articles of combat. The timber and workmanship of the lists cost above two hundred marks. The pavilions, trappings, &c., were sumptuous in proportion. Yet, however weighty the expense, the Queen could not but think it well bestowed, when she had the satisfaction of beholding her brother victorious in so sturdy an 374 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. encounter ; the spike in the front of the Lord Scales's horse having run into the nostril of the Bastard's horse, so that he reared on end, and threw his rider to the gromid. The generous conqueror disdained the advan- tage, and would have renewed the combat, but the Bastard refused to fight any more on horseback. The next day they fought on foot, when Widville again prevailing, and the sport waxing warm, the King gave the signal to part them. "Earl Rivers had his share of his sister's afflictions as well as of her triumphs ; but making a right use of ad- versity, and imderstanding that there was to be a jubilee and pardon at St. James's in Spain, in 1473, he sailed from Southampton, and for some time was full virtuously occupied in going of pilgrimages to St. James in Gahce, to Rome, and to Saint Nicholas de Bar in Puyle, and other diverse holy places. Also he procured and got of om- holy Father the Pope a great and large in- dulgence and ' grace unto the chapel of our lady of the Piewe by St. Stephen's at VVestmenstre.' " The dismal catastrophe of this accomplished Lord, in the forty-first year of his age, is well known : ' Rivers, Vaxiglian, and Grey Ere this lie shorter by the head at Pomfret.' " But, audi alteram partem. In the Life of Richard III., by Caroline A. Ilalsted, one of the best histories ever written by a female hand, the fair and able author (a determined defender of King Richard, it should, how- ever, be observed) detracts much from the couleur de rose character of Earl Rivers, by Walpole. Miss Halsted speaks thus of the Earl : — THE WIDVILLES. 375 " Lord Rivers, having been removed from liis prison at SIieriiF Hutton, was there, on the 23rd June, 1483, tried and executed by the Earl of Northumberland, that peer acting both as judge and accuser. However harsh this proceeding may appear, it is clear that this unfortunate nobleman was liimself satisfied that his sentence was con- formable to the proceedings of the age, and had been merited by his own conduct. That he had confidence also in the Protector's justice, although he entertained no hope of awakening his mercy, is like'SN'ise shown by the annexed conclusion to hia will, dated at Sheriff Hutton, 23rd June, 1483 : ' Over this I beseech humbly my Lord of Gloucester, in the worship of Christ's passion and for the merit and weal of his soul, to comfort, help, and assist, as supervisor for very trust of this testament, that mine executors may with his pleasure fulfil this my last will' " The commiseration ordinarily expressed at the violent end of Anthony, Earl Rivers, has arisen in great measure from the lamentations bestowed upon him by Caxton, whose first book (from the English press) with the date and place subjoined, was a work of this nobleman's, entitled 'Dictes or Sayings of Philosophers,' the MS. of which, elaborately illuminated, represents Edward IV., his son, and the Queen, and Earl Rivers in the act of offering his work to the King, accompanied by Caxton. But this accomplished nobleman, although learned, chivalrous, and excelling his compeers in the more graceful attainments of the age, was by no means free from the vices which characterised his family, and the times in which he lived. He was universally mipopular, from the selfish ajid covetous ambition which marked 376 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. hi« political conduct during the ascendancy of his royal sister. He was the cause of King Edward's committing to the Tower his ' beloved servant ' Lord Hastings. He instigated the Queen to insist on the Duke of Clarence's execution. He grasped at every profitable or powerful appointment in King Edward's gift ; and would, there can be no doubt, have sacrificed the Duke of Gloucester to his insatiable ambition, had not the prince, fi'om inti- mation of his designs, felt justified, in accordance with the relentless custom of that period, in committing him to prison, and commanding his execution." Miss Strickland, in her " Lives of the Bachelor Kings of England," somewhat corroborates the fact that Rivers was not altogether the immaculate character generally supposed. According to her, his want of sobriety was the cause of his being easily entrapped by the crafty Duke of Gloucester and his minion Buckingham, at tliat eventful moment of the accession of his nephew, Edward V., when all depended on his sagacity, caution, and care. " Lord Rivers," writes Miss Strickland, " entered Northampton, and found it swarming with the Duke of Gloucester's northern cavalry, besides nme hundi'ed retainers of Buckingham, each wearing the well-known badge of the Stafford knot. There were three inns in Northampton market-place. Joining each other, Glou- cester and Buckingham had just taken up their quarters at two, the nns situated at each extremity, leaving the middle vacant, like an empty trap, set for the nonce, in which Rivers secured his lodging for that night. Im- mediately afterwards, his brother-in-law, Buckingham, visited him in his quarters, entering with open arms, and THE WIDVILLES. 377 the exclamation of ' Well met, good brother Scales.' And withal ' he wept.' " The fraternal embracings between Rivers and the husband of his sister Katherine were scarcely over, when Gloucester entered from the other inn. His greet- ing was as hearty : ' Welcome, good cousin, out of Wales ;' and then followed some moralising congratula- tions, in Gloucester's peculiar style, on the happiness he felt at the peace and good will which pervaded the times and people in general. Rivers was utterly de- ceived by the apparent frankness and condescension of these great princes of the blood, whom he expected to find rudely repulsive. " Gloucester invited Rivers to supper at his quarters. After the meal, the cups passed quickly and merrily, and assumed the semblance of a revel in the old military times of Edward IV. Ever as the cup was pushed to Gloucester, he pledged Rivers, saying, ' I drink to you, good coz.' The two dukes kept their wits in working- order, but Rivers was so overcome, that at the end of the revel he was led to his inn between both his boon companions. The dukes left him in his bedroom, wish- ing him many and affectionate good nights. There is no doubt but they had extracted information from him sufficient to guide their manoeuvres for the morrow. Certainly, the conduct of Rivers, considering the precious charge he had, was inexcusable. The moment Rivers was asleep, the two dukes called for the keys of his inn, locked the gates, and, appointing sentinels, forbade anyone to enter or depart. The rest of the night was spent by them in arrangements of military strategy. They stationed, at certain intervals, men-at-arms, form- 378 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. ing a lane. Many country people remembered, for many years, how the troopers blocked up the highway to Northampton, and turned them back from market. The two dukes were early as any one on the road to Stoney Stratford. There they were joined by a third person, who, notorious carouser as he was, had certainly kept back from the orgie of the preceding night. This third making up their triumvirate, had hitherto worked successfully for their plans. He and Rivers were most deadly enemies. He came to enjoy the overthrow of the man he hated, and to take official charge of his young royal master. The third person in the plot was Lord Hastings, the King's Lord Chamberlain. While the cavalcade was approaching Northampton, the ser- vants of Lord Rivers began to stir for the morning and found that the inn was locked, and all within were prisoners, closely guarded. They woke then- master — whose sleep was heavy after his revel — by coming to his bedside with exclamations of alarm, telling him, ' the dukes had gone their way, and, taking the keys of his inn, had left him prisoner.' So completely was Rivers deceived that he supposed his princely boon companions were playing out a jest, and had taken this method of ensurmg then* earlier arrival at Stoney Stratford, " By the time he was di*essed, Gloucester and Buc- kingham returned. They were desirous of acting out their parts as speedily as possible, and therefore admitted Rivers to their presence. ' Brother,' exclaimed he, merrily, to Buckingham, 'is this how you serve me? The reply was in a different tone. Indeed, according to the poetical chronicler, Buckingham, THE WIDVILLES. 379 ' Stern in evil sadness, Cried, ' I arrest thee, traitor, for thy badness." " ' Arrest ! ' said Elvers, ' why, where is your commis- sion?' Buckingham instantly flashed out his sword, and all his party did the same. Oppressed by numbers, Rivers surrendered without farther resistance, and was forthwith put under guard in a separate cham- ber fi-om the prisoners previously seized at Stoney Stratford." As may naturally be supposed, this arrest was the pre- lude of Rivers' execution. On Lord Rivers' unhappy decease, he was succeeded in all his honours, but the barony of Scales, by his only surviving brother, Richard Widville, third Earl Rivers. This nobleman, the last of the male line, died unmarried in 1491. By his testa- ment, bearing date 20th February, 1490, his lordship dii'ected his body to bo buried in the Abbey of St. James, in Northampton. He bequeathed to the parish church of Grafton all such cattle as he then had at Graf- ton, viz., two oxen, five kine, and two bullocks, to the intent that they should yearly keep an obit for his soul, and he appointed his nephew, Thomas, Marquess of Dorset, his heir, to whom he devised all his lands what- soever ; desiring that there might be as much under- wood sold, in the woods of Grafton, as would purchase a bell, to be a tenor to the bells already there, for a remembrance of the last of his blood. Upon the decease of his lordship, the Barony and Earldom of Rivers became extinct. This last Earl Rivers was a Knight of St. John of Jerusalem. Much light is thrown 380 v^cISSITUDES of families. on that fact by the following communication from an esteemed correspondent :* — " I take this opportunity of offering you some infor- mation on a different subject, which may probably interest you as an antiquary and genealogist, and which, perhaps, you may think with me, will help to solve a problem that has often puzzled me, namely, why Richard * My correspondent gives me, in another letter, a good deal of information about the Order of St. John, which may perhaps be introduced not inappropriately here : "Regarding the English branch of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, T may add a few particulars. The history of the extinct langue of England, before the dissi>lution of religious houses by Henry VIII., is sufficiently known, and is, in fact, mixed up with the history of the Order in General, but from the year 1540, when the last Lord Prior died, and the Priory became thereby extin- guished, down to the present day a good deal of interesting infor- mation is to be found in the archives at Malta, for it is a curious fact that although the ' Tongue ' was abolished, the connexion of English gentlemen with the renowned brotherhood has never ceased, for knights of our country have been received, few, certainly, and far between, but quite sufficient to keep up the chain, unbroken, from that time to the days in which we live. At the most unlikely periods there has never lacked, at least, one English cavalier to represent what was once, according to Rosio, the very noble, rich, and powerful langue of England. During a rather long residence in Malta, I made an abstract of every bull connected with the English 'Tongue' that had issued from the Chancellerie of the religion from the first quarter of the 14th century, when the ' Libri Bullarum' commence, down to the year 1798, when the Order was driven from Malta by the French. I have, also, had the good fortune to recover from the obscurity and oblivion in which they have so long reposed, the names of nearly a thousand members of the Order, English, Irish, and Scotch, from the first foundation of the Order down to the present day, and to recover the real names of those mentioned by the historians of the Brotherhood, but under sadly mutilated shapes. " In Major Porter's ' History of the Knights of Malta,' you will THE WroVILLES. 381 Widville, last Earl Rivers, who held that title for a quarter of a century, never married to continue his family, the extinction of which he laments in a tone of such pathos in his last will and testament. " Residing for a considerable time in Malta, I amused myself with extracting from the records and archives of the Order of St, John of Jerusalem, preserved there, everything connected with the ci-devant English branch find (vol. ii., p. 280) a pretty correct, and certainly unique list of the Priors and other dignitaries of England, Ireland, and Scotland, which he had from me, one which he acknowledges in his preface. I have since been able to greatly improve these lists. " I am sorry to say that nothing more is to be found regarding the last Earl Rivers, in the archives of the Order, beyond what I have already mentioned to you. There are many other curious things to be had from the same source, curious to a genealogist ; for instance, there are two bulls, dated the same day, 26th March, 1517, granting permission to wear the golden cross of the Order to Thomas Stanley, second Earl of Derby, his wife, and eldest son ; and also to Charles Somerset, first Earl of Worcester, his wife, and eldest son ; each sigoied by the Grand Master of Rhodes, Fabrizio Caretto. There is also a curious bull granting right of succession to the Priory of Torpichen (Scotland), on the death of Sir "VVUliam KnoUes, to Robert Stuart d'Aubigny, on condition of taking the habit of the Order, as the said Robert Stuart was a layman at the time of the bull being issued. He is called by the commissioners empowered to receive his proofs of nobility, nephew of the Lord Bernard Stuart d'Aubigny, Constable of France. This is an interesting fact, as no such person as this Robert appears in any pedigree of the d'Aubigny Stuarts that I have seen ; the bull is dated 17th March, 1504. I have reason to think him the same Stuart d'Aubigny, who, according to the historian, was engaged in the unhappy attempt to recover Rhodes, while the head-quarters of the Order were at Viterbo, and was massacred there ; but Goussan- court in his ' Martyrologie ' calls him, I think, Gilbert Stuart d'Aubigny, and not Robert, but Goussancourt has niunerous mistakes of this nature to answer for. "John James Watts, " of Hawkesdale Hall, Cumberland." 382 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. of that renowned fraternity. Among other matter most interesting, I met witli a petition from Richard Widvile, dated shortly after the period of the catastrophe at Pomfret, the decapitation of his eldest brother, and addressed to the Grand Master of Rhodes — John Ursino — stating that he, the petitioner, albeit a young man, had lived long enough in the world to experience the hollowness and uncertainty of everything connected mth it, and to become thoroughly disgusted with it. He had seen the total ruin of his family, and every thing and person most near and dear to him ; and wishing to devote the rest of his life to the service of God, in the habit of some religious order, he prayed the Grand Master to receive his profession in the brother- hood of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem. " Then follows a bull from the said Grand Master to the Lord Prior of St. John in England, Sir William Tornay, directing the said Grand Prior, because of the eminent merits and good disposition of the said Richard AVidvile, and more especially because of his illustrious parentage, paternally and maternally, and particularly on account of his near connection with the Royal House of England, to receive him, the said Richard Widvile, as a professed Knight Hospitaller of St. John of Jeru- salem, with as little delay as possible. " I conclude, fi-om all this, that the last Earl Rivers lived and died a professed Knight of Rhodes, and conse- quently coelebs. "As no genealogist or historian, however, noticed this curious fact, I take it for granted it lies buried in the archives of the Order of Malta, and is entirely unknown." THE WIDVILLES. 383 Such were the vicissitudes of most of the once proud name and royal race of Widville ; and when one con- templates their elevations and then- falls — then- successes ever ending in reverses, — then- dignities ever akin to decay, and ever fading into naught — one incluies to admit the assertion of the poet, that " graves only are men's works, and death their gain." 384 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. Ctstamcntiirn dEtfcntrititics. " Is not this a lamentable thing, that of the skin of an innocent lamb should be made parchment, that parchment, being scribbl'd o'er, should undo a man ?" — Shakespeare. The stream of active anxious life that, on every week day in the year, from the rising to the setting of the sun, flows round St. Paul's Churchyard, is something marvellous — marvellous not only for its vastness, but also for the incongruous elements of which it is com- posed. On foot, jostling along the pavement; in exclu- sive brougham or vulgar 'buss ; in rapid " Hansom " or slow going " four-wheeler," the crowd moves on, " to or fro the City." Lahitur et lahetur in omne voluhilis cevum. Now and then, a few as they approach the corner near to Dakin's tea-shop fall out of the current ; some- times a spruce bashful bachelor, with thoughts on mar- riage licence intent ; sometimes a widow with a little boy by the hand, seeking to administer to the dead husband and father ; then a smart or seedy attorney's clerk, with ominous law papers under his arm, and then a would-be legatee, bent on ocular demonstration of his good or bad fortune ; occasionally, perchance, a genealogical explorer like myself, or more frequently an inveterate Paul Pry eager to gratify his curiosity about his neighbours' and friends' affairs. These stragglers pass under a quaint old archway or gate- house, on the right hand going from Ludgate Hill, which leads into a dismal looking district — TESTAMENTARY ECCENTRICITIES. 385 its silence, in remarkable contrast with the noise and bustle without. This gloomy locality is no less impor- tant a place than flimous, but now partially destroyed Doctors' Commons— a locality associated with the brightest and saddest events of man and Avoman's career — a locality of which the man-iage joy bell and the funeral knell are alike emblems. But we must not moralize : let us at once enter the long, dark, incon- venient, narrow apartment called the Will Office, and read, not " the simple annals of the poor," but the com- plicated records of the rich. We may search, far and wide, through history and romance, before we read anything half so strange or half so absurd — I might say half so cruel — as is to be found in these archives of Doctors' Commons. Any perr3on may satisfy himself who chooses to pay for the conviction. The sum is not much, only a shilling stamp — being, I suppose, a symbolical tax, a type of the solitary shilling with which elderly gentlemen disinherit their children, by way of shewing that they die in all Christian charity and forgiveness ! But indeed it is hardly to be conceived what a spite the dead bear towards the living ; or, to be quite correct, I should rather say, what a spite the dying bear towards those of their own family, for it is more particularly against near relatives that these posthumous thunders are directed ; towards mankind in general a testator of this kind is all benevolence; he loves not his son nor his daughter, his nephew nor his niece, but his heart overflows with affec- tion and charity for strangers, and he builds museums, or endows hospitals, or gratifies genealogical pride, and starves his kith and kin ! 2 2 386 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. It is a favourite maxim that a man can do what he likes with his own, " the law allows it, and the court awards it;" but, is not this a fallacy? A man's life is surely as much his own as his farm in Kent, or his investment in the funds, yet the law does not sanc- tion or permit suicide. Now it seems to me that the prohibition in the case of life might be extended to the case of property. The unlimited control which the law of England gives to a testator should be restricted. Property and the rights of those to whom, in the course of things, it ought to come, should, to some extent, be protected. At present, Avhatever caprice or bad feeling, or prejudice may dictate, it is in the discretion of a testator to do. In many instances he may alienate to utter strangers the long inherited lands of an ancient family ; he may enrich his mistress and j^auperize his heir ; he may found a public museum and leave his son to starve. This great question of wills, the unlimited power of making them, the negligence with which they are kept, and the right of a man, when dead and gone, to continue still to control succession, is one well worthy of public attention and parliamentary interference. But in times of public excitement, the still voice of social reform — like the voice of conscience — is little heeded. Amid tlie din and struggles of contending parties, domestic legislation gives way to political, and social improvements are scarcely thought of The additions made by Parliament to the appliances of our everyday existence, during the calmer period of the last forty years, have been prodigious. Tliis generation has need to be grateful : the railway, the penny post- age, the cheap newspaper, the bright sunshine and the TESTAMENTARY ECCENTRICITIES. 387 free air let iuto our houses by the repeal of the window tax, the cheerful gas which has not only lighted but re- formed our streets, the embankment of our grand old river, and a thousand minor augmentations of our enjoy- ments date not much further back than the boyhood of those, who are just passing the meridian of life. Nor should we forget how much Prince Albert had to do of late years with the improvement and decoration of domestic interiors. A great deal has indeed been done, but more remains to be accomplished. The Augean stable is not yet cleansed. In a former chapter I have dwelt on the laxity with which wills are kept before they reach official custody ; on the evils arising therefrom, and on the simple means of remedy. But this other and still more important question remains to be discussed : — Can- not the present power of a testator — a power, be it remembered, without restraint or appeal — be bene- ficially controlled or qualified, as in France, by some special code or enactment ? Many and many a family vicissitude has arisen from the unrestrained control a man is thus permitted to have over his property after death. The subject of wills is full of interest, but far too extensive for more than a passing illustration here. A few facts from the notes I have collected, and from suggestions of my excellent friends Lord Gort and James Holbert Wilson, are all my space will permit, and these shall be selected from modern instances, rather than from the curious but somewhat dry details of "testamenta vetusta." Recent instances of testamentary eccentricity abound, 2 c 2 ;588 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. and examples need not be sought in the more ancient records of Doctors' Commons. In the modern portion of that interesting depository- occur startling revelations of misers who walked in rags, and died like paupers, leavhig countless stores to relatives they scarcely knew; of fathers who have cut off with a shilling innocent or repentant sons ; and of false philanthropists who have devoted to works of charity the wages of iniquity. There too is the will of the old Lord who endeavoured to coerce the Crown in the disposal of titles of honour ; of the wealthy General, of a more democratic tone of mind, who stipulated that any one of his daughters who married a Peer should forfeit her share of his riches ; and of the learned Judge who disinherited his daughter in case she married an Irishman, and especially an Irish lord. Then there is the Twickenham gentleman's testamentary injunction couched in flowing verse ;''^ and the will of the Swiss * The first codicil to the will of Nathaniel Lloyd, of Twickenham, in the county of Middlesex, Esq., is in verse; it begins : My good executors fulfil, I pray ye, fairly, my last will. With first and second codicil : And first I give to dear Lord Hinton, At Twyford school, not at Winton, One hundred guineas for a ring, Or some such memorandum thing ; And truly, much I should have blundered, Had I not given another hundred To Vere, Earl Poulett's second son. Who dearly loves a little fun. And proceeds in similar doggerel to give other legacies. This rhyming document was proved with second codicil, 11th April, 1774, by the oaths of the Right Honoui-able Vere, Earl TESTAMENTARY ECCENTRICITIES. 389 refugee who tied up his fortune in the vain hope that it might accumulate to millions upon millions. Doctors' Commons has besides on record the genealogical bequest of the proud representative of the English branch of the grand old race of Harcourt, who enriched the Norman chief of his House, although their ancestors had sepa- rated seven hundred years before ; and also the devise in 1772 by Lord Berkeley of Stratton of his valuable estates — including, I believe, Berkeley Square and Stratton Street, Piccadilly — to Earl Berkeley. His Lordship's apology for thus disinheriting his next heirs, the noble house of Wodehouse, is thus expressed : — "This I do, being the last male heir of my family, desirous of nourishing the root from which it sprang, and wishing the stock may continue to flourish and send forth new branches as long as any civil government sub- sist in this country." And then, within the last few years, is the remarkable will of a trader's descendant, who, from a fanciful notion that he belonged to an illustrious race, bequeathed to the noble house, with which he imagined himself connected, property worth £12,000 a year. In Doctors' Commons too is many a sad memorial ot death-bed animosity, of children disinherited, of para- sites promoted, and of families destroyed — enough to form volumes of striking interest. But my limited space confines me to the following few examples : — ' The succession to Ashridge, Herts, and the other Poulett, formerly the Honourable Vere Poulett, aiid James Henckell, Esq., the executors. 390. VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. vast estates of the Earls of Bridgewater gave rise to one of the most curious of our causes cclebres. In 1823, John WilHam, Ttli Eari of Bridgewater, made a will, by which he bequeathed property, which has been estimated at about £2,000,000 to the then Lord Alford, on condition, that, if the said Lord Alford should die Avithout having attained the rank of ]\Iarquis or Dulce, or should not have attained either of those dignities within five years after he should have become Lord Brownlow, the property was to go to his brother, the Hon. Charles Henry Oust, subject to the like term. Lord Alford died in the year 1851 without having attained the dignities in question, and then arose the point, " was his brother or his son entitled to the estate?" On the one side it was urged that the late possessor being dead, without having obtained the stipulated grade, his descendants had thereby incurred the penalty of forfeiture. To this it was replied, that only one year having expired, the matter must as yet be considered doubtful. Both parties appealed to law, and law in its court of highest appeal — the House of Lords — decided that the condition, being contrary to the principles of the English constitution, and one which the devisee had no legitimate means of controlling, should be passed over, and the will read without it. This judgment confirmed the youthful Earl of Brownlow (Lord Alford's son) in the estate. The judgment of the Lords in this great case was in opposition to the opinions of the majority of the Judges of the land who had been summoned to assist by their advice. Those learned personages, interpreting the law by purely technical reasoning, maintained that the TESTAMENTARY ECCENTRICITIES. 391 condition was valid, but the Lords adopted a more expansive view, and protected the Peerage from the danger with which it was threatened. If the decision had been confii-matory of the old and eccentric Lord's requirement, any millionaire, however lowly born, might attach to the inheritance of his estates some such con- dition as that attempted to be imposed by the Earl of Bridgewater. Juvenal's lines — " Stemmata quid faciunt ? Quid prodest, Pontice, longo Sanguine censeri, pictosque ostendere vultus Majorum?" are readily answered at Doctors' Commons. Let us select one or two examples : — Beriah Botfield, Esq., M.P., of Norton Hall, in the county of Northampton, and of Decker Hill and Hopton Court, in the county of Salop, died 7th August, 1863. His personalty was sworn under £200,000, and his mcome was popularly estimated at £40,000 a year : he possessed a great ta^te for genealogical pursuits, and compiled, for private circulation a splendid quarto volume, entitled " Stemmata Botevilliana." In this work he gives memorials of the ancient house of Botteville (of which the Marquis of Bath is a direct descendant), and with it endeavours, inferentially but without evidence, to connect his own ancestry. Not long be- fore his death, actuated solely by genealogical regard and by a feeling of pride in what he considered to be the origin of his femily, he devised his estate, park, and mansion of Norton Hall, with Buckley Manor, &c., 392 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. to the second son, and each subsequent son in tail male, according to priority of birth, of the fourth Marquis of Bath. The Marquis is described in the Will as " ex antiqua Botevilliana familia oriundus." Truly it may be added "stemmata quid faciunt?" Another instance of the advantages of pedigree occurs ua the will of William, last Earl Harcourt, who died in 1830. That nobleman was the lineal descendant and male representative of the great and historic house of Harcourt of Stanton Harcourt, founded in England in the 12th century by Ivo de Harcourt, brother of Robert d'Harcourt, Seigneur d'Harcourt in Normandy, ancestor of the Dues d'Harcourt in France. The two lines, Harcourt of Normandy and Harcourt of England, thus became separated seven hundred years ago! Nevertheless when the last representative of the English branch, William, Earl Harcourt, was making his final testamentary arrangements, his thoughts turned to the source from which his lineage originally sprung, and he bequeathed to the French Marquis d'Harcourt and his heirs male, not only the beautifully situated estate of St. Leonard's Hill, overlooking regal Windsor, but also a sum of £80,000 to be laid out in land, to increase the property. His Lordship required, how- ever, that each inheritor should not be absent from England more than six months at one time, unless en- gaged in the civil or military service of Great Britain. Family pride does not enter into my next illustration. About thirty-two years ago there died an old miser well known as James Wood of GLOUCESTER. He had been for many years a draper and banker in that city, TESTAMENTARY ECCENTRICITIES. 3'J3 as his fatlier and grandfather had been before him, and had kept the Gloucester old bank — long an institution of the county. At the date of his death, he had reached his eightieth year, and had lived a long life of parsimony and eccentricity ; he was a common-place specimen of penury and avarice, quite of a different stamp from John Elwes, who, though the miser's miserable mean- ness showed itself in a thousand ludicrous ways to provoke scorn or pity, was not so wholly absorbed by this evil passion, that he did not often give signs of a better feeling. On the occasion when the humour took him, he would lend freely, and in these acts of benevo- lence he was never known to take advantage of those whom he so obliged; he was besides an active and upright county magistrate, and sat in Parliament for Berkshire. But old Jemmy Wood was nothing but a miser ; he had no thought beyond the heaping up of hoards of money, no heart for generosity, no interest in the world's ambition. The story goes that he would ride in a hearse to save a shilling, and even accept alms in the street. At his death his personal property, independently of his real estate, was valued at a million sterling. The list of the securities he held is quite tantalizing — New 31 per Cents. £333,098, Reduced 3^ per Cents. £181,000, New Annuities £66,221, Consols £57,500, Bank Stock, £52,000, and so on. Old Wood never married, his only sisters predeceased him ; and at the period of his death, his nearest of kin were two second cousins, Mrs. Elizabeth Goodlake and Mr. Edward Hitchings. On the night of the old man's death, Mr. Phillpotts, an intimate friend, in company with 394 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. Mr. Osborne, one of Mr. Wood's clerks, proceeded up stairs to the lobby, adjoining the room where the de- ceased "usually slept, and from a bureau (the key of which was in Mr. Osborne's possession) a sealed packet Avas taken out, in which were found two sheets of paper bearing date the 2nd and 3rd of December, 1834, which disposed of the deceased's property ; the paper of the 2nd of December signed, but not attested, requests his friends Alderman Wood, M.P., of London, John Chadborne of Gloucester (his attorney), Jacob Osborne of Gloucester and John Surman (his two clerks) to be his executors ; and desires that they should " re- tain to themselves all the personal property subject to debts and such legacies as he should afterwards dh-ect." Tlie second paper dated the day following, was executed by the deceased in the presence of three witnesses, and purported to dispose " of all the estate real and personal, and to give it to his executors, and their heirs in equal proportions, subject to his debts, and to any legacies and bequests he might thereafter make." This was therefore a complete disposition of his whole estate to his " executors," those executors not beuig named in this particular paper. On the 4th of June following, the Prerogative Court of Canterbury granted administration of the effects, pending suit ; but in a few days after, an event occurred which gave a different complexion to the whole case. On the 8th of June, Mr. Tliomas Helps of Cheapside, London, received through the threepeimy post, a letter, anonymously sent, which was found to contain a codicil to the will of Mr. Wood, together Avith a memorandum in pencil to this effect : " The enclosed is a paper saved out of TESTAMENTARY ECCENTRICITIES. 305 many burned by parties I could bang : tbcy pretend it is not J. Wood's band : many will swear to it. They want to swindle me. Let the rest know." This codicil was in these words: — "In a codicil to my will, I gave the Corporation of Gloucester £140,000. In this I wish my executors would give £60,000 to them for the same purpose, as I have before named. I would also give to my friends Mr. Phillpotts £50,000, and Mr. George Council, £10,000, and to Mr. Thomas Helps, Cheapside, London, £30,000, and Mrs. Goodlake, mother of Mr. Surman, and to Thomas Wood, Smith Street, Chelsea, each £20,000, and Samuel Wood, Cleveland Street, Mile End, £14,000, and the latter gentleman's family, £6,000, and I confirm all other bequests, and give the rest of my property to the executors for their own interest. " James Wood. " Gloucester City Old Bank, July, 1835 (Indorsed) Codicil to my Will." On the production of this mysterious communication, the Corporation of Gloucester offered a reward of £1,000 for information of the person by whom it was sent to Mr. Helps, and another of £1,000 to whoever should produce the codicil containing the bequest of £140,000 therein referred to ; but these rewards pro- duced no result ; the mystery remains unsolved to this day. There now commenced the litigation in the memorable case " Woods and others v. Goodlake, Helps, and others," which lasted several years. I will not weary my readers ^ath the dreary details of the lawsuit. At length, in 1840, Su- Herbert Jenner, in a very learned and elaborate judgment, 396 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. which occupied more than six hours in the delivery, decided against the testamentary papers. As to that of July, 1835, Sir Herbert referred to the extraordinary manner of its production, and, commenting on that cir- cumstance, as well as the non-appearance of the trans- mitter of the paper, notwithstanding the large rewards offered, considered there Avas nothing to support the document but the evidence of handwriting, and rejected it altogether. An appeal from this decision was imme- diately lodged by the proctors for the executors, and the case was again heard by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Corroborative evidence was received; and on the 16th of August, 1841, Lord Lyndhurst pro- nounced their Lordships' judgment in favour of the papers, thus reversing the decree of Sir Herbert Jenner. The effect of this final judgment was to confirm the bequests to the Corporation of Gloucester and the other legatees named in the mysterious codicil, and to give to Sir Matthew Wood, Mr. Osborne, Mr. Surman, and Mr. Chadborne's representatives about £400,000 to be divided amongst them. Can any illustration of the laxity allowed in the cus- tody of testamentary papers be more remarkable than this ? Documents were produced and admitted, coming from an unknown source, and accompanied by asser- tions that other similar testamentary papers had been purloined and destroyed ! To afford one more proof of the urgent necessity of a speedy compulsory registration of wills, there is the singular case of the pretended will of the Rev. John Clavell, rector of Churchknowle, Dorsetshire, and TESTAMENTARY ECCENTRICITIES. 397 representative of the ancient and eminent family of Clavell of Smedmore, in the Isle of Purbuck, Mr. Clavell, an aged and feeble man, died in 1833, and his heirs advertised for his will ; some months after which his housekeeper's daughter suddenly produced a will, which she said he had dictated to her, and which gave all the property to her intended lover, a tenant and common man, named Barnes. This wUl was a forgery ; and fortunately there was evidence sufficient to show it to be so ; but not till after a trial of ejectment brought by the co-heirs. The late Colonel Mansel, husband of Mr. Clavell's niece, took an active and energetic part in the proceedings. The trial occurred before Lord Den- man, at Dorchester, in 1834, and lasted four days. The jury, by their verdict, invalidated the will, finding, in fact, that it was the result of a conspiracy between the housekeeper, her daughter, and Barnes, the bailiff and tenant of Mr. Clavell, and Barnes's brother. Against such a will as this, speedy compulsory registration would have been an immense protection. There is something very honorable in the succession to property bequeathed in esteem and recognition of public services or private worth. By a codicil to her will, dated Aug. 12th, 1744, two months before her death, Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, left William Pitt, the great Minister, £10,000 for " the noble defence he had made for the support of the laws of England, and to prevent the ruin of his country." Walpole, in a letter to Conway, thus alludes to another devise to Pitt : " You have heard, to be sure, of the great fortune that is bequeathed to Mr. Pitt by a Sir 398 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. William Pj-nsent, an old man of near ninety, who quitted the Avorld on the peace of Utrecht, and, luckily for Mr. Pitt, lived to be as angry with its pendant, the Treaty of Paris. I did not mention the first report, which mounted it to an enormous sum. I thmk the medium account is £2,000 a year and £30,000 m money." Within our own time, a very few years ago, a similar recognition of a distinguished statesman has occurred. By a Will, dated November, 1857, and proved Decem- ber, 1863, Mrs. Sarah Willyams, of Mount Braddon, Torquay, widow of Colonel James Brydges Willyams of Carnanton, Cornwall, and daughter and heiress of Mendez da Costa, a Portuguese gentleman, left a hand- some fortune to the Right Honourable Benjamin Disraeli, M.P., solely "in admiration of Mr. Disraeli's efforts to vindicate the race of Israel, and in approval of his views and opinions on the subject;" and the testatrix expresses a wish that Mr. Disraeli should obtain Her Majesty's permission to take the names and arms of the families of Lara and Mendez da Costa in Hen of or precedent to the surname and arms of Disraeli. The immediate founder of the noble house of Bar- rmgton was John Shute, Esq., a barrister, to whom Mr. Wildman, of Becket, in Berkshu-e, although no rela- tive, and but a shght acquaintance, bequeathed his estate, declaring that the only reason he had for making Mr. Shute his heir was that he considered him the most Avorthy, of all he knew, of adoption, after the manner of the Romans, a mode of settling property of which he always approved. The late Sm Harry James Goodricke, seventh TESTAMENTARY ECCENTRICITIES. 399 Baronet of Ribstone Hall, Yorkshire, who inherited not only his paternal estates, but likewise the large Irish pro- perty of the Fortescues Lords Clermont, was said to have had £30,000 a year. His mania was hunting. He was a leading member of the Quorn Hunt, and became Master, on the retirement of Lord Southampton. He kept the whole of the establishment at his own expense, and on the day of his death seventy-five hunters were in his stables ready to commence the next season with renewed vigour and spirit. But man proposes and God disposes. He caught a cold, otter hunting, and died at the early age of 36. His Irish property devolved on Thomas Fortescue, Esq., since created Lord Clermont, but his extensive unentailed estates, Ribstone Hall, in Yorkshire, and a large personalty, he bequeathed to a mere hunting acquaintance, Mr. Francis Lyttelton Holyoake, junior, a clever rider and keen sportsman, on condition — if I remember rightly — that he should keep up the Quorn pack. Mr. Holyoake assumed, in conse- quence, the additional surname of Goodricke, and was created a baronet. As a contrast to this bequest is the following clause fi-om the Will of the celebrated Lord Chesterfield: — " In case my godson, Philip Stanhope, shall at any time hereafter keep, or be concerned in the keeping of any race horse, or pack of hounds, or reside one night at Newmarket, that infamous seminary of iniquity and ill manners, during the coiu'se of the races there ; or shall resort to the said races, or lose in any one day at any game or bet whatever, the sum of £500, then, in any of the cases aforesaid, it is my express wish that he, my said godson, shall forfeit and pay out of my estate 400 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. the sum of £5,000, to and for the use of the Dean and Chapter of Westminster." Here is another curious instance of a stranger's regard : — Dr. George Pretyraan was William Pitt's tutor at Cambridge, and in the year 1803, being then Bishop of Lincoln, received a considerable landed property be- queathed to him by a stranger, Mr. Marmaduke Tomlixe, of Riby Grove, Lincolnshire, in recognition of his having been the guide and instructor of the great Minister. Misdirected benevolence often influences a testator, sometimes with disastrous results. In a debate in the House of Commons, 4th May, 1863, Mr. Gladstone, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, gave a remarkable instance, when referring to the Jarvis Charities. This is the statement of the right hon. gentleman : — " Mr. Jarvis died in 1793, and left about £100,000 for the poor of three parishes in Herefordshire, to be given in various ways : — for physic, clothing, food, and so forth ; but there was one thing to which he had a par- ticular aversion, he Jibsolutoly forbade building. That was expressly prescribed by the terms of his gift. I suppose his idea was to supply the current wants of the poor. The population of these three parishes, at the first census after Jarvis's death, taken in 1801, was 81)0, and in 1851 it was 1222. What was the reason of this increase ? Had employment increased? No. Had trade come ? No. Had manufactures been established ? No. Wages were not higher — they were lower by 2s. a- week. Were the dwellings good ? No ; they were the most miserable and scandalous that disgraced any part of the country. The people went there naturally TESTAMENTARY ECCENTRICITIES. 401 enough to wait for the doles ; for the gifts which, by Jarvis's mistake and misguided benevolence, were dis- tributed to them, pretty nearly doubled the income of the agricultural population of these parishes. The morals, too, of the localities were such that they were forbidden to be described. In 1852, an Act of Par- liament was procured to place this particular charity on a better footing ; but a great portion of the evil is still left in full force and vigour. The funds are still limited to the same throe parishes. The remedy devised was : They desired to have the power to lay out £30,000, or nearly one-third of the whole sum, in the very thing' and the only thing which old Jarvis forbade, viz., in building. They are going to biiild a boarding school for the children of the labouring population of these three parishes. The real meaning of this is, that the money of old Jarvis, supplemented by the money of the State, improvidently and unjustly taken from the pockets of the ratepayers for the purpose, has grown to such a height, that the trustees are driven to their wits' ends to know what to do with it ; and they have entered into an immense deal of unnecessary building, because, like sensible men, they felt in that way, if it did no good, it would be doing little harm." The Thellusson will originated a special Act of Parliament. Peter Thellusson, son of Isaac de Thellusson, Ambas- sadoi' from Geneva to the Coiurt of Louis XV., fixed his abode in London, about the middle of the eighteenth centurv, and accumulated, as a merchant there, a very considerable fortune. 2 2d 402 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. By liis will, Mr. Thellusson, after bocpeathing large fortunes to his three sons, devised the rest of his pro- perty, consisting of lands of the anniial value of £4,500, and £600,000 in personal property, to trustees, in trust, that they should receive the rents, interest, and profits, and dispose of them for the purpose of accumulation during the lives of his said three sons, and the lives of all their sons, who should be living at the time of his death, or who should be born within due time afterwards, and during the lives and life of the survivors or survivor of them ; and then he directed that after the decease of such survivor, the accumulated fund should be divided into three shares, and that one share should be conveyed to the eldest male lineal descendant of each of his three sons, and upon the failure of such a descendant, that share to go to the descendants of the other sons ; and upon failure of all such male descendants, he gave all the accumulated property to the use of the Sinking Fund. This extraordinary Will gave rise to a long and learned discussion in the Law Courts, and the Judges before whom it was tried determined that the period of accumulation was within the prescribed limit of execu- tory devises, as the several lines were wearing out together, like so many candles burning at once, and therefore they decided in favom- of the validity of the will, a decision affirmed in the House of Lords, 25th June, 1805. An Act of Parliament was, however, subsequently passed, to interdict in future any accumulation of pro- perty so devised beyond the term of twenty-one years after the decease of the testator. TESTAMENTARY ECCENTRICITIES. 403 The date of Mr. Tlicllusson's death was the 21st of Jiily, 1797. At that period, his thi'ee sons, Peter-Isaac, George- Woodford and Charles, were all living ; of these the eldest Peter-Isaac, created Lord Rendlesham in 1 806, was the father of foui' sons, also alive, or born within the prescribed limit ; and the youngest, Charles, had a son, Charles, born to him on the 31st January, 1797. The second son of the testator, George-Wood- ford, had daughters only. We thus find, that the period of accumulation became limited to the lives of the first Lord Rendlesham and his four sons, and to the lives of Mr. Charles Thellusson and his son Charles. The last sm'vivor of the four mentioned sons of the first peer, viz., Frederick, fourth Lord Rendlesham, died 6th April, 1852, and Charles Thellusson, Esq., the son just named of Mr. Charles Thellusson, died 5th February, 1856. At their decease, the accumulated fund (which, however, had not increased to any marked extent), was divided between Frederick- William-Brook, the present Lord Rendlesham, and Charles-Sabine-Augustus, Mr. Charles Thellusson's eldest son. Sir John Soane, the architect, died, possessed of great wealth, in 1837, having founded at an expense of £120,000, the Soane Museum, in Lincoln's Inn Fields, which he bequeathed in trust for national pm-poses, and the gratification of the public. To his son, George he showed an animosity only equalled by that which Dr. Johnson has so eloquently recorded, of the Countess of Macclesfield to her offspring, the poet Savage. Sir John left to this son George Soane, whom he had caused to be educated at the Uni- 2 D 2 404 VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. versity of Cambridge, and brought up with suitable expectations, forty pounds a year! George Soane, who was a man of ability and learning, endeavoured to support himself and his family by the exercise of his pen, and became a dramatic author of some celebrity. But ill-luck tracked him in all his efforts, and when old age crept on, and the hand that guided his pen became feeble, his case was truly pitiable. At times he was reduced to absolute want. On one occasion, when all else failed him, he was recommended to apply for the office of Librarian or Custodian of his fatlier's Collec- tion, which office was endowed with a few hundreds a year ; but here again, Sir John Soane's Will was against him. It prohibited his son's appointment. Poor Soane is now dead, and, whatever may have been the errors and follies of his early career, he made atonement by thirty or forty years of the bitterest suffering. Not very long before his earthly miseries ended, he printed a piece of autobiography, entitled " Facts connected with the Life of George Soane, A.B." It is a sad memorial of the sorrow and wretchedness the unrestricted power of a testator may inflict on his own child. George Soane's autobiography thus con- cludes : — " I write not in malice, not in revenge for the wrongs of a whole life, but in my own defence, and in justice to my children — Suum cuique tribuito. * * * My father's rancour has been the deadly Upas-tree, spreading its noxious shade over me, and blighting every prospect, every effort I have made for the benefit of those who are in nature nearest and dearest to me. I must once more take leave to ask, will this great nation do nothing for the family, whose natm'al inherit- TESTAMENTARY ECCENTRICITIES. 405 ance it is enjoying? Will it leave the immediate descendants of Sir John Soane to starve, while it quietly devom-s the food of those descendants? I believe that the wrong only requires to be known, and it will be redressed : in whicih conviction I throw myself upon the justice, the liberality, and the Christian spirit of my countrymen ; reminding them only, that if ten times more could with truth be brought against me than really can, yet ' Joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons.'" Not quite a hundred years ago, Mr. Roberts, an Irish gentleman of small fortune, was posting from Holyhead, or Chester, to London, and was dining at a small road- side inn, when the Duchess of St. Albans arrived. Her Grace, it must be remembered, was Jane, daughter and heiress of Sir Walter Roberts, Bart., of Glassenbury in Kent. The only available sitting room in the inn was occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Roberts, and the only horses for continuing the journey were those engaged by Mr. Roberts. The Duchess, whose rank Avas unknown, asked leave to join the other travellers, and was, of course, at once invited to do so. Whilst at dinner it was announced that the only horses were those just come round with the gentle- man's carriage. But Mrs. Roberts, who had been charmed with the aflfabihty of the Duchess (whose rank her maid had betrayed) insisted on her husband giving up the horses to her Grace, who was unat- tended by a gentleman, and should not be forced to spend the night in so lonely a place. 40 G VICISSITUDES OP FAMILIES. Mrs. Eoborts ran to the door to order tlie horses to be unharnessed, and the Duchess followed to prevent her too courteous endeavoui's, when, to her Grace's extreme surprise, she saw the arms of her own family, Roberts of Glassenbury, painted on the carriage panels. Explanations followed, then- family name was found to be the same, and an intimacy commenced. Kindred was supposed to exist, and, though the pedigree was never clearly worked out, the Duchess when she died, in 1778, left her estates by will to Mr. Roberts, who was created a baronet in 1809. The vicissitudes in the title of CAITHNESS have been remarkable. In one hundred and thirteen years four collateral branches came to the succession. The Keiss line gave one Earl in 22 years, MuRiiLE two in 67 years, Ratter two in 24 years, and ]\Iey (still prospering in honour and esteem) three in 79 years. Owing to the ruin of the elder line, none of these four families had more estate than what belonged to each separate branch. This result might have been altered but for a malicious will, I will briefly refer to. Alexander, ninth Earl of Caithness, was an old recluse, living in the small house of Hamer, near Murkle, on the sea coast of Caithness. He had no son, and the recog- nised heir male to the title was William Sinclair, of Ratter. The Earl was displeased at his only daughter, Lady Dorothea, for marrying, against his wish, James, second Earl Fife, whom he detested. One day, so runs the story, William Sinclair, of Ratter, called at Hamer to pay a visit, but the old Earl was not at the moment ready to receive him, and detained the visitant TESTAMENTARY ECCENTRICITIES. 407 a considerable time waiting. Becoming impatient, Ratter gave utterance to some sharp remarks on the want of com-tesy of his chief, which were carefully and promptly retailed by an old servant to the Earl, who vowed he would be avenged. His resentment led to an immediate alteration in his testamentary intentions. His daughter, Lady Fife, and his son-in-law had long since been excluded, and now his cousin and heu- pre- sumptive was doomed to share the same fate. In his perplexity and irascibility the old Peer bethought him of a namesake and schoolfellow, who was no provable relation as a Sinclair, and settled everything upon him and his family. If they were of the same stock, it was in the 34th degree of consanguinity. Caithness died in 1765, when the title passed to William, tenth earl, and the estates of Muckle, &c., according to the entail I have just alkided to, went away to Su- John Sinclair, of Ste- venston, Bart., in East Lothian, and continues with that family, with the Murkle coat of arms. The performance of impossibilities is sometimes re- quired by testators. John Browne, Esq., of Rathbane, in the county of Limerick, who made his will in 1842, required that his son the Rev. Peter Bro-svme, Incum- bent of Blackrod, in the county of Lancaster, should, under penalty of forfeitmg a considerable estate, change his Christian name of " Peter" for the Christian name of either "William" or "James." The old gentleman had taken an inveterate dislike to the name of " Peter," from a feeling of animosity he entertained towards the chief of his house ; but it was easier to enjoin than effect the alteration : 40 S VICISSITUDES OF FAMILIES. " A king can mak' a belted knight, A marquis, duke, and a' that ; But "a Christian name's," aboon his might, Guid faith he mauna fa that ! " The perplexed heir knew not what to do : to rid himself of the Christian name he had received at the baptismal font was impossible, to rid himself of the property excessively unpleasant. So, in his dilemma, he did all he could : he applied for the Royal Licence to be allowed to adopt " William" as a prefix SURNAME; and this permission was granted under the Queen's sign manual in 1851. The late William Scrope, Esq., of Castle Combe, Wilts, and Cockerington, in Lincolnshire, devised his Lincolnshire estate to his distant kinsman Simon Thomas Scroope, Esq., of Danby, in Yorkshire, with a condition, however, that the legatee should spell his surname correctly. The consequence was, that Mr. Scroope of Danby obtained the Royal Licence to change his name to Scrope. This gentleman is now the head of the illustrious family of Scrope, and claims as such the ancient Earldom of Wiltes. His case has been for some time before the House of Lords. Sir Jerome Alexander did not belong to the national Irish party. The learned judge who was sent over to Ireland in the reign of King Charles II., made his will in 1670. He seems to have been very rich, and had estates in the counties of Tip- perary, Meath, Westmeath, and the Queen's County. His daughter Elizabeth was the chief object of his love and Hberality; but he annexes to the inheritance he TESTAMENTARY ECCENTRICITIES. 409 leaves her tliis proviso, that she shall forfeit all, if at any time after his decease she shall " marry any lord of Ireland, or any archbishop, bishop, prelate, baronet, knight, esquke, or gentleman that has come of Irish extraction, or been born and bred m Ireland." The alienation of BuNNY (the ancestral home of the old fiimily of Parkyns) under the Will of the late LoRD Rancliffe, forms the subject of a separate chapter in this work ; but " the vicissitudes of families," caused by testamentary eccentricities, are so numerous, that they would supply materials for many volumes. My present pm-pose will be attained if the few instances, I have cited, lead to a fuller consideration of the important questions of Will makmg and Will keeping. 2 D 3 I N D E X. Abbots in Parliament, i. 315. Abereorn Dukedom, ii. 6. Abercorn, Duke of, i. 140. Abergavenny, Mary, Countess of, i. 299. Acland, Sir P. F. P. A., i. 196. Ajaocic, visit to, ii. 154. Albany, House of, i. 89. Alexandek, Sir Jeeome, will, ii, 408. Allardice, Robert Barclay, Esq., of Ury and Allardice, i. 112. Almanza, Battle of, i. 37. Anstrudc, Barons do, i. 35. Apperley, Mr. (Nimrod), i. 335. Argyll, Duke of, i. 140. Arms gi-anted to Baron Ward, i. 257. Athgoe Park, co. Dublin, i. 401. Attainders, ii. 26. Austria, Empress of, i. 88. Austrian Service, British subjects in, i. 8. Austrian Emperor, coronation, i. 242. Avandale, Lords, i. 101. Babington of Castle Doe, i. 353. Baibds of Gaetshereie Ieon- WOEKS, i. 368. Bairda of Auchmedden, i. 370. Banbuey Peeeage Claim, ii, 19. Barnewalls, ii. 74. Baronetcies disputed, i. 29. Beaconsf.'eld, ii. 114. Beaiiharnais, ii. 128. Beauge, Battle of, i. 37. Beauvais, Bishop of, i. 229. BeNTINCK OF BCLriTEODE, ii. 106. Berkeley of Stratton, Lord : hi.s will, 389. Berwick, James, Duke of, i. 37 Biauh-burne, i. 4. Bogle, John, Minature Painter, i. 113. BONAPAETES, ii. 122. BOTFIELD, BeKIAS, WiLL OF, ii. 391. Bouillon, Due de, i. 222. Browne, Peter Wm. (Will), ii. 407. Beeadalbane Peerage, ii. 38. Bridgewatee Will Case, ii. 389. British subjects in Austrian Service, i. 8. Bubb-Dodington, George, i. 195. Buchan, John, Earl of, i. 37. Buckingham, Dukes of, Staf- FORDS, AND ViLLIEESES, i. 75. Buckingham, Duke of, i. 141. ii. 262. Bulsteode, Vicissitudes of, iL 91. Bulstrode, Sir Richard, ii. 97- Bunny, The Fate of, ii. 328, 409. Burke, Edmund, ii. 116. Burke, Serjeant Peter, on " Doubt- ful baronetcips," i. 30. Burton, Sir Charles, ii. 87. Burtons of Leicesteeshieb, ii. 85. Bush, Rev. Paul, husband of the heiress of the Cromwells, i. 72 Caen, i. 392, 400. Caithness, Earldom, ii. 48, 406. Calentyre of Calentyre, ii. 205. Callendae, The Laieds of, ii. 203. Cambridge, Title of, ii. 9. Carruthers, Knima-Maria, ii. 170. Castleton Baronetcy, ii. 56. Chamberlain, Hereditary Great : Mistaken decision, i. 156. Charlton, Kent, i. 304. 190. 412 INDEX. Clmtcl, Eugene, i. 400. Cliarnwoocl Forest, Author of, i. Cheslyns and Suakespeakes, i. 315. Clanna Korys, i. 375. Clareuce, Duke of, George, i. 3. Clarence, Dukedom of, ii. 7. Clavell Will Case, ii. 396. Closeburn, i. 374. Colbert, Minister of Louis XIV, i. 36. Cole of Brancepeth, ii. 79. Coleman, Edward J., Esq., of Stoke, ii. 120. Colour of Ireland, i. 124. Coucj, Lady Pliilippa De, i. 146. Commercial Caprice, i. 189. CONNEMARA, PrINCESS OF, i. 322. Conyers of Sockburn and Hor- DEN, i. 301. Conyers Fund, subscribers to, i. 311. CoNTERS OF Hornby, i. 304. Conyers, The Fall of, i. 301. Corbett, Sir Charles, Bart., i. 307. Cornwall, Dvkedom of, ii. 8. Cotterell, Mr., i. 272. Cox, Sir Hawtry, ii. 56. Crawford Earldom, i. 198. Creations by Queen Victoria, ii. 6. Crew, Chief Justice : summing up in the De Vere case, i. 159. Cromwell, Oliver, his daughters, i. 68. Cromwell, a Brewer — fiction, i. 67. CrOMWELLS, ElSE AND FaLL OF THE, i. 61. Cuthbert of Castle Hill, i. 36. D'Arcy, of KiltuUagh and Clifden Castle, i. 17. D'Ai'YERGNE, Philip, Story of, i. 219. Dcir, Abbey of, i. 163. Dc Lacy, Baron, ii. 340. Delauy, Mrs., ii. 109. De la Poles, ii. 180. De la Tour d'Auvergne, i. 219. Derby, Earldom of. ii. 15. Desmond, Tue Old Countess of, ii. 284. Desmond, Earldom of, ii. 29. Deval, Monsieur, i. 229. De Vere, Earl of Oxford, i. 137. Devon, Earldom of, ii. 21. Dinas Mowddwy, Lordship of, i. 331. Discovery, The, i. 398. DisracH, The Eight Hon. B., ii. 398. Doctors' Commons, ii. 385. DoDINGTONS OF DODINGTON, i. 193. Dorset, Marquessate of, ii. 26. Douglas, i. 139. Douglas Cause, ii. 42. D'Oyly, of Chiselhampton, ii. 56. Ducal Families: comparative antiquity of their being first ennobled, i. 139. Dudley Bakony, ii. 15. Earls Marischal, i. 162. EciiLiN, Sir Frederick, Bt., ii. 65. Egliuton and Glencairn, ii. 50. Elizabeth of York, ii. 248. Emerson-Tennent, Sir James Bart, i. 381. England, Peerage of, i. 32. Erskine, Cardinal di Killia, ii. 49. Exeter, Duke of, i. 20. Fairfax, Lady : interruption of the High Court of Justice, i. 153. Fair Maid of Kent, ii. 240. Fall of Conyers, i. 301. Ferguson's " Irish before the Con- quest," i. 375. Ferguson, Samuel : Poetic lament on fall of Monasteries, i. 315. Ferrers, Marmion, Esq., of Bad- desley Clinton, ii. 26. Fesdi, Cardinal, ii. 126. Fields, descendants of CromTvell, i. 71. Findeme of Finderne, i. 25. FiNDERNEs' Flowers, i. 26. FitzGcrald, of Desmond, i. 13. Fit/Xleralds, Earls of Kildare and Dukes of Leinster, i. 139. FitzPatrick, Eight Hon. J. W., ii. 270. INDEX. 413 Flemings, of Stoucliani, i. 6-4. Forbes, William, of Callendar, ii. Foreign Service, i. 34, 41. Forward, i. 353. FouLQUES, OF Tete-Foulque, ii. 351. Fox, of Fox Hall, ii. 270. Fraser, of Fiiulrack, i. 370. French Service : L-isli officers in, i. 11. Gargrave, of Nostel, i. 317. Garstiu, John Ribton, letter of, ii. 67. George III : " Ealph Robinson," i. 296. George III and " Aiild gang aboot," i. 295. Gladstone, Rt. Hon. W. E., ii. 400. Gleucairn and Egliuton, ii. 50. Gloucester, Dukedom of, ii. 10. Gloucester, Duke of, Thomas Plan- tagenet, i. 3. Goodricke, Sii- H.'s vnU, ii. 399. Gort, Tiscount, ii. 387. Graham, of Gartmore, Netherby, &c., i. 107. Great Chamberlain : question of itg inheritance discussed, i. 156. Grenville, i. 195. Guistiuiani, Princess, ii. 203. Hamilton Dukedom, ii. 45. Hamilton, Anne, Duchess of, i. 6. Hamiltons of Sweden, i. 41. Hampden, John, the Patriot, i. 63. Hanoverian Creations, ii. 5. Harcourt, Earl's will, ii. 392. Hart of Culmore Fort, i. 353. Hawardcu, Vi^covmtess, i. 168. Hajman, Rev. Samuel, ii. 65. Hereditary Knight, ii. 36. Herefordshire, extinction of fami- lies, i. 4. Hewson, Rev. Francis, letter of, ii. 68. Hetman, Sir Peter, Baronet, ii. 59. Hitchcock, Mr., letter from, ii. 75. Hortense de Beauharuais, ii. 137. House that Jack Built, i. 287. Howard of Levens, i. 288. Howards, nobQity and historic dis- tinction of, i. 140. Hulton, i 4. Huntingdon Peerage Claim, ii. 22. Hyde, of Castle Hyde, i. 18. Inchiquin, Lord, ii. 269. Ireland, Diike of, i. 145. Ireland, Family Vicissitudes in, i. 723. Ireland's National colour, i. 124. Irish before the Conquest, i. 375. Irish. Peerage of, i. 32. Irish Peerage, temp. King George I, ii. 35, lEisn Peerage titles, ii. 26. Jarvis bequests, ii. 400. Jeffeeets, Lord, ii. 101. Joau of Ai'c, ii. 192. John Mytton, of Halston, i. 331. Kavanagh, of Borris, i. 9. Keilh, Marshal, Anecdote of, i. 167. Keith, Earl Marischal, i. 162. Kent, Earldom and Dukedom OF, ii. 11. Kent, Earl of: Edmund of Wood- stocke, i. 3. Kent, the Fair Maid of, ii. 240. Kildarc, Earldom of, ii. 27. Kilmarnock, Earl of, ii. 214. King Tom, i. 189. KiNGSLAND, Viscount, ii. 74. Kinpont, Lord, i. 113. Kirby, Miss, i. 191. KlKKCUDBEIGHT, LORD, ii. 57. Kirkaldy, Bellman of: his son, i. 167. KnoUys, Gen. Sir William, K.C.B., ii. 21. Lairds of Callendar, ii. 203. Lairds of Westquaetek, ii. 219. Lancashire, i. 4. Lanceroua : " The Landgravine," i. 146. 414 INDEX. Landlt:ss Loeds and Baronets, ii. 53. Langloy Priory, Leicestershire, i. 345. Larcom, Gen., ii. 342. Lauriston, Marquis de, ii. 176. Law Lords, rapid extinction of, ii. 7. Law of Lauriston, ii. 158. Leland's origin of De Vcrc, i. 143. Leslie of Austria, i. 41. Letters of Baron Ward, i. 2G1, 269. Lindsay, Earl of Crawford, ii. 38. LiNtSAY of Edzell, i. 197- Lindsay, Lord, i. 199. Lisle, Barony of, ii. 18. Livingstones ,,ii. 203. Livingstones of the United States, ii. 218. Livingstones of New York, i. 42. Llanovcr, Lady, ii. 110. Lloyd, Nathaniel — will in verse, ii. 388. Locke, Peter "Warren, i. 401. Loudoun, Edith, Countess of, ii. 365. Louis Philippe's visit to Eoehamp- ton Convent, ii. 132. Louisa de Bourbon, Duchess of Parma — Vicissitudes, i. 253, 285. Lowther of Lowther, i. 288. Lucca, Duke of, i. 240, 258. Lucca ceded to Tuscany, i. 259. Lytton, Baron, ii. 6. Macaulay's paneygric on de Vere, i. 137. Macaulay, Baron, ii. 6. MacCartiiy, ii. 268. MacCartiiy of Dunmanway, ii. 276. MacDonnell, Kt. Hon. Alexander, i. 136. Mackenzie of Scaforth, i. 169. Mackcnzies, origin of, i. 169. Mackenzie proplieiy, i. 169. Mackworth of Normanton, i. 185. Maolellans, ii. 57. MacMahon, Duke of Magenta, i. 37. Macnamnra, Colonel, of Dool en and Ennystymon, ii. 272. M A G u 1 R E of Tom po, i 375 Maguire, Hugh, i. 377. Maguirc of Fermanagh, i. 15. Mahony, i. 41. Maltese Knight's Tale, ii. 351. Mansfield of Killigordon, i. 353. Mansfield, Francis, of Castle Wray, i. 352. Mansergh, Nicholas, i. 200. Mar, Earldom, ii. 41. Margaret of Clarence, ii. 262. Maries, the Four, ii. 209. Marisoiial Earls, i. 162. Marlborougli, Dukedom, ii. 45. Marlborough's, Duchess of, will, ii. 397. Martin of Ballynahinch, i. 322. Murtin, Dick, i. 322. Mayney, Sir Anthony, ii. 57. Maxwell of Calderwood, i. 6. Meehan's " Flight of the Earls," i. 14. Melombe, Lord, i. 195, Memoirs of Noble Families, ii. 51. Mondez da Costa, ii. 398. Menteith, Earls of, i. 103. Middleton, Sir Hugh, ii. 57. Milesian Families raised to Peer- ages, i. 8. Modena, Court of, ii. 261. Modcna, Duke of, ii. 261. Modena, Francis Ferdinand, ex- Duke of, i. 88. Moira, Lord, i. 347. Monasteries, their influence and value, i. 313. Monastic Eecords and MSS., loss of, i. 314. Montrose, Duke of, i. 140. Montrose, Family of, i. 31. Moray, Earl of, i. 102. Moore, Sir Richard Emanuel, Bart., ii. 56. Morland, Sir Samuel, ii. 57. Musgravo of Hartley, i. 288. Mure, Elizabeth ; her marriage to King Robert II. of Scotland, i. 106. Mytton, John op Halston, i. 331. Naples, King of,' i. 88. INDEX. 415 NcBbitt of Tully Idonnell, i. 353. Neville, Lady Margaret, fate of, i. 5y. Nevilles, Earls of Westmore- land AND Warwick, i. 53. Newburgli, Earldom, ii. 203. ii. 48. Newcastle, Dukes of, first ennobled, i. 139. Nomenclature, Family, ii. 60. Norfolk, IJukeof, i. 140. NORMANTON, i. 186. NoRwicn OF Brampton, ii. 70. Northumberland, Duke of, i. 141. ii. 89. NosTEL Peioby, i. 313. O'Brady's Scholarships, i. 10. O'Byrne, of Cabinteely House, ii. 27 O'Cakeoll, Eedmond, Story of, i. 401. Ochiltree, Lords, i. 101. O'Daly, of Bureen, ii. 271. O'Donnell, Prince of Tyrconnell, i. 15. O'Dogherty, i. 15. O'Fcrrall, Right Hon. Richard More, ii. 270. O'Flahcrtic, of Lcmonfield, ii. 271. O'Gara Scholarship, i. 11. Oglanders of Nunwell and of Normandy, i. 390. O'Grady, of KiUballyowen, ii. 272. O'Melaghlins, Kings of Meatu, ii. O'Neill, Lord, of Shanes Castle, ii. 269. O'Neills, i. 122. O'Neill, Lord, i. 10, 129. O'Neill of Tyrone, i. 14. O'Neill of Clancboye, i. 14. O'Neill, Sergeant Major, i. 134. Orglaiides, Count de, i. 391. Ormonde, Earldom of, ii. 27. Oxford, Earl of, De Verb, i. 137. Palaeologi, i. 38. Pal£ologus Theodore, Stoet OF, i. 39. Parkyks Family, ii. 329, 409 Parma, Ex-Duke : his ancestry, i. 284. Parma, Duke of, i. 253. Parma, Duchy, i. 260. Parma, Duke, abdication, i. 277. Parma, Duchess of, i. 88, 285. Peiin, William, ii. 114. Pcnn, John, ii. 118. Penny, Mr. Stephen James, i. 3. Peerage titles : Vicissitudes of, ii. 18. Peerage Claims, ii. 18. Percys, of Northumbeeland, i. 47. Percy, Abbe de, ii. 89. Percy, the Trunkmaker's claim to the Earldom of Northumber- land, i. 50. Permanence of English Society, ii. 54. Petrie, Dr., letter of, ii. 342. Peyton of Iseleham Baronetcy, i. 43. Peyton, John Lewis, i. 43. Pitt, WiUiam, ii. 397. Plantagenets, i. 2. Plantagenet Margaret, i. 3. Plumbe, Miss, i. 191. Poles, Earls of Suffolk, ii. 180. Portland, Duke of, ii. 111. Precedence, ii. 49. Private Memoirs of noble families, ii. 51. Queensberry, Marquessate, ii. 47. Quin of Adare, ii. 272. Ramolino, Letitia, ii. 125. Ramsden, i. 4. Rancliffe, Baron, ii. 332,409 Reresby of Ttirybergh, ii. 82. Ritchie, Mrs., heir of the Earldom of Menteith, i. 112. Rivers, Earls, ii. 365. Robeson Jack, i. 293. Roberts of Glasscnbury, ii. 405. Robinson, John, M. P., i. 287. Rochefoucauld family Vicissitudes, i. 229. Roche of Fermoy, ii. 33. Roehampton Convent, ii. 132. Roxburghe, Duke of, i. 141. 41G INDEX. Russell, Artcniidoi'us Cromwell, Esq., i. 72. Kussiiiu Service, Irish Officers in, i. 12. Russell of Fordhani, i. 72. Rutland, Duke of, i. 141. Ruvigny, Marquis de, i. 37. Ryan of Inch, ii. 273. Saintcs, Bishop of, i. 229. Sainthill, Richard, of Cork, ii. 297. Saiisburt, Earldom or, ii. 13. Saiisbprt, Margaret, Countess OF, ii. 262. Sampson family, i. 351. Scotch Peerage Precedence, ii. 49. Scotch Peerages, ii. 37. Scotland, Family Vicissitudes in, i. 6. Scotland, Peerage of, i. 31. Scropc of Cockerington Will, ii. 408. Seaforth, Fate of, i. 169. Sebright, Baron de Everton, i. 172. Selby-Lowndes of Whaddon Ilall, ii. 265. Self-Reliance, i. 200. Sempill, John, of Beltrees, ii. 210. Seneschal of Ireland, ii. 33. Separation of title from estate, ii. 53. Shakespeares of Langiet Priory, i. 317. SnOBINGTONS OF BuiSTRODE, ii. 92. SiiRKWSBPRT, Earldom of, ii. 14. Shute Barrington, ii. 398. Sinclair, Alexander, ii. 49. Sinclair of Ilolyhill, i. 353, 361. Smart, Joseph, ii. 248. Smart, Robert, ii. 248. Smart, Mr. Joseph, of Halesowen, i. 3. Smyths of Ashton Court, ii. 300. SoANE, Sir John's Will, ii. 403. Somerby, H. G., Esq., i. 44. Somerset, the Prond Duke of, i. 50. Stafford, Roger, Story of, i. 78. Staffords, Dckes of Bucking- ham, i. 75. Standard of Ireland, i. 124. " Statesmen " of Westmoreland, i. 288. Sten-art of Horn Head, i. 353. Stewart of Albany, i. 100. Stewai't-Mackenzie, R. J. A., i. 181. Stewart of Ards, i. 367. Stewart of Craigiehall, i. 114. Stewart of Ardvorlich, i. 102. Stewart of Glenbuckey, i. 102. St. Leger, Sir Warham, i. 379. Stoke Pogeis, ii. 118. Strathern, Earls of, i. 103. Strichen, i. 373. Strickland of Sizergh, i. 288. Stuart of Darnley, i. 35. Stuart creations, ii. 3. Stuarts, the Royal, i. 85. Suffolk, Eaels and Dukes op, ii. 180. Surtecs, Robert, of Mainsforth, visit to Sir Thomas Conyers, Bt., i. 306. Taunton, Lord, ii. 120. Tempest, i. 4. Testamentary Eccentricities, ii. 384. Thomond, Marshal, i. 15. Thellusson Will Case, ii. 401. Three Plantagenet Ladies, ii. 240. Thynne, Thos., of Longleate, " Tom of Ten Thousand," i. 50. Titles — their Fortunes and Fate, ii. 1. Tomline, Marmaduke, ii. 400. Townley, i. 4. TraKbrd, i. 4. Traquair, John, Earl of, i. 7- Tiulor, Creation, ii. 2. Tui-enne, Marshal, i. 220. Turpin, Dick, ii. 111. TJmfretill, Lords, ii. 87. Urquhart, of Bui'dsyard, i. 6. Vaughan, i. 353. Vere of Carlton, Notts, i. 155. Verb, Earl of Oxford, i. 137. Vicissitudes of Bulstrode, ii. 91. ViLLiEES, Viscount Puebeck, i. 84. INDEX. 417 ViLxiEHSES, Dukes of Btjcking- HAM, i. 75. Wakefield, Thomas, History of, ii. 189. Waxlee, Edmtji^d, the Poet, i. 63. li. 115. Wfird, "Walter, i. 264. Ward, Baeox, Memoir of, i. 238. Warwick, Earldom of, ii. 12. Washington, George, Ancestor of, i. 288. Waterfosd, Earldom of, ii. Way, Arthur Edwin, Esq., ii. Wellington, Duke of, i. 141. Wentworth, i. 4. Westmoreland, Earldom of, ii, Westquaeter, Lairds of, ii. Whalley tbe Eegicide, i. 64. Whitelockes op Btjxsteode, ii. 95. WiDViLLES, Earls Eitees, ii. 365. Wigton, Earls of, i. 168. Wildman of Becket, WiU, u. 398. 32. 304. 26. 219. Wilkins, Mrs., of Soham, i. 73. Will Depository, i. 400. William Wrat of Ards, i. 350. WlLLOUGHBT OF PaEHAM Baront, ii. 24. Wills, lax custody of, i. 398. Willyams, Mrs. Sarah, Will, ii. 398. Wilmot, Daniel Sinclair, Co-heir of Barony of Dudley, ii, 16. Wilmot, Mr. George, i. 3. Wilson, James Holbert, ii. 387. Wilson, Beau, ii. 163. Wood of Gloucester's Will, ii. 392. Woodall, William Otter, ii. 153. Woodcock family, ii. 16. Wrat, the last William, of Ards, i. 350. York Cardinal, i. 86. Yorkshu-e West Riding, i. 3. 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